Prue Salter’s Blog: Exploring the Power of Technology as a Learning Tool

Wow, 2 months since my last post. How can it be that long? Probably because it has been a challenging last few months for me.

The start of the year is always the busiest time for me work-wise and I have had a number of revelations the last few months about the whole PhD process….

1.     When you are at school there is a huge gap between going from Year 10 to Year 11. It is the only year where there is such a massive jump in expectations and in ability needed. I think this particular transition is a bigger jump even than going from Year 12 to uni. Well I have found  a new gap that makes this old one look laughable… the gap from a Masters to a PhD. I have a new sense of respect for anyone who has a doctorate - in fact I can’t believe really how many people have made it to the end of the process. In some ways it would be mush much easier if you did it straight after your degree without entering the real world first. If I had done this when I was in my early 20s, I think it would not have been as challenging as I am finding it now. After 5 degrees I did not expect it to be that much different or much more challenging than anything I had done before - just longer. I was wrong though, it is so different from anything I have done before and the expectations are beyond what I had anticipated. In my 20s I would have expected it to be hard, I would have expected to know nothing at the beginning and I think that would have been an easier attitude to have entered with.  I attended a really interesting seminar with a student who was a few years down the track who outlined that she had the same experience - she’d come into the PhD with first class honours and could not understand how she was suddenly stuck in a ‘swamp’.

I loved this quote they showed at the seminar, which leads into my next point:

The ordeal of candidature is a mad process in its assignment of a structural role to insecurity. It challenges the candidate’s sense of worth, provoking a trauma of loss as one of its central knowledge-producing mechanisms, one which is often cruelly prolonged or repeated.
Frow, J. (1988) Discipline and Discipleship. Textual Practice. 2 (3) :pp. 307-323.

The seminar also made these points:

Challenges the candidate’s sense of self worth – provokes a trauma of loss as one of its central knowledge-producing mechanism. It is a breaking down of the former sense of self. One begins as a sole writer with a fixed sense of self, and then moves towards becoming part of a discursive community where you learn to speak the same language with a common vocab.

2.     There are a lot of articles about reconstructing your sense of identity when doing a PhD and I can see now where this comes from. At first you begin with a really clear idea and sense of confidence about what you want to research. Then as you start to explore the topic and find out how very little you know, the confidence erodes and doubt seeps in. Again, in your 20s you are much less aware of what you don’t know and I feel this ignorance in some ways would be bliss. Anyway, so after your sense of self has been eroded as you become aware of how little you know and how far you have to go, you then start to recreate your image of yourself as a researcher piece by small piece. Everything else you have done prior to this is absolutely meaningless. It has all been swept away and you are in kindergarten again. You now have to start taking baby steps again as you firm up your research question and start to think about how you will approach the research you do. I get comments from Year 7 students about how now they have come to high school they are the little kids whereas they used to be the big kids. I know what they mean, I don’t like being the little kid again either. 

3.     And talking of firming up the research question… it seems so clear until your supervisor starts discussing it with you And then you realise that getting the general idea of what you want is not enough, you need to ensure every word is selected to represent exactly what you want it to represent. So first the topic is too broad, then too narrow, then you read someone else’s and think oh that is so much clearer or gee that is a good idea next thing you know you are being pulled in every which way and have totally lose clarity about what you want to know. I said to my supervisor that I thought that this whole stage really sucked and he said he recalled saying something similar to his supervisor. Meanwhile others are talking about enjoying every moment, enjoying the process and I must admit that I am not. I don’t like the uncertainity, I like clarity - and I don’t like having to spend too long in the fog before it clears.

4.     Of course the lack of control is another big issue for me. Ideally I like things to be very systematic. But the literature review is anything but. I would really like to sit down, go through all relevant journals, locate a list of all 300+ relevant articles I should read, then start systematically working my way through them. But it doesn’t work that way. You find one source, then this leads to something else, and then you change direction and then there is something else to explore and it is all tangents and sidelines and very messy. But this is the way it has to be approached. It is also frustrating as there is so much reading you would like to do and I have the feeling that no matter how much I do there are always going to be more articles that people say have you read such and such? 

So it has been a challenging few months as I come to grips with all of this and try to find enough time to do all the reading - and thinking - I need to do. I am definitely cutting down on my commitments next year though to make more time for my uni work.

You can see what I have done so far by clicking on the links n the left hand side of the page at: http://www.pruesalter.wikispaces.com/

So on another note, the Taronga Zoo course is going very well. The task for this week was to write a speech on a topic we had been given, we have to present it next week. Below is my speech. Oh it was so nice to have something simple and contained that I could complete in a short space of time.  Not getting that sense of completion or satisfaction with anything I am doing for uni at the moment as no matter how much I get done my list of what I’d like to do / need to do never seems to get smaller.

……………………………………………………

Interpretative Theme

Tasmanian devils are tragically at risk from a contagious and deadly form of cancer that threatens to lead to extinction within 10-15 years. While the search for a cure continues, there are ways that people can contribute to the cause of saving the Tasmanian devil.

Location: Tasmanian Devil Enclosure

Key Messages

-       There is a cancer threatening the devils.

-       They pass it through a natural behavior of biting.

-       Just in case we can’t cure it, we are breeding an insurance population in zoos etc across Oz.

-       We need financial support to do this, so visit the website and donate.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

SPEECH:

Hook

I’d like everyone here to look very carefully at our Tasmanian Devils for a moment, and try and memorise exactly what they look like. Now close your eyes and picture what you’ve just seen. Can you see them in your mind? Open your eyes. Well in maybe 10-15 years, a memory, or perhaps a photo, might be all that is left of the devils.

Introduction

Welcome to Taronga Zoo where we are working to save the Tassie Devil. My name is Prue and today you are going to hear about the struggle this native Australian animal is facing.

Transition: You might already have heard about it in the news. Does anyone know what is threatening the devils?

• Devil Facial Tumour Disease
• rare form of cancer
• will kill the devil within 6 months of the cancer appearing on their face
• very contagious

Transition: You see, it’s almost as easy for the devils to catch this cancer, as it is for you to catch a cold. Have you ever been around a friend who sneezed near you and later you got sick? Well, imagine a cold where you had to bite your friend to catch it! .

• That’s how the devils pass the cancer to each other.
• You might think “that seems ok, as long as the devils don’t bite each other they won’t catch the cancer”.
• But the problem is, biting is a natural part of their behavior during feeding and mating.
• And so, the cancer continues to spread in the wild.

Transition: So, what can we do to save the Tassie Devil? We can’t stop them doing their natural behaviours!

• Scientists are racing against the clock to find a cure for this cancer.
• But there is concern they will not find one in time.
• So here is what Taronga Conservation Society is doing.
• We are working with other zoos across Australia on an ‘insurance breeding program ‘to create a cancer free population of devils
• This way, if the worst happens, and the disease wipes them out in the wild, zoos can one day repopulate the wild.

Conclusion

So although this cancer is a serious threat to the devils, there real steps being taken to save the Tassie Devil. In fact, the good news is that since 2008 when they were listed as endangered, the breeding program has produced 34 joeys already. (Pass out pics) They are actually quite cute aren’t they! If you’d like to show your support of the devil, then visit our interactive tassie devil appeal website, listed on the sheet there (www.tassiedevilappeal.org). It is great fun, and you can even breed your own virtual devil or create your own devil family! The donations through the site help to support our work to breed a cancer free Tassie devil population, just like the ones you see here today!

……………………………………………………………….

Actually it was quite interesting reading about this topic. Here are some more facts I couldn’t fit into the 3 minute speech. Tassie devils used to be all over Australia up until about 4000 years ago when dingos were introduced and survived in Tasmania due to no dingos there. There were called devils by European settlers due to their demonic grunts and high pitched squeals and red ears.  They have really powerful jaws so crunch up and eat all parts of their prey. They live around 5 years in the wild, usually have once a year and as they are a marsupial the young spend 5 months in their pouch.  This cancer appeared around 1996 and it is mostly spread during the devils biting each other during the feeding frenzy. They prefer to be solitary animals but cooperate when feeding. The facial cancers are horrific looking, looks like their face is being eaten away and many of them die from starvation due to the facial cancers as they are unable to eat. The problem is that as about 90% of them have been wiped out, the gene pool has been depleted and so when they bite each other as the genetic material is similar the immune system does not recognize the cancerous cells as foreign matter and so the tumor forms. There has been some progress in the search for a cure for the cancer but it seems like it will not be found in time. So the zoos want to try and build up a quarantined disease free population of 1500, they have about 115 now. So a long way to go.

• Leave a comment... (0)

Thoughts on article from ‘What does good educational research look like?” by Yates, Lyn (2204) from 1st block

Some ideas after reading this article:

Perhaps we need to question what we are trying to achieve before we can decide whether the end result showcases ‘good educational research’.

A criticism of doctoral research raised in this article is that it can sometimes lead to the production of things read only by 3 people. This had been a criticism that previously I would have agreed with. Being a pragmatic type of person, I like things to have a purpose and an outcome so I had always been a bit dismissive about researching something that does not have a practical application and outcome. Find something out, then use this knowledge to make something better.

However I am now starting to question this approach, and really the whole thrust of the PhD is that you are significantly contributing to the wider body of knowledge in your field. Although the work may not have immediate practical applications, it may lead to further developments in the future – we get higher by standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.

But perhaps I am focusing too much on outcomes? The article points out that being forced to pursue research in a ‘pure’ way is an experience that can train and transform a potential researcher and help them develop and refine not only their research skills but also undertake a personal journey of discovery. The experience and scope and depth of the research may lead the candidate into questioning their own beliefs and assumptions not just about their topic but about the research process in general.

This tallies with some advice I received from other (further along) doctoral students. The advice was to treat the whole process as a journey of discovery, to not worry if you cannot see all the steps lined up but instead to focus on the immediate steps and to in effect take a leap of faith that eventually everything will come together.

The definition in the article of what is a PhD: ‘A PhD is a form of accreditation that certifies that the holder has proved himself or herself as a researcher and warrants admission to the community of licensed academics or competent scholarly independent researchers’.

So what is good educational research?

I think it is original and creative yet has taken into account the existing research (interesting point made in the article: the problem to be tackled should emerge naturally from the literature review). The research has been done properly. Methodology is well-thought out and applied appropriately. The research question has been addressed resulting in an original contribution to knowledge in that field.

• Leave a comment... (0)

This week in my studies I gave a quokka a head rub and attended a presentation on the frontline teachers’ perspective of the education reform that has been going on in Hong Kong schools.

The first lesson of the zoo and the the first Community of Scholars meeting I attended had little in common apart from the fact that I rode my scooter to both.

At the zoo we discussed the changing role of modern zoos and zookeepers, we petted an echidna, analysed the nocturnal house, saw where they did the food prep with the bags of vacuum packed mice, and I gave an inquisitive quokka a head and chin rub for awhile.

At the first CoS meetings, I listened to an interesting presentation on the reform of the HK educational system which began just after I left HK mid 2000. Has been a challenging time for teachers there and now with populations dropping they will begin to experience unemployment too as up to 30% of schools are closed.

I also experienced a positive and negative feeling:
- The positive one was the feeling that I am now part of a new community, the research community particularly in the education faculty, at UTS. I am now a member of this group, I can see all sorts of opportunities for interesting academic discourses and although there are things I do not like about the world of academia (perhaps more on that at another time) I am attracted to this world and stimulated by participation in it.
- The negative emotion was envy. A number of doctoral students and lecturers were in attendance and some two years along, some 4, some more, and here I am day 1 of the PhD studies with a very long path ahead of me. So yes, definitely felt jealous of those who are already a fair way along the path and in particular past the first year where there is so much unknown.

• Leave a comment... (0)

So sorry I have neglected you Mr Blog, have been working non-stop for last 8 weeks on my study skills site (www.studyskillshandbook.com.au) trying to incorporate more principles of online learning and make the the site more interactive, am really happy with how it has been developing and now ready to shift my focus for awhile to my studies this year.

I think I am going to start at least doing my PhD work on a wiki: http://pruesalter.wikispaces.com/ 
I found the process of working on a wiki really useful, being able to edit and arrange to have my supervisors be able to directly comment on what I am doing and monitor my progress easily seems like a great bonus. The pain will be backing up what I do, I think I will have to cut and paste each page into a word doc to back it up, unless anyone knows of an easier way?

Not much on the wiki yet but am starting to get my thoughts together and put a plan in place - think I will have a better idea where to start after the first orientation session late Feb.

So at the other end of the spectrum I have had the first orientation session of Cert 11 in Animal Care at the Zoo. The best part was the cotton top tamarins that are in a tree behind the glass wall at the education centre. They are the most magical little monkeys with minature faces and teensy teensy punk rocker white mohawks. We all watched them entranced. The next best bit is we get our uniform soon. But it is interesting to see how different the course is, it is all competencies and signing off of skills, I like it. I like the idea of having to demonstrate certain outcomes. It is very clear exactly what you have to do, how to do it, and how to demonstrate it is done.

Whereas the PhD rigght now is one big mass of unknown and possibilities of directions.

• Leave a comment... (0)

Even though I explained in an earlier post why I decided to go with creating my own xml file and hosting my own audio files, I wanted to share on last thought on iTunes U.

Launched in 2007 (and that is about as much info as Wikipedia has - I have an untested theory that you can measure the popularity and how well-known things are by the amount of info on wikipedia…) this is Apple’s attempt to bring some academic respectability to the concept of iPods. Even now when I suggest to students they could put their study notes on their iPods they laugh - to them iPods are a fun tool and not to be confused with learning!

Apple is cleverly trying to merge the two perspectives by providing academic institutions with a means of distributing their material in a user-friendly fashion for students - a format and site they are already familiar with.

Here is how Apple describes iTunes U:

iTunes U puts the power of the iTunes Store to work for colleges, universities, and other education organizations, so users can easily search, download, and play education content just like they do music, movies, and TV shows.

Apple shares common goals with education—to advance teaching, learning, and research through innovation, and to engage and empower students. Students, as well as instructors and staff, expect a campus environment that accommodates their digital lifestyle, adapts to their individual learning and teaching needs, and encourages collaboration and teamwork. iTunes U provides a way to meet all these expectations.

Based on the same easy-to-use technology as the iTunes Store, iTunes U features Apple simplicity and portability and is designed as a service for institutions to manage a broad range of audio, video, and PDF content, and to make it available quickly and easily to students, instructors, staff, alumni, and, optionally, the public.

With iTunes U, users can access educational content, including lectures and interviews, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Users can browse content and download it to their computers, Mac or PC, regardless of their location. They can then listen to and view that content on their computers or transfer the content to an iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV for listening or viewing on the go.

With the iTunes U easy-to-use interface and web services, instructors and staff can easily post, change, and share content on their own without impacting their IT department. Instructors can also set a page to allow students to upload their own content for review or to share with other students in the class.

http://deimos.apple.com/rsrc/doc/AppleEducation-iTunesUUsersGuide/Introduction/chapter_1_section_1.html accessed 15th October 2008

My prediction, this is eventually going to be really really big. The early adopters are already in there and exploiting the technology to the full. But it will not take long before institutions automatically have an iTunes U page just like they have a website. Apple has the advantage of already having an easy to use organised interface in place and has set up good structures for institutions - allowing them to create specific courses and to tailor their iTunes U site to the needs of their learners.

So even though it was not the right match for my purpose, iTunes U gets a big tick from me.

• Leave a comment... (1)

Some years ago, in a burst of Internet marketing enthusiasm, I purchased Camtasia, a product that allows you to record your screen as you navigate through with a voiceover. But I never got around to doing anything with it.

 Sometime later and now I needed a video tour of my site. So I decided to look at the available options and work out whether Camtasia was really the best option for what I wanted to do. Lots of people had lots of suggestions. So here is what I discovered.

First I followed a few dead ends:

• Profcast was my first lead. But Profcast is more for recording powerpoint presentations or podcasts.
• SnagIt sounded great - but it is just for static screen captures.
• Screencoder turned out just to be something written by some anonymous guy with lots of support complaints as far as I could see.
• XVidcap is an open source alternative but it only works with Linux systems, no go.
• Screenflow seemed liked an effective and cheap option but only for Macs.
• CamStudio 2.0 is an open source alternative but it only outputs to avi and I was wary again of support issues.
• vNc2WF was a free alternative for capturing what you are doing on the screen but you had to add the audio later which was a pain for what I was doing.
• Windows Media Encoding has a recording feature but output is only as a WMV file.

So it came down to 3 options:

- Captivate (by Adobe for around $600)
- Camtasia (by TechSmith for around $300 - but I’d already bought it anyway)
- Jing (also by TechSmith for free!)

<My thoughts after exploring these options are:

• If you are looking for interactivity, quizzes, keyboard shortcuts, highlighting text, being able to print out slides, then Captivate is for you. Of course there is a trade-off for all this functionality, file sizes are big. But this is a great product if you want an interactive demo or a training experience.
• But if you are interested in something like a product tour (which is more what I was after), Camtasia is the better option. Although it doesn’t have the same level of interactivity available (for example you can do a quiz but can’t get feedback on your results instead the answers are sent to a lms or email) there is a huge amount of functionality. You can spotlight part of the screen, have background music, zoom in, choose the output size of the screen, record audio during the screen recording or add it later, use a web cam to insert a speaker, zoom in to part of the captured screen, edit and trim video easily, and you can also have clickable flash hot spots which take you to a certain section of the video or to an external web page.
• Another benefit of Camtasia over Captivate to my mind is that you can output to lots of different formats whereas with Captivate you can only output to swf (which you can’t upload to places like YouTube etc).
• The other thing I like about Camtasia is that the recording is all happening in real time. If you want to have the screen still while you talk about a feature that is what happens. But Captivate works differently. It only takes screen captures as the screen changes, so it is capturing a series of screens each containing a mouse click or significant mouse movement. But adding audio is much more cumbersome. Many users have reported problems adding audio and trying to synchronise the audio recording done later with the images or taking the time-consuming path of adding audio to each slide/section. 

So my path seemed clear. I had made the right choice in Camtasia. My $300 had not been wasted after all. 

I started creating my tour. It was relatively easy to learn and after all I did not need lots of special features, this was just to be a straightforward tour. After quite a few attempts I finally got a version I was happy with. I chose a viewer/player size and uploaded it. Despite the fact that the tour was less than 5 minutes long the file size was almost 20MB. It took so long to load the video (in fact I gave up waiting a number of times). So back I went to the drawing board. I made a shorter version. But it was still a couple of minutes long (if it takes less than 60 seconds to do the tour then there is probably no need for a tour!). It was still a huge file. So then I tried reducing the size of the viewer. It still took too long to load (and was too small to see).

The problem is that there is a lot happening on the screen and constant changes. This means a much larger file size. If you are filming someone a plain background and a person who doesn’t move too much will take much less file space then one with a changing background and lots of movement as the screen has to keep changing all over rather than just making incremental changes.

My next option was to use TechSmith’s hosting service Screencast.com. But it was not cheap and you are charged on bandwidth. Well with 60 schools of 500 kids that is 30000 potential users, I could be served with a hefty bill especially as I had no idea how much use the tour would get. I didn’t want to take the risk.

It looked like it was time for Jing to step up and be counted.

Why did I have to be so thorough and explore all options? Why didn’t I just go straight to Jing? I can see why so many people recommended it.

This is what I like about Jing:

• Jing is incredibly easy to use (the hardest part is the installation which takes awhile as you have to install Microsoft.Net as well). Click on the sun, choose your screen section and away you go.
• Jing gives you 2MB free space on Screencast.com. So with Camtasia (made by the same people as Jing, they released Jing in 2007) you pay for the product and pay for Screencast.com. With Jing it is free and you get 2MB free space on Screencast.com. Go figure.
• You can also save the video on your computer, on your server or send to flickr etc.
• It is a very user-friendly piece of software it is hard to stuff it up. The creation of the product and the uploading is integrated making it a very seamless process.
• You can send people the link where the video is or you can embed onto your web page.

So why is TechSmith giving Jing for free when it is so great? Well it is not perfect…. I guess the theory is you’ll like Jing but then say but gee I’d really like to do this this and this so the next natural progression is to purchase Camtasia.

Here are my problems with Jing:

• You can’t resize the screen to be viewed. If you recorded it as a 400×300 picture it will be displayed as 400×300 which is a pain when you are recording full screen but do not really want to display as full screen. Videos can only be viewed in the dimensions they are recorded.
• There are no keyboard shortcuts to start recording, pause or stop recording. So you have the mouse at one end of the screen and you are ready to finish but you have to see the mouse being dragged down the screen towards the stop button.

Some things that bother other people (but are not an issue for me):

• Maximum length of the video is 5 minutes.
• The video ends with the Jing logo.
• No real editing facilities if you don’t want to do it all in one go.
• You can’t add sound later.
• Only output is swf.

But for my purpose, Jing was fine. My only concern is what happens if you go past the 2MB bandwidth per month limit. Does the video just stop showing? I have put a query in to tech support but no reply yet.

So my thoughts are. See how I go with the existing video in terms of bandwidth. If it is a problem, reduce the video size and track the usage. If I can get a handle on the usage then I can decide whether it is viable for me to open a paid Screencast.com account and advance to the extra functionality of Camtasia.

PS. One last thought. Your recording is only as good as the hardware supporting capture. I have one laptop where the fan whines and another where it loads the web pages really slowly. Not ideal for screen recording. And despite trying a number of microphones, even the expensive ones do not give perfect sound quality. Plus when you live in a small apartment where traffic noise and even the noise of the lift start to intrude on the quality of the recording you realize how a professional recording studio would make a world of difference. Plus I bet they don’t have two cats meowing and hurling themselves at the door because they are desperate to know what exciting things you are doing in there with the door shut!

• Leave a comment... (0)

An interesting experience when you create your first podcast.

I had decided I did not need a script as I felt very confident I knew what I wanted to say.

So off I went. It ended off being 7MB and lasted about 7 minutes. I discovered that even with pointers of what I wanted to say, if I wanted a tight recording, I did need a more scripted approach. I found that I was repeating myself at times and the ending was very weak.

So I wrote a script and recorded it again. This time it was about 3MB and 3 minutes (hmm, around 1MB per minute?). Despite being half the length, I still covered the same content. Just in a less waffly way!

So here are my first two attempts:

Without scripting:          With scripting:    

• Leave a comment... (0)

Once you have recorded your mp3 file for your podcast you can either:
- Put it on a site that supports an RSS feed.
or
- Put it on your own site if you have one and create an RSS file that will then allow people to subscribe.

So what is RSS? Really Simple Syndication content can be read easily by software that will collect all your downloads for you. Once you have subscribed to a feed (by entering in the feed’s link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon) the software will check regularly for updates and download anything new. Clever heh!

Here’s the Commoncraft explanation:
.

You can also see it at: http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

The most common formats for feeds are RSS and ATOM (although I rarely saw Atom mentioned anywhere). All web feed formats are based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) which is a text-based language used to describe and distribute data. If you are familiar with HTML at all, it is not too difficult to work out what is going on in XML code.

Why did I decide to go down this path? Wouldn’t it be easier to just upload my files to a podcasting site where all this RSS stuff is done behind the scenes?

Yes it would be. But as I run a subscription based site I really wanted my audio files, like my video files, to be hosted on my site rather than an external site. I already have my own site, space is not an issue. If you didn’t already have a website I don’t think you would bother going down this path. But every month we currently have to check anything that is on an external site as we have had issues with links changing, things no longer working and so on. By creating my own RSS file I would have much greater control over my content (not that I am a control freak, ok, maybe a little bit of a control freak). I could also choose how I wanted the files set up and how I wanted them formatted.

So I worked out that I needed to create an RSS file and upload that file and my audio file to my website. Some sites save the file as .rss but the majority save the file as .xml. I decided to go with the majority.

I found that a number of sites offer a service where you type in your info and it will supposedly create the RSS file for you. Lovely! Well none of those worked perfectly (the best was probably http://www.feedforall.com/) but when I looked at the code from these I started to see a pattern. So I checked out the code on some more sites that offered podcasting and eventually worked out a basic structure. I much prefer if I know what the code is doing as it makes it much easier to then change.

 Here is my version of the code (cobbled together from multiple sources!) if you’d like to try. You would work on this file in something like notepad and save it as an .xml file.

 <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<rss xmlns:itunes=”http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd” version=”2.0″ xmlns:atom=”http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom”>
<channel>
<atom:link href=”LINK TO YOUR XML FILE” rel=”self” type=”application/rss+xml” />

<title>YOUR PODCAST PAGE TITLE</title>
<description>DESCRIPTION OF YOUR PODCASTS!</description>
<link>YOUR WEBSITE</link>
<language>en-au</language>
<copyright>Copyright 2008</copyright>
<lastBuildDate>Wed, 23 Aug 2006 00:56:00 GMT</lastBuildDate>
<pubDate>Sat, 25 Mar 2006 11:30:00 -0500</pubDat>
<webMaster>YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS (MAY ALSO HAVE TO PUT NAME IN BRACKETS)</webMaster>

<item>
<title>FIRST PODCAST TITLE</title>
<link>LINK TO THE PODCAST PAGE</link>
<guid>LINK TO THE MEDIA FILE</guid>
<description> DESCRIPTION OF PODCAST</description>
<enclosure url=”LINK TO THE MEDIA FILE” length=”36864″ type=”audio/mpeg”/>
<category>Podcasts</category>
<pubDate>Sat, 25 Mar 2006 11:30:00 -0500</pubDate>
</item>

<item>
<title>SECOND PODCAST TITLE</title>
<link>LINK TO THE PODCAST PAGE</link>
<guid>LINK TO THE MEDIA FILE</guid>
<description> DESCRIPTION OF PODCAST</description>
<enclosure url=”LINK TO THE MEDIA FILE” length=”36864″ type=”audio/mpeg”/>
<category>Podcasts</category>
<pubDate>Sat, 25 Mar 2006 11:30:00 -0500</pubDate>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>

You would enter in all your own info in the CAPS sections. You would also need to change data like the length of the file and the date information (I have left the date info in the format you need to include it - the last bit refers to time with reference to GMT time). To add another new podcast, you’d just copy and paste the section between <item> and </item> and change the relevant info then upload the RSS file again and the new media file.

It took some time, like many many hours, to come up with the above code.

It is also a good idea to test that your code works and there are free sites that let you do this. I got some strange errors from some of these, then one that worked best for me was: FeedValidator.org at http://feedvalidator.org/

 Of course, nothing is ever simple, even though my code was supposedly valid it still wouldn’t work. Eventually I worked out it was the password protection on the site causing the issues so changed the location of my xml file and then had no problems.

 I tested the feed three ways:
1. By clicking on the RSS feed and checking it worked in Internet explorer.
2. By subscribing via my aggregator (Netvibes).
3. By selecting ‘subscribe to a podcast’ through iTunes.

Because iTunes is one of the most popular ways of managing audio files, I decided to do all I could to make my feeds iTunes friendly.

This meant adding additional code:

 Just before the each first item I added:
<itunes:author>Study Skills Handbook</itunes:author>
<itunes:subtitle>Podcasts about study skills. </itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary>Podcasts about study skills. These podcasts cover the skills you need to be successful at school. </itunes:summary>
<itunes:owner>
<itunes:name>Study Skills Handbook</itunes:name>
<itunes:email>info@studyskillshandbook.com.au</itunes:email>
</itunes:owner>
<itunes:explicit>No</itunes:explicit>
<itunes:image href=”http://www.studyskillshandbook.com.au/images/additionals/icon3.jpg”/>
<itunes:category text=”Education”>
<itunes:category text=”K-12″/>
</itunes:category>

and for each item, after the publish date tags but before the </item> I added:
<itunes:author>ELES Study Skills Handbook</itunes:author>
<itunes:explicit>No</itunes:explicit>
<itunes:subtitle>Study Skills </itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary> All about study skills.</itunes:summary>
<itunes:duration>00:24:30</itunes:duration>
<itunes:keywords>education, studyskills</itunes:keywords>

 Some more resources on this topic:
http://www.rss-info.com/
http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-specifications.htm
http://radio.about.com/od/podcastin1/a/aa030805a_3.htm

 Now if this all seems like WAAYYY too much effort for you, the next post I will look at what I think is the best option for the non-technies among us, iTunesU.

• Leave a comment... (0)

As the Master of Education at UTS draws closer to the end I am getting excited about my study for next year.

Ok so I plan to start my PhD next year (topic still slippery but something around online learning) but the really exciting bit is that I am also doing a TAFE course - Certificate 11 in Animal Care (why is there no Cert 1, only Cert 11 and Cert 111, don’t know) through Taronga Zoo. Talk about opposite ends of the educational spectrum.

Taronga Zoo took awhile to process my application and I started getting worried, the form said that you need NSW School Certificate, perhaps with almost 5 higher degrees they had decided I was too overqualified! But I have been accepted and start next year. In addition to a fortnightly class I also do 12 practical days during the year at the zoo. I know the website says that it is not all playing with baby animals instead lots of scooping up poo, but…. I am going to get to play with baby animals!  I am sure they didn’t mean it about the poo.

Will also be interesting as some of the students I now run sessions for end up going to TAFE instead of Uni and I make the point that the skills I am teaching around study skills are relevant regardless of which direction they go. So it will be interesting to see if there are other skills they need at TAFE style courses that I do not currently address. Also interested to see where TAFE fits on the scale of spoon-feeding at school versus a more independent approach needed at uni.

Did I mention the baby animals?

• Leave a comment... (2)