April 2008 Archives

Among The UA's many programs is a unique on; Race Track Industry Program. RTIP offers students two paths: "The Business Path prepares students for employment in the areas of race track management, regulation and pari-mutuel racing organizations. The Equine Management Path prepares students for employment in areas dealing with racing and breeding animals." LTS has been shooting video of RTIP's guest speakers series the past year and we are in the process of populating a YouTube playlist and will create a site on iTunes U soon.

So why blog about it? Last night, RTIP hosted a screening of an independent film called The First Saturday In May. The film was produced, directed, filmed, edited -- it's an Indy afterall -- by two brothers. One of the brothers, Brad Hennegan, showed the movie to an RTIP marketing class and last night he showed it at Gallagher Theater. (Gallagher is the movie theater in the student union.) BTW, there are quite a few departments and programs that could take lessons from RTIP on marketing its program.

I encourage everyone reading this entry to see this film. It is about six trainers who are preparing a horse for racing's holy grail, The Kentucky Derby. As Brad Hennegan said during a Q&A session, the story is really about people and not about horse racing. It traces the lives and work of six trainers with horses targeting the 2006 Derby. Terrific film.

"Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?" by Sara Corbett, Sunday, April 13th, NY Times Magazine.

When I was teaching Intro to Information Technology for SIRLS over the past few years, I asked students to look at particular technologies, how they have been evolving (the technologies, not the students) and how a technology might help bridge the digital divide. A great example happened serendipitously a few years back following the class in which I talked about Skype and VOIP. As I left the computer lab, I noticed the lab tech, Micah Boyer, using Skype's chat to exchange messages with his financé who was in Africa at the time.

Micah was an anthropology grad student who had served in the Peace Corps in Benin. He told me how Skype was making a real difference in Benin. The gist of the story is that with Benin's independence, the government decreed that the country's economy would be based upon cotton, an extremely labor-intensive crop. Farmers were forever dependent on the government to sell their cotton. However, even in remote villages where there was little to no infrastructure, farmers were buying time at the village Internet café and Skyping cotton buyers in other countries about buying their surplus they had. In this way, Skype was freeing farmers from their government's control. Over the next couple semester's Micah talked to my classes about this experience. Having this "real-world" example did a lot to persuade the students who felt like I was touting some damned technology they'd never heard of before, to consider the lessons.

download spreadsheet

Last week, Apple ran a features window On Evolution atop the iTunes U mainpage. I'd commented when first seeing that the College of Science Evolution lecture series was the first of the items featured that I couldn't wait to see the use report. I'd also noticed that Rick Michod's "Social Evolution" Evolution Series lecture track was the 16th most downloaded track on all of iTunes U last Friday and is still holding down 16th place. (On Evolution is still the feature, if you'd like to look). It's also realized four times (406) the number of downloads than our previous high (99).

I heard this quoted yesterday in the context of how thugs and felons can get away with anything in the NFL so long as they have great skills. In that context a sport's writer said: "If Jeffrey Dahmer could have run a 4:40, he'd have had an eating disorder." Had to share that one.

"I have shared these with parents of freshmen to be, and they love them!" These are the words of Keith Rocci, Advising Specialist in the College of Education.

One of the themes that I've been exploring related to our UA YouTube channel, has been how these resources can help those parents who are involved in a student's college selection process. With news of campus tragedies being all too familiar, many parents are evaluating prospective universities around perceived safety issues. In the September 2006 University Business article "Helicopter Parents Take Flight in College Recruitment Process," results of a study indicated that since "the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, parents understandably were fearful about their teens traveling long distances to college, especially when travel involved flying. A spike in parent concerns about safety in an earlier study reflected those fears." With the shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois in the past 12 months, educations might expect parental safety concerns to become renewed or even elevated. At our own campus, none of us forget the murders in College of Nursing several years ago.

In shaping our use of the UA's YouTube channel my primary vision has been to feature videos that present the UA in a positive way to prospective students. By featuring videos of current students talking about their experiences - academic, cultural and social - we can do much in leading a high school student to a favorable impression of the UA. It appears that our YouTube channel also has the potential to win over parents as well. Might be a good time to contact the Parents Association. If anyone has other ideas on promoting our YouTube channel, let me know.

download the spreadsheet

Big jump in the number of visitors last week. We've been averaging ~11,500 but last week had 21,048 visitors.

The UA's Apple rep, Glen Banks, has put an event together with UA BookStores that involves learning more about doing podcasting. It is aimed at the UA community - faculty and students in particular. It seems to partly be developed around promoting podcast producer, a function within Apple's Leopard operating system. If you're wondering why the bookstore is hosting the event, UA BookStore's Computer and Technology Store (C.A.T.S.) sells Apple products.

Read on to see the schedule of events.

Download the spreadsheet for the week of April 6 - 12, 2008.

BTW, the new Noteworthy window on iTunes U includes our Museum of Art Lectures. We're in good company, too. The other institutions represented in Noteworthy are MIT, Yale, American Public Media, ideastream, The NY Public Library, Loyola Marymount's Law School, and U. Michigan.

Our Apple rep is working with OSCR to put an event together on April 24th at the UA Bookstore. The gist of it, according to an email I received a couple weeks ago, is that OSCR staff will conduct "a general primer on capturing audio and video for podcasts" at the Bookstore on April 21st and 22nd. The Bookstore will then host a series of lectures and other events on the 24th highlighting the Mars Mission. Apple and the Bookstore plan to tie these events together and put the spotlight on iTunes U by offering some informational chats and opportunities for the public to practice capturing and posting podcasts. I'll be giving an overview of our UA on iTunes U and had to provide our Apple rep with a paragraph. So I went into our iTunes U site and counted the number of tracks we have up.

What a surprise! There are just over 500 tracks in our iTunes U site. That's a heck of a lot of content.

Download spreadsheet Here is the spreadsheet for the past week.

Two excellent videos were added to our UA YouTube channel. One is Mario Thomas, a senior in aerospace engineering, speaking about his experiences over the past several years in the MLK, Jr. Center. This video's title is Mario Thomas: Seeing the MLK Center Flourish. The second video is Shakayla Byrd: Whatever You Need Is Right Here. Shakayla is a freshman who speaks enthusiastically about the Center's resources and services for students. Bruce Smith, African American Student Affairs director, told me that both Mario and Shakayla composed their talks own their own. Two terrific videos promoting the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Center. Check them and email others about them.

Jim Austin pointed me to a a blog entry about about YouTube Insight, a brand new tool from YouTube that enhances our capability to learn who is viewing the videos on the UA's channel. I Googled "Insight" and found an announcement on YouTube's blog Broadcasting Ourselves ;) On March 26th, the YouTube Team posted, "YouTube Reveals Video Analytics Tool for All Users." "Today we're releasing YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks." This has the potential to be very useful, unless they all turn to be like the emails I get from YouTube about recent subscribers (hint: porn).

Google's April Fool joke invites you to join them in colonizing Mars. If you go to Classic Google follow the link to A Cool World: Enjoy a rosier future as a Virgle Pioneer. The video I embedded above is part of it. As Springsteen is said to have advised Bon Jovi, Larry and Sergie! Don't quit your day job.

Addendum: Ken Wall alerted us to this page that is collecting various April Fools Day webpages.