There has been an absolute flurry of activity around our primary topics the past several days. Now that the election is over and blogger.com is back to normal traffic I feel like I can actually post some of it. This isn’t new today, but I thought I’d point you to some news I saw several days ago, but again today on bbc.com … “Studios to Sue Net Movie Swappers.” Basically it breaks down like this — you steal and illegally trade/provide a film online, plan on coughing up $30,000.00 per film. Not too cheap! Here’s the breakout quote, “We know who they are, and we will go after them.” Ok, sounds like the MPAA is going to use the same tactics as the RIAA … management by fear. Anyway, very relevant stuff …

In related news, Wired.com ran an article today titled, “File-Sharing Thrives Under Radar.” It talks about BitTorrent and how it is getting some serious attention from the MPAA and RIAA … goes on to say that it has existed under the radar for so long, but now that it is gobbling up bandwidth (up to a third!) “Hollywood’s copyright police are taking notice.” I’m not going to bore you with the details of ol’ BitTorrent, but you should know there is a ton of stuff out there — spanning from legal music, trailers, etc, to all illegal stuff. Literally anything you want is sitting there ready to be taken. The article gives a great overview of how the technology works — which is a very cool way to distribute materials by the way — and lays out the prediction that its days could be numbered. Ouch … people do use peer 2 peer for good as well … oh well.

All the while more and more legal music services are expanding … Apple has a ton of music available online and not to be outdone I read this morning that MSN’s download service is expanping. I guess the point is that we are really just on the cusp of this stuff exploding in the digital world. All the stuff we were talking about weeks ago — the pervasive nature of technology and how we live in the digital world is getting set to go mainstream. Those of us who have been plugged in for the last five years or so don’t find this astonishing — we have been waiting for it. But to see the whole world begin to line up to buy digital products is cool to me … for crying out loud, my parents even have an iPod and an account on the iTunes Music Store. Ouch again … only reason I say that is that I am tech support …

In a totally unrelated sense … I found this cool little thing today … take a look at it. I know its a little goofy, but it does hold HUGE potential. Anyway, as always, very curious about you are all thinking and if anything you’ve been learning via class or your own research makes you want to say something please do — in other words, comment!

Glenn Johnson, Project Manager for the PSU ePortfolio Initiative, stopped by class today to discuss the whole ePortfolio concept. He started by discussing the importance of evidence … what I take from that is that it is critical to create a sort of historical roadmap of your time here at PSU. I did so much stuff in college that is lost forever … some of it was actually good stuff — other stuff wasn’t, but the point is that I don’t have ANY real record of my knowledge and intellectual development. The new ePortfolio opportunities can easily overcome that.

Going Beyond the Resume

“It allows others read between the lines …” It provides prospective employers with the evidence they need to see what you can actually DO. That is an important distinction … with a static, paper-based resume you list all sorts of skills and experiences — but if you pair that with an ePortfolio, there is a historical record of your actual competencies. It lets people actually see what you’ve done. It is going to make a huge difference.

At PSU, students are being asked more and more to create digital assets as outcomes to their classroom assignments. Trust me, unless you have some sort of next generation storage area network system with a huge meta data repository, you’ll loose it all. That’s what I did. With an opportunity like ePortfolio, PSU has provided you with a digital repository that represents you — and its easy to do. Good stuff.

Glenn went on to discuss some real-world examples of students’ usage of the ePortfolio and how it transformed their job/internship search experience. One of the students he highlighted is over in EMS … this student differentiated himself (using ePortfolio) from someone who has taken the courses to someone who can actually report the weather. Good stuff. Here’s an incredible example.

What are the 5 pieces of evidence that you will point to that differentiates you … then think critically about each one of those and why they were the ones you selected … Glenn says, “that’s part of your story.” Here’s a real nice page that describes how to do the selection process.

Here are some tips:

• Keep it focused
• Keep it simple
• Make sure you tell your story
• Know your audience
• Sell yourself to that audience

Scenario … faculty staff, instructors, advisors at PSU are in a unique position because of how well connected they are … they have friends in so many different areas of the world — corporate, professional associations, other Universities, etc … if one of my colleagues has a grant that requires an information technology problem that needs to be solved and they send me a request to see if I have a student or know of someone who can help out … typically what happens is that they send that out to a whole bunch of people via email and someone would respond that, “hey, I know someone …” now, if that email contains a link to that student’s ePortfolio, I’ve just given my friend that opportunity to do a “virtual interview” via the portfolio.

ePortfolios begin to make a big difference when you make it to the short list … two positions with 250 applications … will an ePortfolio make a difference? No, but if you are one of five left, then yes it will make THE difference.

The point is this; you really need to start thinking about how important it is to start documenting your competencies via the ePortfolio. I wish you all would start building one … at a minimum; it will help you organize your experiences. At the other end of the spectrum, it will give prospective employers an opportunity to really get to know you without having to physically meet them. It will be the way people are differentiated in the coming years. If you want any help, let me know and we’ll do a web publishing session. If you have questions or comments, post them here and I’ll make sure Glenn gets them.

Hey, I like Green Day … even own a few of their songs. When one of your fellow classmates sent me the email quoted below last night, I thought it was cool and a VERY interesting approach to building some sort of physical connection with its fan base. You see when I was a kid — way back in the 80’s — we bought all our music on cassette tape and then CDs … What’s interesting about that is that they came with some sort of physical presence — a CD jewl case or cassette case. These made you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The whole digital music “revolution” has sort of removed that physical presence … unless you call 4.3MB of one’s and zero’s on a hard drive a physical presence. Anyway, Green Day is selling blank CD-Rs that they say are for you to burn their music on. Actually a cool idea … Here’s what Jason Streeter had to say about it:

“Prof. Camplese,

Check out what the band Green Day is doing to make money because so many people are downloading their music. Instead of trying to stop illegal downloading, they are sort of encouraging it and allowing kids to buy their CD-R’s with the “Green Day” logo on it. This is a very interesting business move but kind of goes completely against what we are trying to create with our project. They advise to use the CDs to make compellations from previously bought Green Day CDs but I don’t really think this is true!

Thought it would make an interesting blog entry for the class.

Enjoy,
Jason Streeter”

To tell you the truth, I don’t think its really because so many people are stealing their music as much as its an attempt for them to give their audience a little bit of that warm and fuzzy feeling you get from actually owning something physical. Either way, very cool find, Jason! What do the rest of you think?