Month: November 2005

The Social Bookmark

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I have been teaching IST 110 this semester at Penn State in a completely new way … all new assignments, new tools, and new approaches. I am still asking students to work in teams to solve a large real world problem assignment. The focus though is more on the tools that are powering the concepts of web 2.0 — open collaboration and community. One of the new assignments I have been tinkering with takes advantage of the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us. The ability to maintain a set of shared, community created, resources is something I’ve wanted to do for some time. When I finally got my mind wrapped around the social bookmarking approach I knew I had to use it in class.The way it works is that every student signs up for a del.icio.us account on the first day of class. Doing that allows them some time to figure out what the environment is good for. We then decided on a common tag to use when bookmarking things that were somehow related to the class. I simply asked them to start using and I gave them a couple of weeks to get started … it was really cool to see how the shared set of bookmarks started to come alive a couple of weeks in.

I actually created a new “assignment type” for them around the concept — the Social Bookmark Activity. Every couple of weeks students pick two of their bookmarks and post it to the class blog. They are to report why they selected what they did and why they used to tags they used. It seems like it is paying off … I would like to continue using this type of assignment but I would like to find ways to make it more meaningful. I am wondering if any of you have some ideas? At any rate, it has been a great way to get them to look at building a knowledge base in a new way and has expanded their class reading list quite a bit. I’ll be trying to pull some student thoughts and reactions to this and report them here.

Podcasting with the Samson C01U & Audio Hijack Pro

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

I can’t believe I am back to figuring out podcasting setups. When I started podcasting over a year ago with the From the Basement series, we had a great setup going. It was essentially a Radio Shack 7 Band DJ Mixer, a couple of PowerBooks, and a couple of microphones. What was great about it was how easy it was to setup and use — because we were using a mixer and a dedicated recording machine all the mixes could happen without issue. If you wanted to play iTunes, use iChat and Skype to talk to remote guests, and record the people in the room it wasn’t a challenge. The big issue was that it was a big setup — and forget about moving it around to do podcasts anywhere but From the Basement.

I recently got a new Samson C01U USB microphone and have tried a couple of times to get a decent podcast going with it. It is a great mic, but I haven’t been able to get my whole mix thing going. My big goal is to not use a bunch of goofy system settings to make it happen … I just want to be able to turn on my Mac, plug in my mic, open an application, and start recording … I don’t want to use SoundFlower or anything else — simple is the solution I am after. If this is going to make it to the classroom, it has to be easy. At any rate, here is a sample podcast that sort of talks about this post and some of the history and thinking behind it all.

This morning I am sitting down at my G5 and Samson to run some tests. I thought I’d report my findings here. The software and hardware I am using are as follows:

  • PowerMac G5 DP 2 GHz with 1 GB SDRAM (I gotta get more memory)
  • Samson C01U USB Microphone
  • Samson C01U software applet
  • Audio Hijack Pro
  • iTunes
  • iChat AV

What I want to do is have the mic and the additional software produce a single mix that is of good quality. The screen shot below shows the setup in action. You’ll notice that the Samson C01U software has the gain set to +26dB and that input on the Sound control panel is set to just above half. These are settings that I seem to have to play with quite a bit, but this seems to yield good results. In AHP, I have the microphone set to be hijacked and in the Effects pane I’ve added the “Application Mixer” effect for both iTunes and iChat … those are then turned to “Hijacker on” mode. You can then start recording and the audio from each of the external applications are mixed in with the audio coming from the microphone (my voice). I haven’t tried it yet, but I assume you could add as many applications you want by adding more Application Mixer effects. We’ll have to play with that as well.

Podcast Setup

Online IST Flashback

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

I have been spending some time assembling briefing materials for people in my new group. So many of the things we spent years trying to figure out at IST are of real value as the larger University begins to move itself more aggressively into the areas of blended and hybrid learning spaces. As I have been putting stuff together, I’ve been going back through old documents, presentations, and notes so that I can share the things we did successfully in the Solutions Institute with my new team. In doing so I came across a nice white paper my wife and I wrote a few years ago that sort of outlines our approaches … nothing great, but still a nice historical reflection of things done. I just thought I’d share. And BTW, Happy Thanksgiving!

Web 2.0 and Web Design

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

I gave a guest lecture in one of my good friend’s User Interface and Design courses this past week talking about Web 2.0 … it was a lot of fun and the students were actually very open and engaging. I really enjoyed it. One of the points I was making as I was comparing the Web 1.0 models to the Web 2.0 concepts was the notion of web design and how much it has changed in the last few years. With the birth, or more appropriately the adoption, of easy to use publishing systems — like blogs — there has been a bit of a push away from “radical web design.” People just don’t need to spend a ton of time using Photoshop (or whatever) to create graphically intense layouts and move them into Dreamweaver … it seems to me the concept of web design has changed so much. So much that most of the places I go look about the same … you’ve seen them, two columns or three, its all the same stuff.

I am not saying there isn’t any value in the notion of web design anymore, but it is less about the look of a site and more about the content, the functionality, and the value it can provide. I guess it is a natural evolution, but it is strange to still see college kids working so hard on their web pages in Dreamweaver (or whatever) when they could be just as easily using one of the many free open source tools that empower instant web publishing. The value is built into the process of design — not the output of the graphics package. If we (and our students) can begin to spend more time on looking at who we are trying to reach, establishing goals, crafting great content, and providing a usable solution then I am all for the death of web design. This is not an attempt to piss off web designers — that skill is real and those who do it well kick ass. I just thought it was interesting that so many of the students (and the faculty that let me give the talk) engaged me around that point. They were most certainly Web 2.0 newbies and I think the point that web designers once ruled the earth (like the dinosaurs) and no longer do sort of woke them up to some new ways of thinking about design. Is web design dead, doomed, or not?

Easy Podcasting … Finally

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

It looks like companies are really starting to get the hint — people want to podcast. Although it is still a little tough to get the software side of it setup (if you really want to produce something with multiple inputs), the hardware end is getting a reall boost lately. Some time ago, I got one the new USB powered Samson Audio microphone. It looks and sounds very good … it did take me quite a bit of time to get it setup, but now that it is the results are great.

To add to that, on Friday at work one of my new staff came in to show me what he had just purchased for the group, the Blue Microphones Snowball Microphone … he picked it up from the Apple Store. Here is another one of those plug and play kinds of things. Although I haven’t used it myself he says the quality is fantastic. It doesn’t look quite as good as the Samson in its shock cage, but if it really works as well as he says, this might be the one. Then yesterday I saw the M-Audio has released the Podcast Factory setup … its a nice mic, some software, and a breakout box all in one package. While I was the director of the Solutions Institute, our podcast studio used two M-Audio mics and a USB breakout box — not easy to setup, but the quality was unmatched. I am curious about this new release by them.

Remember, its also really simple to just open QuickTime Pro and use your iSight as a microphone. I do that for quick class releated podcasts and the quality is strong as well. If you have a PowerBook, the built in mic isn’t too bad either, but nothing like the iSight’s mic. Garage Band has some good support as well, but not nearly as easy as QT Pro.All in all, it seems as though podcasting (and content creation in general) is finally hitting the point where anyone can do it — with the right tools … and the tools are finally available.

Wireless … In the Car?

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

Yep, it works like a charm. I got a cellular wireless card the other day and got to use it today. Driving from State College to Philadelphia today my wife pulled out my PowerBook, slid the card in, connected to Verizon and spent the last two hours of trip on the Internet. This is a very good thing. Opens up a whole host of opportunities. The speed of the card isn’t what we are used to in the broadband world we live in, but being able to get online while driving is amazing … pages loaded just fine, we didn’t drop a connection once. It was great being able to keep up on the Nittany Lions while she read the news and browsed blogs. As a matter of fact I am using it now that I am sitting in a sports bar watching the second half to write this post, catch up on email, and do a little research for class this week. I hate to beat a dead horse with this, but I am amazed.