Month: January 2006

On Second Thought

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I was just sitting around tonight and was thinking about how people are bent out of shape about iTunes U and its so-called walled gardens.  I personally agree to some extent, but I then started to think about reality a bit.  In higher education very few faculty are willing or are (legally) able to post their materials in the open.  It is one of the big reasons many Universities have large learner or course management systems (LMS/CMS) in place.

These tools give us the ability to maintain content, upload stuff, protect materials at a class level, customize the learning space to a degree, and collaborate — all behind protected spaces.  Sounds a hell of a lot like iTunes U (without the RSS, pod catcher, slick interface, or integrated commerce).  Lots of people complain about how restrictive our LMS/CMS tools are … these environments are designed to be unsearchable and closed … that is what we require in higher ed.

No argument here, podcasting is real and we have to deal with it.  My question is, should our existing tools wake up or do we go to a new approach?  Interesting times …

The Missing (Podcasting) Link

/ Cole Camplese / 8 Comments

Now that I have spent a couple of weeks producing podcasts for my IST 110 class this semester I am realizing this isn’t as easy as it should be. Don’t get me wrong, the podcasting studio in GarageBand has been a quantum leap forward, but at the end of the day it still feels a hell of a lot more like a pro application than a consumer one. When I look at the podcast value chain (excuse my use of that term here), I see Apple really wanting to own the whole thing — inbound right through outbound. In my mind there are three pieces to the podcasting chain:

  1. Creation – the art of putting one of these things together … even though GarageBand is easy, it is still hard for normal people. Try asking a typical teacher/faculty member to get all that gear ready, hook up a mic, handle the post production, and everything in between … just not going happen. Maybe a couple of the steps, but not all of them.
  2. Storage and Indexing – The ability to move the raw podcast to a server to be served to the masses. This means not only getting it up to a space, but also making sure all the meta data is accurate and that it has some sort of searchable context associated with it. It is one of the reasons why I love using the blog as a vehicle for this. Each post can act as the holder of the podcast episode (if its a class, talk, whatever). iTunes U does this.
  3. Delivery – Once you’ve gotten through the whole creation, storage, and indexing you can now deliver these things via some sort of RSS enclosure. Again, the blog works perfectly for this as the RSS gets written for you and your audience can easily get these things using any pod catching software … again iTunes U or even just iTunes does this well.

So in my world, the last two are actually a hell of a lot easier to overcome than the first. Sort of strange that what appears to be the most technically challenging aspects of this are handled either by really easy to use open source tools (blogs) or by Apple’s new iTunes U service. Now, back to creation …

When I do a podcast for class, I record as I present in GarageBand … easy enough, but I do a ton of editing after the fact … by a ton I mean it is taking me at least 1.5 times as long to edit as it did for me to record it. I take my Keynote slides and export them to the desktop, import them into iPhoto, pull them onto the GarageBand timeline, do my mix down, share it to iTunes, upload the file, write the blog post, and link it all up … the software handles the feed for me.

It sort of dawned on me today that Apple might be missing the boat with one of its killer apps — Keynote. If Keynote had the podcast studio in it I would be done the second class ended … It would be amazing if, since my presentation is built around a set of slides, Keynote itself managed the recording and syncing of all that stuff. I could walk in, put on my mic, click a “Play and Record Keynote” button in the app itself, do my presentation, and when finished, just click publish. In our classrooms, there isn’t any time after the class to mess with stuff at the podium … the next class is on its way in and the next professor is anxiously waiting to log into the machine … if you make it all happen with a click to start and a click to publish it is a no-brainer. Value chain complete.

Anyone out there want to comment on that? Am I missing something or are we missing one of the biggest pieces to this whole podcasting from the podium revolution? I know here at Penn State we are struggling most with how to capture that event … not the publishing and sharing part … just the first step. Damn, and they just revved Keynote … maybe in iWork ’07?

Update: Could ProfCast be the answer?  We shall see this weekend.

iTunes U Hits

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

So it happened the other day … Apple announced the long awaited iTunes U service. I even saw on CNN the other evening a big story about it and how Stanford was letting people in for free. To me it is an outstanding opportunity to share the knowledge of the Academy. To some others it makes them nervous. At the end of the day it looks like an opportunity for schools to easily make content available to their students.I won’t say that it is the perfect solution — only becuase I don’t think any of us know what that is. Just a year ago most members of Higher Education would scratch their heads and say, “pod-what … podcasting … hmm, that’ll never work.” A year later and there are thousands of these “shows” floating around the web and inside the iTunes podcast directory. Adam Curry went big time with Podshow, Odeo got funded to allow people to easily create this stuff, and Apple built a service that lets schools host, index, and serve their content in this format. Now this is one fast tracking technology. There are great things ahead … it is sort of funny to me that we are all talking web 2.0 (for better or for worse), and the hottest thing happening are “radio shows” that are auto delivered via RSS. Sounds amazing, but it is true.

No matter how you look at iTunes U, it is a great opportunity to get your stuff out there quickly. When was the last time someone told you they’d take care of your content for you? I am interested in the thoughts of the community and more interested in what will come next.

iTunes U … Finally … Almost

/ Cole Camplese / 5 Comments

I’ve been unusually quiet about Apple’s iTunes U release given my previous postings … there is a reason — we are looking very closely at it. Now that I am involved with these kinds of things it makes me feel a little freaky commenting on it all. Here is my overall take (and I share some of the thoughts being discussed elsewhere) on the iTunes U service:

  • I think Apple has done an amazing job of building something that we all need in education (not just HE) … a simple way to store content and more importantly a simple way to access content.
  • Apple’s standard iTMS is an amazing thing — clean, elegant, and simple … giving institutions the ability to tap into an interface as well designed as that is a major plus for the people we serve — students, friends of the Univeristy, and other alumni.
  • The backend to the system just works and that is amazing. Posting this stuff to sites is not an easy task, but the iTunes U service makes that painless.
  • I don’t share the idea that these are walled gardens … look at Stanford as an example. But, we need to be able to provide faculty with the ability to say with confidence, this needs to be protected. That is just the way it is.
  • I am not a fan of a proprietory file format that locks out the 20 or so percent of students on our campus that own other types of music players. That is just bad news. It will kill it on our campus if it is iPod-only. Update … I got an IM from someone in the know and iTunes U can handle anything iTunes itself can. That means MP3, AAC, M4A, MOV, PDF, AIFF … maybe more. Now we’re talking!

I have other thoughts, but I am reserving judgement. We all know that there are no less than three pieces to the podcasting universe for us in education … these three challenges are what make this stuff so hard. There is creation … and let’s be clear iTunes U does NOTHING to help us there. We are left to figure that one out ourselves … and that means our faculty are left to figure it out unless we do something about it (which we are). There is the storage and indexing of the files … good open source blogging software (and other CMS tools) makes this a little more straightforward, but is still a pain to setup, maintain, connect to authentication systems, scale, and keep organized. Finally there is the distribution piece … a place where faculty, staff, students, friends of the University, etc can show up and FIND this stuff. If you’ve ever used a multi-blogging platform with a lot of people you know this stuff gets lost very easily. Feeds are feeds, but getting mere mortals to subscribe the right way isn’t as easy as you’d think.

So, at the end of the day iTunes U helps lower the barrier on the last two pieces. Creation is still tough, but can be overcome. Its those last two that put a lot of strain on the end-users … that is why iTunes U is a good thing. Not the perfect thing, but hey what V 1.0 is perfect? We shall see as we move down the path.

iLife in the Classroom … Finally

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

For the last several years I have been an avid iLife user … starting with the first release several years ago I have used to track all my photos, music, to make movies and DVD. I always wanted to use GarageBand, but the most musical talent I have is related to listening to music. When I started podcasting a year a half ago I didn’t even attempt to use it. I used a mish-mash of tools like Audio Hijack Pro and Audacity to record and edit the resulting podcasts. All of this stuff was used almost exclusively at home … I just didn’t see the value (outside of my students using iMovie) of how it all fit together in the classroom … call me lazy.Well, I’m now using to iLife ’06 and it has become an absolute staple in my classroom. Not really for my students mind you, but for me. GarageBand is now a part of every class period as I record lectures and produce enhanced podcasts. It gives me the ability to walk in with my PowerBook, a wireless microphone, and a Keynote presentation and do a class-based podcast. When class is over, I take about 30 minutes to export my sldies from Keynote into iPhoto, they show up in GarageBand, and I can drag them to the timeline. I mix it down and push it to iTunes … I could be using iWeb to publish them, but I am not ready to jump off the WordPress bandwagon just yet. At the end of the day the students click a single link from my class blog and iTunes auto-launches and a subscription is set.

iLife in the classroom has finally arrived for me. I’d love to hear how everyone else is using it.

Podcasting in WordPress 2.0

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

Well, after lots of digging and running into dead ends I went back and reinstalled the WP-iPodCatter plugin for WordPress.  I had done that yesterday and it didn’t seem to be working until I added “enclosure” to the Custom Fields area of the WP write panel.  Once I did that, I could easily add the URL of the m4a file and it gets dropped into the feed.  I can then use the itpc:// protocol to let users auto-subscribe to my podcast feed via iTunes.

I have it working here at Learning and Innovation as well as my class blog.  It seems like a step backwards from the way WP 1.5 just added the file, but I could be wrong about all this.  At any rate using the plugin, adding the custom field, and dropping in the full URL of the file made it all work.