Long Tail & Social Music

While I was traveling last month, I spent some time reading the Berkman/Gartner report about how social activities will shape the future of online music purcahses got me thinking about how that is relevant to what is going on a couple of fronts … the first is obviously a discussion and lesson for IST 110 this semester. The second is how it could relate to the sharing of eLearning options. Let’s explore both … What follows come right out of my personal content management system I installed on my laptop — fancy words for local install of MovableType.

For class I could clearly have the teams read the report and respond … it might be interesting for them to use it as the basis for a team podcasting assignment. I think Odeo limits podcasts to 3 minutes, so it would require them to pull their ideas together. I really like the idea of having them get together, distill their thoughts, abd articualte them in a concise way.

As it relates to eLearning objects it goes back to something my wife, Kristin and I were really starting to look at when she was still with the Solutions Institute — community based reviews and recommendations of eLearning objects. I’m not going to spend a whole bunch of time reflecting on the merits of eLearning objects, but I will say that I just saw the results of the PSU FACAC survey for faculty and TAs and an overwhelming number of respondendents claimed that they would not only use objects built by other faculty (at PSU and beyond) in their own classrooms, but would be willing to share their own stuff. That is interesting to me and a major shift in the thinking here … but you would think that we as designers of these things we’d want to create environments that mimic the best of what industry is doing to really encourage this.

I have been saying for years that eLearning and eCommerce are so similar in so many ways. I used to think that it was limited to just the design, development, and storage of the objects … but, I am seeing now more than ever that the concepts of the iTunes Mix Store’s iMix and Amazon’s customer reviews (as well as the “this is what others bought” concept) are as relevenat and important to the adoption of eLearning objects as anything else.

The basics of adoption and diffusion of innovation theory talks about getting leaders of your target audience to become part of your diffusion efforts … these early adopters can do more for your cause than hours and hours of marketing. When we released Online IST we brought out our early faculty adopters — those who were respected among our target audiences and let them talk about why it was good … this lead to a huge jump in our adoption efforts. The same is true at the next level … as objects become more widely used and shared, the thought of faculty publishing “playlists” with teaching notes will create new adoption of the pieces … just my opinion, but I think as faculty figure it out and start to share their thoughts about what worked and didn’t work we’ll see more uptake of objects that are quality.

The quality part of this is the big piece. We have all sorts of repositories out there, but most of them ignore the notion of quality — obviously a few get it right … I think allowing the community to establish the quality metrics and share their thoughts about them is key. We shall see, but the notion of letting faculty share playlists of their selected objects in context could encourage uptake … just like the Berkman report discusses how community based playlists will drive 25% of online music sales by 2010, maybe community based eLeanring object playlists can help drive adoption in our space. Sorry for the stream of typing on that one.

Apple Buys Next! Oh, wait that happened a while ago …

I have really started to like the Apple Matters series, “This Day in Apple History.”  So many of them crack me up only because I remember most of them.  I honestly haven’t always been as plugged into the Apple news thing, but I was always aware of it – somehow.  I mean, for the most part I knew when big things happened; we did have MacWorld and MacUser to keep us up to date.  Funny thing is that before the web, it was hard getting the info in the moment.  Once a month I would get my dose … and read that thing over and over again.  Come to think of it, maybe the web has driven more of a change in things then I give it credit for … at any rate, I remember when Apple picked up Next very well.

When it happened, the web was around, but I was still getting MacWeek down at Cogence Media outside of Philly.  The real rumors of the day included Be and was I psyched when I finally talked my boss into letting me have a Mac clone — can you say PowerComputing 210?  It came with a build of Be that you could actually run.  That was cool … I thought I was looking at my future platform.  Then Apple turned around and bought Next.  Blew my mind … but man, Next was cool.  Remember those black cubes from back in the day.  Oh and by the way, that’s why Apple built the new cube … just because they had a guy with some experience in that space.

At any rate, here’s to surprises and solid choices.  Buying Steve Jobs, err Next, was the best move the fruit company had made in a long time.

The Missing (Podcasting) Link

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 … Finally … Almost

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

So, after my crying and bullshit I did end up “getting” a copy of iLife 06.  I still think the Apple Store should honor educational discounts, but at the end of the day, Apple did come through.  I just saw some amazing things with the new podcasting capabilities in GarageBand … it is going to be a good solution.  The whole iChat integration is sick … get on iChat with a couple people and watch what happens … all I can say is that it is flat out cool.  Alright, more later … I’ll put it all through the paces tomorrow on the plane, but all in all it is a major upgrade — even if its just the GarageBand podcasting stuff you are looking at.  The other apps are also very nicely done.  Sorry for the bark earlier!

The Apple Store: What a Kick in the Ass

I went over to the Apple Store here in San Fran today to grab a copy of iLife 06. That store is so nice … the glass stairs, the endless amount of time you can chill at the machines, and the theatre are all just so sweet. They had like a trillion copies of iLife 06 so I grabbed one along with an educational game for my little girl. I must have spent an hour deciding on buying some other stuff I really didn’t need and then finally headed over to the counter to get my software. I asked the lady behind the counter if I could use my faculty/staff PSU ID to get my education discount and she said, “sure!” So she went through the whole thing and then proceeded to tell me that they do not offer educational discounts on software in the store. What a kick in ass.

I know there will be one back in State College for me either as a departmental purchase or as a freebie from the Apple Distinguished Educator program, but I have an eight hour day tomorrow moving between airplanes, gates, and airports that would have given me a really nice chance to discover the new features.

Speaking of features, I did get to try the new podcasting studio in GarageBand down on the MacWorld show floor and it seems very capable. It is a little overkill for the typical facculty member to use to capture their lectures in the front of a class, but for those who want to do a “real” podcast it looks like there is finally a solution that just works. I just wish I could’ve posted a podcast review of my new software today using my new software. Again, what a kick in the ass. BTW, I didn’t buy anything at the store … I just said no thanks and walked out.

Off to MacWorld

I am getting set to fly out to San Fran this morning for some meetings with the Apple Digital Campus group … we are doing it around MacWorld because it allows everyone to be in the same place at the same time. I’ll be flying while Steve is doing his thing on stage … I actually had a pass for the keynote, but I am already spending way too much time away from home and another night would’ve been over the top. I’ll catch him on the replay once Apple posts it. And just being there later today, I imagine I’ll get to see whatever he releases. Oh, and being right next to the San Fran Apple Store will allow me to try not to burn a hole in my pocket on the next big thing.

The ADC meeting is going to be a good one. They’ve put together a great agenda and it will allow us to talk openly about how the ADC Exchange changes this year. There needs to be some open discussion about some of the things going on over there and this will give us a chance to do it face to face. Tonight we are visting with the John Lennon Tour people … looking at how they use technology to empower student’s ideas. That should be very cool … I’m hoping to take some ideas back for my class. I will probably be blogging from the air, but not about the Keynote. I certainly won’t be the first to write about the new stuff, but I’m sure I will have something to say about it. Well, off to MacWorld.

.Mac up to a TB

I am not a Mac rumor guy … but this jumped out at me.  This is sort of old news, but as I was logging into my .Mac admin panel I noticed that I had a TB of data transfer … that was the other day, now when I log in I don’t see any mention of it … hmm?  It sorts of makes me think this is tied to the whole MacWorld thing coming up this month. I remember back in the day — you know maybe 13 months ago or so, Adam Curry was using a .Mac account to deliver his podcasts because they didn’t have a hard limit on bandwidth transfer. That changed. But, here we are creeping back up to a very respectable (even generous) level. This has me thinking that thre are potentially two things going on …

The first is a real podcasting application and distribution system built on the iLife tools with big hooks to .Mac … that would be a major deal for me. I podcast here and there — for both personal use and, with more frequency, for educational purposes. The process is relatively straightforward, but still not easy enough for my tasts. I want one click easy … you know, click once and record, click again to stop, encode, add meta data, and publish … ok, that’s two clicks, but you get the picture. For my dollar iLife is missing a simple publishing tool (read personal content management system) that supports RSS enclosures. .Mac would provide the perfect platform.  BTW, we are working on a simple classroom podcasting toolset at PSU … more on that later.

The second is some sort of media transfer capacity … this has been writen about before and as cool as it all sounds, doesn’t get me as excited as a podcasting/writing application does. Trust me, I have my eye on the whole Intel Mac Mini as DVR/Media Center thing rumor mill thing but at the end of the day I can live without it. I know it would be great for a lot of people, but my life isn’t driven by TV or video so I am not as jacked at these prospects.

Eiter way, that is my big rumor post for the new year … I am hoping for option 1, that’s for sure. Thoughts?