Musings: Podcasting 105

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.

Musings: Exploring screen recording options

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!

Musings: Podcasting 104

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:    

Musings: Podcasting 103

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:
.[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/0klgLsSxGsU” width=”425″ height=”344″ wmode=”transparent” align=”center”/]

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.

 

So exciting!

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?

Musings: Podcasting 102

I thought I’d share all the resources I found most useful when exploring podcasts:

HOW TO PODCAST TUTORIALS AND ABOUT PODCASTING:

I think these are my favourites:
http://aquaculturepda.wikispaces.com/podcast
http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/00-podcast-tutorial-four-ps.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/help.htm
http://radio.about.com/od/podcastin1/a/aa030805a.htm

But these have some good stuff too:
http://ourmedia.org/node/273304
http://www.podcast411.com/page5.html
http://www.guidesandtutorials.com/podcasting-tutorial.html
http://www.macworld.com/2005/04/secrets/junecreate/index.php?pf=1
http://homepage.mac.com/ilife06/learn/learn-to-podcast.xml
http://learninginhand.com/podcasting/index.html
http://learninginhand.com/blog/2006/03/videos-about-podcasting.html
http://chatt.hdsb.ca/~magps/boylit/Podcasting%20in%20Education
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10163_7-6246557-1.html?tag=nl.e404
http://www.stager.org/podcasting.html
http://schoolofpodcasting.com/
http://www.jasonohler.com/storytelling/storytech.cfm#power_of_music
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/audiovideo/sites/about/pages/recordingothers.shtml

AUDACITY RESOURCES:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ccc0b7577fcc340bb99f
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/tutorials.html
http://aquaculturepda.wikispaces.com/Podcast4
http://etc.usf.edu/te_win/movies/audacity.html
http://audacityined.wikispaces.com/
http://www.audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Audacity_Wiki_Home_Page
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3
http://www.lifelonglearner.us/other/audacity/
http://www.guidesandtutorials.com/audacity-tutorial.html
http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/17-audacity-tutorial.htm
http://altec.colorado.edu/howto/audacity/aud_hlp01.shtml

GARAGEBAND:

http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/
http://www.apple.com/support/garageband/podcasts/

MUSIC

http://iodapromonet.com/login.php
http://www.freesound.org/
http://www.sounddogs.com/
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/
http://www.shockwave-sound.com/
http://www.pbtmlive.com/
http://www.sounddogs.com/
http://www.musicbakery.com/
http://www.soundsnap.com/
http://bumpermusic.blogspot.com/
http://www.podsafeaudio.com/
http://magnatune.com/
http://www.archive.org/audio/
http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_audio
http://www.podsafeaudio.com/
http://www.cinemavolta.com/daily/index.html
http://www.pdxbands.com/podsafe/
http://ruccas.org/
http://www.resources.bravenet.com/audio_clips/
http://www.jamglue.com/
http://www.audionetworkplc.com/
http://ourmedia.org/learning-center/open
http://delicious.com/kolson29/freemusic
http://collaborationnation.wikispaces.com/Music+and+Sounds
http://freeplaymusic.com/
http://soundtransit.nl/search/
http://www.flyinghands.com/
http://www.archive.org/details/etree
http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/
http://www.soundclick.com/default.cfm
http://www.artistserver.com/music.cfm

HOSTING

http://www.odeo.com/
http://www.podomatic.comand
http://www.blip.tv/
http://www.houndbite.com/
http://www.divshare.com/
http://www.easypodcast.com/
http://www.esnips.com/
http://www.gcast.com/?nr=1&&s=90753817

PODCASTING DIRECTORIES

http://www.ipodder.org
http://www.itunes.com
http://www.podcastalley.com
http://www.podcastcentral.com
http://www.podcast.net
http://recap.ltd.uk/podcasting/index.php
http://epnweb.org/
http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory
http://www.podcastbunker.com/
http://teacherspodcast.org/

PODCASTING EXAMPLES

http://www.heppell.net/bva/bva3/sandaigschool.htm
http://mylcpodcasts.blogspot.com/
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/default.aspx
http://www.englishcaster.com/idioms/
http://www.meaghersphysics.podomatic.com
http://meaghersclasses.podomatic.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/
http://kinderteacher.podomatic.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/edpod/
http://www.summahistorica.com/podcast-archive.htm
http://itunes.stanford.edu/
http://www.adrianbruce.com/acekids/index.htm
http://thedowns.edublogs.org/category/podcasting/
http://mrmayo.typepad.com/podcasts/
http://www.mpsomaha.org/willow/radio/index.html
http://bobsprankle.com/blog/
http://web.mac.com/michael_cowling/
http://www.radiowaves.co.uk/
http://bhwilkoff.podomatic.com/
http://podcastbangla.blogspot.com/
http://www.mpsomaha.org/willow/radio/index.html
http://web.mac.com/michael_cowling/Classy_IT/Podcast/Podcast.html

SOME TECHNICAL STUFF

http://ourmedia.org/node/273297
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2006/10/26/quickstart-digital-audio-editing.html
http://www.profcast.com/public/index.php (a more professional recording tool)

LEGAL GUIDES

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Image:Podcasting_legal_guide.png

PODCASTING READER

http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/

Musings: Podcasting 101

After immersing myself in podcasting sites and info for the last six weeks I have come to a number of conclusions:

– There is a huge amount of information on the web about podcasting (too much!).
– Most of the sites pretty much say the same thing although some make the information clearer than others.
– As with most things on the web, there are very fewstandards and multiple paths you can take to reach similar outcomes.
– Podcasts vary widely in quality, content and style and purpose. As one site aptly explained, you could cough into a microphone each week and upload it and call yourself a podcaster.
– There are many levels of complexity, you can choose either not to worry your pretty little head too much or you can delve deep into the complexities of codecs and compression and all sorts of audio quality issues.
– The best podcasts are those where the style is most suited to the content and the audience needs.

So here is my summary for those who don’t know much about podcasting:

A podcast can now refer to both audio and video files that are available on the web for listeners to subscribe to. If you just upload an audio mp3 file to your website for people to download then technically it is not really a podcast. The term podcast implies that it is part of a series of media that is uploaded over a period of time and that it gives the listener the ability to subscribe the subsequent podcasts so that updates are taken directly to the listener (rather than the listener having to come back all the time and check if there is anything new available).

Of course, Commoncraft gives the best explanation:

.[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/y-MSL42NV3c” width=”425″ height=”344″ wmode=”transparent” align=”center”/]

Here’s a short version of what you will find on the web about how to podcast:

i) Plan first what you’d like to cover in your podcast.
ii) Record any audio files (most popular applications appear to be Garageband and Audacity).
iii) Edit the audio file, adding or deleting elements (but being careful of copyright).
iv) Save the audio file into mp3 format.
v) To host your podcast you can either upload your audio file to a site that supports podcasting or create an RSS file that will allow people to subscribe to your podcasts and upload the audio file and the RSS file to your own site. (Don’t know what RSS is? Don’t worry, more on this in the next post.)
vi) Decide what supporting material and evaluation/comment process you might provide.

On my next post I will be explaining my trials and tribulations of what I discovered when I chose to walk down the RSS path myself (I may need to wear a wig for awhile until all the hair I tore out in frustration has grown back….).

Musings: My views on learning

My current views of Learning:

 I believe that true learning stems from curiosity. We want to find out something or know more about something.  That is why children have such an open mind to learning new things – they are curious about the world! Learning does not necessarily just mean acquiring knowledge – although it does include this – learning can be a new skill, a new attitude or opinion or a deeper understanding of someone else’s outlook. To me, deep meaningful learning has occurred when you make new neural connections that allow you to do or know or think something you did not know or could not do or think before.

The factor that I think is most important is motivation – wanting to learn something is the most powerful driver of success in learning. Other factors that come into play are your own personal experiences, attitudes and ability levels. While I believe anyone can learn anything, there are limitations probably based more on belief that anything else.

 

My current views of Technology-Mediated Learning: Continue reading

Musings: Bloggings CEOS (May#6)

What prompted these musings? Hearing a discussion on ABC Radio that prompted me to visit this blog: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/

 

Jonathan Schwartz is chief executive officer and president of Sun Microsystems. And he keeps a blog in his role as president of Sun.

 

He writes about all sorts of topics and everyone from employees to the general public can comment on his posts. What a fantastic way for a big org to be more accessible and what a fabulous marketing opportunity.  How many companies can you go direct to the CEO? I found the comments more interesting than the posts in some ways although it was interesting that after skimming a few you start to get a feel for what this man is like. 

 

Another interesting application for blogging.

 

Musings: SuperGeek to the rescue! (May#5)

 What prompted these musings? Wondering how I was going to get the CD-ROM drive on my laptop fixed without being parted with from it for days on end, then seeing a SuperGeek van – we come to you and fix computer problems and thinking, why not?

Anyway, so the guy arrives on time (great start) and proceeds to fix not only the CD-ROM drive but lots of other fiddly things that had been bothering me but that you wouldn’t take to a repair centre to fix – I figured I had to pay for the hour, may as well use it all! Was great value for a hundred bucks.

But it was a short conversation with the guy that inspired this blog.

Me: ‘Gee, they must have to give you heaps of training to do this job cause everyone expects you to be able to fix every possible software and hardware problem.”

Him: “Nah they can’t really train you for this”.

He then proceeded to solve all my various problems, not through knowledge acquired in a series of training courses, but through jumping online, google searches, checking forums etc etc until he found a suggested solution he could try. It was quite incredible to watch. It was a perfect example of why teaching our students navigation literacy is so important. The important knowledge he possessed was knowing what to look for and how to look for it.

PS. Now after listening to ABC Radio this morning talking about how unscrupulous bloggers are paid to promote people, products and companies I just have to say I have absolutely NO alliances etc with SuperGeek other than being a satisfied customer!

Musings: Computers putting on airs? (May#3)

 What prompted these musings? Reading a chapter about ‘affective computing’ and no, it is not about computers who are showing affectations….

Yet another new term!  Hershey (2006) defines ‘affective computing’ as computing that relates to, arises from or deliberately influences emotions – basically it is researching about emotion in computers.

One of my classmates John, will be pleased to know I have discovered in this reading even more new terms: ‘perezhivanie’.  Vygotsky (1994) found that the development of a child depends on the way the child experiences a situation in the environment, ie. how it relates emotionally to a certain event and coined this as perezhivanie.

The idea is that we know now that emotion and motivation strongly affect learning. So wouldn’t it make sense that we design the technology to react to the emotion of the students? Researchers in artificial intelligence have looked at ways to customize educational systems to the affective states of students.

For this to work, Piccard (1997) postulates that first the system has to be able to recognize the emotions of the student – are they disappointed, do they need encouragement, have they given up? Second the system must be able to express emotion and usually to make this more realistic the system is represented by a lifelike character (called animated pedagogical agents: check out  http://www.isi.edu/isd/ADE/ade-body.html) .  So where to from here? Continue reading

Musings: Technology – a cure for dementia? (May#2)

What prompted these musings? A discussion with my mother as I drove her from Newcastle to come to Sydney for the weekend for mother’s day celebrations.

I recently attended a seminar by Dr Martin Westwood, aka ‘the brain man’ who spoke about how when mice were exposed to a stimulating environment the symptoms of a neurological disorder were dramatically reduced.

My grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s. My mother is concerned she too may one day develop symptoms (even now if she has been forgetful she will sign her emails from ‘Al’). But really, their mental lives could not be more different and much of that is due in a large part to technology.

So where do the differences lie? Continue reading

Musings: How did you get here? (May#1)

What prompted these musings? A surprising result on the cluster map on the bottom left hand side of the page.

When I added a cluster map to the bottom of the page, I wasn’t really expecting to see any other dots apart from that of classmates in the e-learning course and maybe a few other Australians who arrived here via my study skills site.

But blow me down with a feather there are dots from countries all over the world! I’d love to know how these people ended up on my blog. What were they looking for? What did they enter into the search engine? How far down was I on the list of links? How many links did they follow to end up here? Was it useful at all?

 So if you have ended up on this page, I’d love to hear your story!

PS. The picture has absolutely nothing to do with this blog post. I just thought it was cute.

PPS. If anyone knows how to make the cluster map actually display properly let me know!

Musings: Technology is not enough…(April#4)

What prompted these musings? A link to this video from a colleague (Thanks Suzanne!) which was very thought provoking. We can spend all this time on technology and tools but unless we have the fundamentals sorted, we have to question how effective the whole experience really is.

In addition to the jokes about educators which are very amusing, the funny stories about drawing a picture of God and the perils of being Shakespeare’s English teacher, and comments on male/female differences, there were some really fascinating points made in this video about creativity and education in schools by education guru Sir Ken Robinson.

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/iG9CE55wbtY” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” align=”center”/]

These were the main points that caught my attention from Ken’s talk: Continue reading

Musings: A wealth of knowledge at your fingertips (April#3)

What prompted these musings? Remembering what it USED to be like to arrange an overseas trip.

What I love most about the Internet is you can find out anything you could possibly ever need to know and it makes it all so easy. I remember when I first traveled overseas in 1991. You bought the lonely planet book. You read it. If you were brave you might translate a blurb into the appropriate language (using another book – not babel fish!) and you might ring overseas and try and book a room.  Now you can not only book the room online but see a 3D model to the point where you can tell what type of tea bags will be there.  And even better, you can hook up with total strangers and get travel advice on the best places to see, where to eat and what to do. 

This accessibility to information has opened so many previously closed doors. Just consider…… Continue reading

Musings: Why does a true blogger blog? (April#2)

What prompted these musings? Firstly a comment from a fellow blogger about disguising what is really an ad as a blog (http://forblogssake.edublogs.org/2008/04/05/when-is-a-blog-an-ad/) and secondly some comments from some classmates about their shyness and insecurities about publicly posting their thoughts on a blog as part of their assignments for this course.

I have a theory. I think a TRUE blogger blogs because a true blogger can’t help themselves. I am basing this theory on nothing more than my personal observations (very scientific). A month or so ago prior to starting this course I had nothing to ever do with blogs and no knowledge of blogs (other than having heard of Perez Hilton as a celebrity gossip blogger). I had no idea there were serious blogs out there or blogs that could be useful – I guess if I ever thought about them I thought they were simply the mad ravings of a tea-cosy headed geek. But the moment I set up this blog I was hooked. I am attempting to keep this blog more of an educational discourse on all things e-learning (of which blogging is certainly a feature) rather than my musings on everyday life (I am afraid if I started rambling all my thoughts about things like how people drive in Sydney, our tax system, our politicians, my new lounge room furniture etc etc I would never stop).  But I can see how it becomes an addictive process…..IF you are a certain type of person.

So what types of person blogs? Continue reading

Musings: ‘If you can’t beat ’em…..’ (March#7)

What prompted these musings? An article in the Sydney Morning Herald on Sunday 30th March 2008. http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/catholic-church-launches-virtual-parish-on-the-web/2008/03/29/1206207489791.html

Let me say upfront I come from a Catholic background. There are things I like about the Catholic church and things I don’t. One of the things I do not like is that the Catholic church seems so backward in things like the concept of women or married priests (in fact I sent the Pope a Christmas card this year, all the way to the Vatican, explaining that due to priest shortages my mother’s parish can only have mass every second week and asking if they could explain why we can’t have married and women priests – I just don’t get it. No reply yet but it is only 3 months, I am hopeful).

Anyway, this article astounded me. Despite being so behind the times in so many areas, the Catholic church has realised that if they can’t beat them, they have to join them.

So what has happened? Well a new social networking site for Catholics was launched yesterday: http://www.faithtrip.net/ Continue reading

Musings: The challenges faced by today’s students wrt technology (March#6)

 What prompted these musings? An interesting video my current lecturer brought to our attention.

One of the biggest concerns I see from parents and teachers is students’ use of technology like chat programs and social networking sites at home when they are also trying to do their schoolwork. One of the biggest problems students complain about is how to deal with the multitude of distractions when they are trying to make themselves do their schoolwork.

This video from Prof Michael Wesch’s Digital Anthropology class at Kansas State University is a powerful depiction of the issues students today face in their technology driven world and in a world where our students have changed and our systems are struggling to keep up.

If you haven’t done it yet, watch the video now before continuing to read this post.
Continue reading

Musings: Defining a learning community (March#5)

What prompted these musings? Well this is actually an excerpt from a uni assigment. While the assignments might disappear from this site eventually, the blog will remain so I would like to share my thoughts on the topic of coming to a definition for a learning community.


My view:

A learning community is a group with a shared interest who have acted upon a desire to learn more and help others learn more. They interact collaboratively through different learning activities to share information, resources and ideas around their topic in order to facilitate group and individual learning.

A true learning community is representative of unselfish, collective learning as opposed to individual, secretive learning. There is no single ‘teacher’ but instead the members contribute to the learning of the community. The knowledge is not hidden, but shared, creating a knowledge base for the community to build upon.

This supportive environment, combined with the group’s social interaction, creates a strong sense of ownership and commitment to learning in the community.

How I came to this viewpoint: Continue reading

Musings: The myriad of amazing tools available on the web (March#4)

What prompted these musings? Well each month on my site http://www.studyskillshandbook.com.auI add new videos, new content and new features to the site. I have come across so many new things this month in my elearning explorations that I thought I would detail here the tools I have come across that I will be taking advantage of for April.

1. del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/)
I think students (those that aren’t already using it) will find this a really valuable tool, particularly senior students doing research for assignments or those doing subjects like Extension English where they need to reseach an area or the IB where they choose a research topic.

2. Vokis (http://www.voki.com/)
Vokis are just cool. I am going to use them to give a study skills message to students that they may not necessarily have read but are more likely to listen to from a voki.

3. 250 Cool generators (http://www.techroam.com/250-cool-generators/)
I stumbled onto this through an edublog and wow I love it – a great way to generate really interesting images.

4. Commoncraft (http://www.commoncraft.com/)
This is a really interesting way to communicate – I definitely want to spend more time exploring these (and maybe making my own?)

5. Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/)
Sharing powerpoints, not sure if I can use this but definitely worth exploring. Continue reading

Musings: del.icio.us (March#3)

What prompted these musings? The fact that since starting del.icio.us I just can’t leave it alone!

This is a simply fabulous tool to help in the information management problem we face online. I can’t believe I had not embraced it earlier. It took me some time to add and sort all my personal bookmarks as at first I put masses of tags with each link. Then when I looked at my enormous cloudtag I had to stop and really think about how I planned to use this tool. Did I really need a tag on ‘students’ for example? Some of the generic terms were not really going to be of much use to me. So I stopped and really thought about how I would use del.icio.us (should have done this at the start I guess but the problem was that I until I had used the tool I didn’t really understand how it worked or its potential). I then went back and rationalised my tags, thinking carefully for each link as to what purpose or categories I would like to access this link from. This took some time as often a new thought would occur and I would have to go back and add that tag to a number of the links. I think with use I will be more effective in my initial selection of tags but I would love to hear any tips from experienced del.icio.us users as to the best way to make use of this amazing tool. I’d also be interested to hear if there are any users who became disillusioned with it – after all, as the photo shows, we all have different ideas on what is delicious!

Musings: Observation vs Participation (March#2)

What promoted these musings? A posting from ABB (lecturer) in the e-learning subject I am undertaking.

 
Ok, I am a convert. A comment ABB posted is now forming a critical approach to all work I will do in this area. You need participation for deep understanding, observation is not enough. Prior to this subject I would have thought that it would be enough to lurk furtively around and get a feel for what the technology is about. My own experiences so far this semester have dramatically changed my views, my understanding and appreciation is so much deeper when I am an active participant in the technology. And even more interesting, in most cases I quickly shift from a participant to an advocate of the technology! Netvibes, delicious – love them!

Musings: Information Navigation Literacy (March#1)

What promoted these musings? Further thoughts on Seely Brown and Duguid’s article (1999) and the current information overload I am experiencing as I immerse myself into the world of Web 2.0.


As we move from our obsession with text to a new form of literacy, the way we approach information gathering and information processing will need to change.

As a systematic person, I previously liked to gather all possible sources of information then systematically work through them eliminating those that were not relevant to my purpose. The key is I wanted to make sure I was not missing anything. In days gone by, this approach worked well as there was only a limited group of materials that I had access to.

But with the technology and tools available now a major mind shift is needed. There is virtually an unlimited amount of information. I am plagued by worry that I am missing out on things. Every link opens up another round of endless possibilities to explore. I feel overwhelmed by the amount of interesting topics/areas I would like to pursue yet know there are simply not enough hours in the day to sate my whetted appetite.

So how do we cope with this overload of available information? How do we deal with the stress of always knowing there is so much more out there that we may not have discovered yet?

Two things. We need a fundamental mental shift and we need to harness the tools available (such as delicious) to help us manage the overflow of information. I also feel that this oppressive feeling will fade and that it is only when you are first thrown in the deep end that you sink quickly to the bottom that you feel like you are drowning, as you claw your way to the surface that first feeling of being overwhelmed will (hopefully) begin to disappear.

So perhaps I should just savour this feeling, suspecting it may never come again for me, that this is a unique moment in my development of my skills in this area, and that generations after me who grow up developing information navigation literacy skills as part of the norm may quite simply never experience this feeling.

It is incredibly oppressive, yet at the same time the lure of the unexplored possibilities is frightfully tantalizing.