Month: June 2006

Interesting Comments

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On Wednesday I was asked to present a breakout session for my unit’s all staff meeting on podcasting and iTunes U. I did the typical thing, but very quickly as I only had 20 minutes. Again, I should have recorded it, but I blew it again. One of the things I discussed was the choice of supporting Audacity on podium machines for faculty podcasting during class. Yes, there are better tools to create podcasts with, but Audacity is a cross platform solution. One of the things that struck me were the comments by one person after the session that there were so many better solutions on the Mac. I told him I understood, but he insisted that we were cheating faculty by pushing Audacity. I hate to say it, but I sort of agree … unfortunately, the reality of our situation is that only about 75 of the hundreds of podiums on our campus have Macs in them. Maybe in the next couple of years I can rely on more Macs and push some of the best software out there … between GarageBand and ProfCast there is so much we could be doing. All of our Macs do have GarageBand installed.

I imagine over time we’ll develop more instructional material to support all these tools. We are collecting a list of all the software pre-installed on the podium Macs and PCs and will begin creating instructions on how to use them all. Until then, we’ll train on Audacity because it can serve the masses.

Like Wildfire

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Watching the World Cup has reaffirmed my thought that the World is really a small place … so many nations coming together all fighting for one thing. Most of it seems like everyone is just getting along as well. It also makes me think about just how big the World really is as well when you see all the Nations going toe to toe on the pitch. It is also funny that some of the people sitting in those stands may be edu-bloggers or read the words that I type here every now and then.

For the past several weeks I have been using Google Analytics to help me understand where my site traffic comes from. I don’t get a ton of it, but enough that it is interesting to see how you’re getting here, how many are return visits, and most interestingly where in the World you are connecting to me from. The Geo Map Overlay display just blows my mind. I dropped a screen cap of some of my results from the last few days into the post. What amazes me is how there are points representing people from really all over the World. It just strikes me that the blogosphere is empowering people to connect with one another in ways that really were not possible a short while back. Even if I had a cable TV network I doubt I’d be able to reach such a diverse set of site visitors. It just goes to show you how information can spread like wildfire in our always on, ultra-connected World.

Blog Map

Sure, most of the traffic is the eastern US, but look at all those points on the other side of the World. Hard to belive people can hear me typing in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Auckland.

Sickness in the House

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And I really mean it … our house has been in the throws of a very nasty stomach virus since Monday.  Both my wife and I (and she is 7 months pregnant, BTW) have spent the last four days somewhere in between hell, our bedroom, and the master bathroom.  It has not been pretty.  Today we were both able to eat real food and keep it in us … I know it is gross, or as my four year old would say “G-R-O-S-S, gaross!”  Speaking of the little lady, she hung in there with us … we somehow were able to muster just enough energy to drive her the two miles to her AM only pre-school and figure out how to drag our sick asses back over there to get her.  She rested on the bed with us, played quietly on her eMac, and probably roamed the house aimlessly as my wife and I layed half dead in bed.  It feels like it is behind us now as I prepare to catch up at work from not only this week’s sickness, but my three day Boston trip last week … you know what that means don’t you?  Pure wall to wall meetings for the rest of my life.  Hey, as long as I don’t get that damn stomach virus back I am good with it.  So that explains my inability to blog, participate in any sort of email discourse, answer the phone, or show up for anything this week.  It is strange, you’d think doing nothing would be fun … it isn’t … as a matter of fact it hurts.  Tomorrow I will attempt to get back at it and show back up at work — if they’ll still let me.  So much to do over the next few weeks … should be fun — as long as we stay healthy.

Looking at ProfCast … Again

/ Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

Several months ago I spent some time with ProfCast … really looking at it through the podium podcasting lenses of the current podcast project we have underway here at Penn State.  I recently decided I was doing both the app and the project a disservice by not taking a closer look at the features.  The first time around I was put off by the apps inability to easily edit the captured event.  I was also a little frustrated by the preferences and publishing options … they seemed a little overwhelming for novice users.  This time around I found something much different.

Last week I gave two talks at the Penn State Web 2006 Conference … one on podcasting (where I gave ProfCast some major thumbs up with the collected audience) and the other on Web 2.0 in the Higher Education Landscape.  Prior to going live, I actually used ProfCast as a practice tool.  It was so easy to use … I just dragged my Keynote file onto the ProfCast screen and everything happened from there.  It was even smart enough to do a nifty little overlay (ala, growl notifications) when I stopped my presentation to ask if I was done, or if it should pause.  Very cool and a very important capability.  The enhanced podcasts it produced are first rate … slide transitions are managed well as I use lots of builds to illustrate processes in my talks.  It was effortless.

ProfCast

I would have used ProfCast during the talks, but the rooms were big and I was getting feedback from wearing two mics.  Too bad, but I will be using it to release a podcast soon … maybe even revisit the Podcasting talk to release on the Podcasts at Penn State site.

I am still a little put off by the publishing options … it is still a little much for faculty member to figure out in the 30 seconds they have to wrap up in a classroom and get out.  Maybe a simple publishing mode that could be set by an administer that would publish to a default location (or set of locations like a default podcasting serivce, iTunes U, and locally)?  I did like the edit in GarageBand feature — a good lecture during an hour class should only really have 30 minutes or so of podcastable material, the rest should be “dead air” as students engage in conversation or activity.  Editing this out is critical.  That is another killer feature … I wish it could be pushed to Audacity as well, but that is a format issue.

All in all, this is an application to keep a very close eye on as a classroom podcasting solution.  I hate to say it, but if this were cross platform we’d probably be jumping all over it.  Who knows, it may show up in our classrooms as part of a podcasting suite.  To the makers of ProfCast, nice work!  Talk to us and let us provide some feedback to make it the podcasting toolset.  Has anyone else used ProfCast and have thoughts to share?

Bud Tribble at the Apple Digital Campus Institute at Harvard

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

I am sitting in a nice classroom at Harvard Unviersity at the Apple Digital Campus Leadership Institute in Science Education listening to Bud Tribble. The focus of the event as you can guess is science education … not exactly my space, but still very interesting. I am here with Kyle Peck as we attempt to plan our own symposium in the ADC mode. Bud Tribble is a smart guy … he has both a Ph.D. and M.D. from the University of Washington and has been all over the computer industry for the last 20 some years — from the original Macintosh team, to NeXT, to SUN, and now back at Apple, Bud has been a real leader in the industry.

I was actually lucky enough to spend an hour with Bud about a year ago as I was working on a paper related to digital expression in the higer education space — really looking at how the Mac OS could play much better in existing infrstructure on our campuses. I was pushing Apple on the idea that students at places like Penn State shouldn’t have to have a .Mac account to play nicely with iLife. The conversation quickly moved into his areas of interest and it was a relatively terrifying experience. Did I mention the guy is smart? We ended up talking quite a bit about identity management and it was just a great hour.

Here he is going over the Apple advantage in science education … as with all things Apple in education at the moment, there is a lot of podcasting talk. The best point so far has been something in passing — that it isn’t important to focus on high production value, the point is to think about the pedagogical soundness of the approach … his example is the Electric Pickle video podcast. Talking iTunes U and how it all works … makes it sound so easy … not a person blinked at the “we host it for you” comment. Had a nice slide titled, “Click. Sync. Learn.” Interesting concept … I wonder if we could use something along the lines of “Create. Sync. Teach.” to get faculty engaged … does that work?  If the response I got to my podcasting talk the other day at the Web 2006 conference is any indication, we won’t need it.

Lots of product overviews, but the good thing is the comment that Apple delivers a complete solution — all the UNIX tools as well as the standard tools we need — like Office.  But as time when on, we returned to podcasting and how it can connect people to concepts that are difficult to teach.  All in all an interesting discussion.  Bud is a smart guy and I enjoy hearing him talk.

Jeff Veen is Smart

/ Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

“A distillation of all the things that are good on the web.” — Jeff Veen on Web 2.0

Are we getting back into the boom and bust of the Internet around Web 2.0? That was the lead in that Jeff Veen used as he kicked off the keynote for the Web 2006 conference. What are the lessons we are learning from the web 2.0 space? What do we want to do now that we are getting there? And are we facing the same challenges with web 1.0?

If we don’t embrace it, we’ll be out of business … not exactly. The intelligent use of these new technologies is the key. He sees a lot of people with major misconceptions as they relate to this stuff … he likened the emergence of web 2.0 to other major technological events — the railroad for example lead to not only major change, major wealth, and then a bust … but always triggered major change. Are we going back to the future with all this stuff? There are signs that he sees.

The elements of web 2.0 … sort of structure for how websites come together … this is the Jesse James Garrett work … Surface indicates how we draw people in via the way things look. He used blogger as an example … how simple it looks and engages people from the second you show up. You then have to look at the Skeleton. This points to how we are going to communicate what we can do for you on the web via the page … these are elements like navigation and interaction. We then move to the structure … how all of our stuff on our site is organized. It indicates how we organize a site and communicates how to travel to the information you need. From there is scope … what does your organization do and what do we work to focus on within the boundries of our web space? Making sure we are within our constraints. FInally there is strategy … “following the money.” Figuring out if it all matches up with the other elements and meets the needs of our organization. He spent quite a bit of time drilling down on all of these issues … good stuff.

Web 2.0 is about trust … trusting your users as peers. It is no longer about a big push from me to you … it is an open environment in which I need to give you a framework to enable and empower you. As an information designer that is what needs to be done. The first impression is critical towards end users trusting you via your webspace. We establish very strong cognitive impressions of sites from the first impression at the surface level. In web 2.0, users control their data … “this is my stuff, help me with my stuff.” He mentions that Flickr isn’t all that different than photoshop … I can post it, I can edit it, and I control it. Interesting perspective.

AJAX is not new … the term is, but it is all built on stuff that has been around since the 4.0 browsers … he shows kayak.com and how it makes it so much more fluid an experience we are moving towards. The biggest usability challenge is not difficulty, it is that people are afraid to break stuff. AJAX helps people play with stuff, “like roller skates for the web.” This new approach lets you have one page that can continue to update and pull data into without all the movement and reloads. Four principles of information design:

  • Discoverabilty – making stuff easy to find … sometimes we push it too far.
  • Recoverability – actions should be without cost … the ifilm.com registration page is a perfect example where you never leave a page.
  • Context – let people know what is going on.
  • Feedback – how the system responds … showed how tada.com gives you great feedback as you are manipulating items.

Random Quotes

Tagging … “experience as architecture.” Enabling social networks … by letting people organize themselves and other people find it … and engage with each other. If you ask me, this is one of the spaces that we must continue to explore and push in the higher education landscape.
Old problems that need to be solved, new platform, participation that is driving us to do more … read that as a stack.

Amateurization … “an architecture of participation.” Veen uses that one from O’Rielly all the time to describe the web 2.0 space. If you think about the fact that there are so many sites we get our news and information from — it isn’t just the big guys anymore.
Go get the presentation — Creatvie Commons Attribution license … http://www.veen.com/nextgen.pdf

So I have to give a talk later today on Web 2.0 … shit. Veen nailed it, I wonder if I can just cancel my session. Update, our session was good and too much fun … we shoulda podcasted it!

How Long …

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

We’ve been waiting on a new voice recording solution for the 5G iPod for a long time … way too long of a time as a matter of fact. I’ve seen demo solutions … there’s the Belkin TuneTalk, the Griffin iTalk Pro, and the XtremeMac MicroMemo — all of these look great and take advantage of the iPods new, higher quality recording capabilities. I am just very frutrated that we are looking at a situation where I can’t get my hands on these things. Am I missing something here, or is this taking way too long?

As we are getting set to roll out not only a podcasting service at the University, but a call for participation that will help faculty and students create content I would really like to be able to give them this solution. But, I can’t. I am starting to get proposals from faculty wanting to do this stuff, but there isn’t a viable solution … or is there?

When I had my “old” iPod I could slap my iTalk on the top and it was good enough for basic conversations … as a matter of fact I used it for all sorts of things — meetings, phone calls, and even an interview here and there. I am just ready for a new solution as I am searching high and low for something to put in the hands of my customers. As I am preparing to travel yet again, the thought of packing recording gear just in case I decide to podcast seems like a real pain … I mean, they even look cool:

XtremeMac

Big Week Coming Up

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

Now that Dr. C (my Dad) has entered the blogoshpere with his first comment here at my blog I feel as though worlds are colliding … this is just the latest sign that technology is impacting so much of our daily existence … dare I call it ubiquitous? I knew things were being turned upside down in their house when I watched him on the couch at their house clicking away wirelessly on the couch last weekend. I just never thought he’d figure out how to drop sarcastic comments on me. 😉

In my real life, I have been spending a great deal of time meeting with people who until recently have not embraced technology as a cornerstone to academic pursuits. It has been an amazing few days — creating new opportunities on campus that will extend our reach into more corners of the University. Yesterday for example was spent meeting with faculty and department heads from two very different colleges here at PSU looking to enhance and extend their curriculum with eAnything. Today was equally as exciting … having lunch with one of the smarter guys on campus and talking about both the rich history of eLearning at PSU and the great potential for the future. Good stuff.

Next week we host the Web 2006 conference here on our campus and it proves to be an exciting event. Over 350 web professionals from all over PSU will be descending on us for two days of peace, love, and music — no, wait, that’s not right … two days of hands on information rich sessions that will hopefully bind us together like the event on old man Max Yasgur’s farm. I am actually doing two talks … one on podcasting and the other on Web 2.0 in the higher education enterprise. Should be interesting. The highlight for me is the fact that Jeff Veen is the keynote … I am looking forward to hanging out and talking with him Monday night and hearing his talk Tuesday morning. I’m not even close to being done with my talks, but I imagine it’ll get done sooner or later. Then I spend some time with my friends from Apple at Harvard at their Apple Digital Campus Leadership Institute … I am looking forward to that as I am traveling with Kyle Peck, who is an amazing educator and world-class thought leader. Three days with him will be a real treat. At any rate, now that it is close to the weekend I can hunker down and get my presos done — oh, and spread eight yards of mulch in my yard.