Download the public site stats and/or the private site stats.
Leila Hudson's "Chess Was Invented in Iran" led all downloads again with 65 more this page week. Another public lecture that Leila gave, "Comedy and Counterhegemony," received 30 downloads. Within the top ten download last week were Linguistics Lectures.
I noticed today that the audio track of Dr. Leila Hudson's lecture "Chess was invented in Iran," was #1 on our downloads list. (look to the right of the UA's iTunes U main page. [iTunes link] Leila's lecture was downloaded 53 times during the 7 days of this report. It is undoubtedly related to the presidential election and subsequent events in Iran over the past 7 days and, I think, shows how people all over the 'Net will turn to iTunes U for quality information.
Our UA top downloads list changes almost daily. If you check it after today another track could be back on top. Leila's lecture was recorded three years ago and is included in Wildcatcasts. Faculty are invited to record their public/invited lectures for iTunes U. The LTC lends digital recorders with armbands and easy to follow recording instructions for these purposes. If interested, complete this short contact form.
Here are the spreadsheets for the Public Site and the Private Site
The iPhone OS upgrade is now available. Among the many useful and cool things it provides is acces to iTunes U. For us UA folks, this means mobile access to the approximately 2,000 audio and video tracks in our iTunes U site.
Here is more info.
Mobile Learning and iTunes U: Now download directly to iPhone and iPod Touch and there is a short video on this page showing how to access iTunes U from the iPhone and Touch.
This morning I attended a webinar: "Facebook and Twitter Recruitment Tools Engage Prospective Students," presented by Mike Richwalsky, Assistant Director of Public Affairs, Allegheny College. Althought he webinar was weighted on using these tools for marketing a college or university rather than instruction, I still got a good deal from it. Being in the LTC can be called upon by colleagues in UA departments and programs to help understand how to use social networking tools. As I've done a few other times now, I tweeted while listening to the speaker and following his slides.
Richwalsky began with a short overview of why higher edu should be using social media, sharing these four points: 1) Enhance your existing marketing, 2) Create or enhance your connection with your "customers," 3) Find new "customers" at a reduced cost, 4) Spread good news instantaneously. He gave examples a little later showing how Allegheny's Twitter site accepts replies and its Facebook site accepts comments. What is important is to treat these in a customer focused way and seize the opportunity to exchanging messages with the sender. He said if someone writes "your tuition costs too much" you can try to engage that student and could direct him to financial aid.
As in the last webinar I attended that was about a university YouTube channel, he pointed out that more people beyond the digital native age are using social networking. He provided a statistice from a Neilsen Group report showing the biggest increase in blog and social networking users came in the 35-49 age group. And he emphasized the importance of promoting your Facebook page on the college's homepage, adding links to print documents, adding "share this on Facebook" on every page on your website, and inviting students to participate in Allegheny College's Class of 2013 in their acceptance letter (after their deposit). He also showed how Allegheny had ushered students into Ning where they had "by invitation only." This seemed to be a good way to have your students away from the fraud merchants selling t-shirts.
My alma mater, U. of Cincinnati, moved to the No. 18 spot among public universities for federal research expenditures according to the NSF's data. This is from the NSF's annual report and reflects research expenditures for FY 2007. Cincy was 28th in 2006, marking a pretty significant increase. UC is 28th among all institutions. Where is the UA? Number 36 overall.
Download last week's private site spreadsheet or the public site spreadsheet
On June 13th, the NY Times (and I'm sure many others) reported that "Google will be launching an new microblogging search service that will sort results by relevancy and integrate those results with its own web search engine to trigger a 'MicroBlogsearch universal search group'." See
Google to Launch Microblogging Search Engine? Here's a Google announcement . There's a link down this page to an article from back in May in the LA Times where products chief Marissa Mayer is quoted saying that "Google was interested in the possibilities for micro-messaging/micro-blogging, particularly from the search perspective." And now we having an actual product being released.
We have a plug-in installed on our Movable Type (server-side) that makes posting from an iPhone or iPod Touch simple.
In fact I am doing it now. You can add it as an icon to your iPhone or Touch desktop by touching the plus sign and selecting Add to Home Screen. Like making a bookmark but I think more direct because you then just tap the icon and it opens your Safari to our MT login page. Once logged in to MT, you see a screen to "create entry," "manage comments," and "manage entries." I think this has potential for instruction with students being more and more connected. And students don't need to buy an app from the iTunes Store.
Download last week's iTunes U stats for the private site and the public site.
I'm happy to report that the final two lectures from the College of Science, Next: Science that Transforms series were uploaded this morning to iTunes U and this afternoon to YouTube. You can also downloaded these videos off the Podcasting website.
"Next: Visualizing Human Thought" presented on March 3, 2009, by Elena Plante, Professor and Head of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences. [watch on Youtube]
The ability of the human brain to think and communicate one's thoughts is fundamental to our experience. For centuries, our ability to understand how human thought is represented and communicated had to be inferred from observing behavior following brain damage. The recent advent of new tools for noninvasive study of the normal brain has revolutionized our understanding of brain function, allowing us for the first time to visualize human thought. And we are only just beginning.
"Next: Really Intelligent Computers" presented on March 10, 2009, by Paul Cohen, Professor and Head of Computer Science. [watch on YouTube]
Halfway through its first century, artificial intelligence has delivered some astonishing successes on narrowly defined tasks: cars that drive themselves, airline reservation systems you can talk to, search engines for the Web. Yet these accomplishments have failed to match the general, flexible, adaptive mind of a two-year-old child. By understanding the differences between childlike and computer intelligence, we set the stage for the development of really intelligent computers.
Darwin 200th Birthday Celebration
On Feb. 12, 2009, the University of Arizona's Ecology & Evolutionary Biology department led The Darwin 200th Birthday Celebration. There was a Darwin Look-A-Like contest, wonderful live music performed by Charlie D and his Natural Selections, poetry readings (including an evolutionary poem written by the attendees), and exhibits showcasing research being done in the department. This video is a great example of what we want to get up on the UA's YouTube channel. It features students and educates viewers about E&EB and research conducted in this department.
I set up Google Analytics for the local page we have for people to get to the UA's iTunes U main page. I looked at the stats for approximately the dates when spring semester began to its end.
click this image to get a screenshot of the full page.
What does it mean? We can see that 1,767 visitors came to this page to click the blue button to go to the UA's public iTunes U site. Given the fact we average 50,000 - 60,000 visitors to our site a week, this tells me is that the vast majority of visitors are entering through the iTunes store. Google analytics also tells us that visitors arrived at itunes.arizona.edu this way:
* 37.27% Direct Traffic
* 48.71% Referring Sites
* 14.03% Search Engines
2013 Tees is run by college students uniting incoming college freshman classes with class tee shirts. We create unique, relevant tees for college freshman every year. Our tees are worn at around college campuses nation wide at freshman orientation, collegiate sporting events, and everyday college life. We hope you like our tees! Have a great freshman year Class of 2013!
I picked up a rice bowl at the Panda Express in the student union today. On my way out I pass Alan Beaudrie who tells me a story. Alan is in the College of Public Health and works with student services slash academic affairs. He was an early adopter of blogging to reach students and had successful sites for MEZCOPH and the College of Nursing.
Alan tells me that he found a Facebook site directed to the UA's class of 2013. There's also one for the U. of Georgia. And the purpose is simply to suck in in-coming freshmen and get them to buy a t-shirt. Here's a page showing happy students prouding wearing their UGA Go Dawgs! tees. They run about $15 and you pay through PayPal. The tees do not have the university logo on them so I don't think there is any logo infringement. It seems more like we're dealing with entrepreneurs, perhaps college-age, who know how to exploit social software to their advantage. Whether they actually ship a t-shirt we don't know, at least at this time. Could Pay Pal transfer the funds to an account that can be cleaned out without the owners leaving a trace? Maybe because I once fell for the magazine subscription scam my radar is constantly up.
If you have a Facebook account, login and search on class of 2001 + arizona. The first site shows 1,904 members and looks like it could be a legit UA site. But it's not. In recent news it features the point of the site, "Hey don't forget to check out the zona class of 2013 t-shirt here... high quality, tagless, with free shipping. http://www.2013Tees.com/azona" (spelling doesn't count)
Alan also pointed me to a Chronicle of Higher Education article from December 2008, "Company Created Official-Looking 'Class of 2013' Facebook Groups for Hundreds of Colleges." LOTS of comments and well worth reading.
Download the Public site spreadsheet
Download the Private site spreadsheet
Last week I uploaded "From Anarchy to Otaku-Youth Subculture Thirty Years After Punk" to Art & Identity: Artists Lecture Series. Today I noticed that it was downloaded 225 times. That's a lot for UA videos in iTunes U. Checking Apple's iTunes U main page I found that it is included in the Fine Arts New And Notable [iTunes link] feature, prominently positioned on that page.
Apple reports the following institutions are participating in iTunes U.
Albany Medical College
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Asbury Theological Seminary
Appalachian State University
Azusa Pacific University
Bacone College
The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement
Château de Versailles
CSU Long Beach
De Anza College
Eastern Michigan University
Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain
FORA.tv
Full Sail University
Kauffman Foundation
Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS)
George Mason University
Georgetown University
Hasso-Plattner-Institut für Softwaresystemtechnik (HPI)
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
McGill University
McNally Smith College Of Music
Nobel Biocare
Northwestern University
Ohio
Poynter Institute
Rubin Museum of Art
RWTH Aachen University
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
SUPINFO International University
Tate
Teachers TV
UNIL - Université de Lausanne
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
University Of Maryland, Baltimore
University of Massachusetts Boston
Université Nice Sophia Antipolis
Université Paris Descartes
University of Minnesota
University of New Hampshire
University of San Diego
University of Warwick
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Virginia Department of Education
Wheaton College
Wesleyan University
