Who is heading to the Educuase Learning Initiative conference in Atlanta next week? Anyone, anyone … if you are let me know and we can get together for a podcast, a drink, a conversation, or all the above.
Month: January 2007
Engaging the Communities
One of the core concepts we have been working towards within ETS at PSU is the idea of creating more opportunities to engage our community. If you have spent any time here over the last year you know our community is huge. We throw around numbers like 100,000 when talking about our statewide faculty, staff, and student numbers. When you are dealing with massive scale and the geographic challenges our campus system creates you need to get creative about how you get people engaged.
Clearly with a staff of 35 or so folks you can reach a lot of people, but not the kinds of numbers we hope to. If you can find a way to move opportunities to the people and get champions working at each College/Department/Campus to spread the word you can radically change the ratio. I’ve written about all this before, but we have started to see some change. This past semester we put into place the Foreign Language Podcasting Studio here at the University Park Campus and we’ve now taken our next step in our quest to widen our network.
This semester ETS has started the Engagement Initiative. It is designed as an evolving set of opportunities to engage faculty, staff, and students in the use of emerging technologies for teaching, learning, and research. One of the first projects to emerge from the program is now going on. The McKeesport Podcasting Engagement Project with Kathleen Brown as the lead faculty has been initiated to help her redesign her journalism course to take advantage of web 2.0 concepts. You’ll be seeing more about her program over at the ETS site, but for now Chris Millet posted some pictures of his trip to McKeesport to setup the first Campus Podcasting Studio. We are all very excited about this and what is tocome.
I am curious how others work to engage their audiences at their campuses and beyond. We are using spaces like the ETS Blog, the Symposium Space, and now these remote Studios to help shift the opportunities we provide our core audiences. What do you all do?
Office 2008 for Mac
Not sure how I missed this last week, but it appears as though Microsoft has announced its plans to release Office 2008 — I know it just turned 2007, but the folks in Redmond say that even though the box says 2008 they will give it to us in the second half of 07. Nice of them isn’t it?
Office has become one of the least used set of apps in my Dock … Word very rarely comes to life unless it absolutely has to — in other words if someone else sends me something. PowerPoint? Forget about it, Keynote is where I spend my presentation life. I do find myself in Excel more than I care to admit, but that is a major shift for me in the last year. All in all we’ll get our Universal version of Office with the nice XML format, but I’m not sure how much I’ll use it. Time will tell.
Update: If this TUAW gallery is any indication, I may find myself back in Office a bit more.
Nike + iPod
I am going to preface this post with the fact that I am pathetically out of shape. I know that now b/c I went out running yesterday and I hurt today — when I say I hurt, I mean I really hurt. OK, on with the post.
Even though I am thinking my iPod is a little old skool now that the iPhone is out, I did start using my Nike + iPod yesterday. I got the thing for Christmas and have just now gotten around to trying it … when in the world would I have left a piece of technology sitting around for a few weeks? Must be the exercise part … I have to say that my first impressions are very positive … here’s a quick recap of my experiences with it:
- It worked so well with my iPod Nano … really just plugged it into the bottom of the Nano, slid the fob into the sole of my Nike sneakers and it connected and communicated right away. Starting a run was as easy as selecting to start workout. It asked me to pick a playlist and I was off. Every five minutes a voice came over the iPod to tell me my progress … very cool.
- It actually motivated me to exercise … something that nothing has been able to do in the last year or so. I’ve used my recumbent stationary bike on occasion, but this blend of technology and music/podcast listening is something I may be able to get into. The web interface is so slick and actually encourages you to set goals for yourself. I’ve set four unique goals using the Nike + site … to run 20 miles in 4 weeks, burn 2000 calories, run 10 times over that period, and do at least 5 miles under 10 minutes. I know at this point it is mighty pathetic, but I have to tell you it is time I start somewhere.
- In high school I had to be able to do 2 miles in under 12 minutes every season for varsity soccer … my senior year I was able to do the two in eleven minutes and eleven seconds. During my run yesterday I did my first mile in eleven minutes. I am seriously out of shape. Maybe connecting the dots with technology and exercise will help me get it back together.
- Once I get myself together a bit I think I will invite some other people to some running challenges. This whole site has the ability for you to create events and challenge friends from all over the world to compete against you. Again, I am seriously out of shape and it will take me time to get to that point, but I am sort of looking forward to it. This whole thing feels a hell of a lot like a massively multiplayer online game … not Warcraft or anything, but something that might motivate me further.
So other than the fact that I am so out of shape the Nike + iPod deal is really a great product. Now, can I continue to go after my goals? Only time and my online profile will tell.
ETS Talk 13 is Now Available
This week’s ETS Talk Podcast brings Cole, Brad, Chris, and Allan together to talk about a bunch of things. The new Apple iPhone has been a hot topic around our offices this week and we do our best to break it down. The thing about the iPhone is that it is so interesting we are starting to really think about how it will alter what we can do in an educational setting. We also announce our new email address for comments and feedback. You can now email us at etstalk at psu dot edu and the Hot Line is working at 814-806-1855. We listen to our first listener submitted audio comment as well. All in all a good show.
My iPod is Dead to Me
Well, not really but after Tuesday’s announcement of the new iPhone I am feeling a little less than thrilled with what I am left holding. We all drooled over the iPhone and its ability to make calls and access the Internet, but the iPod-like features are crazy. All of a sudden the device that on Tuesday morning was a state of the art digital media player with its iconic click wheel and sleek exterior now looks a little dated and outmoded. I find myself thinking, “using a click wheel to scroll through list of music sucks … I want to touch my music.” I am left asking a few questions.
When will the iPod line be refreshed with similar functionality? I love the iPhone, but not everyone needs the total package. Will Apple make us buy that device just to get the iPod features many of us have craved for quite some time — namely wide screen with both horizontal and vertical orientations? I can say that the iPhone gets me close to eliminating a device, but not really. My iPod is 80 GB and it manages a lot of data (as the image below shows). The iPhone is Nano in storage capacity and I am not going to give up the ability to store and access all my music, podcasts, TV shows, and movies when I am going away for a week. I will still need my old-skool iPod to handle those tasks. But for everyday use the iPhone seems to be perfect. What I really want to know is when can I expect a 40, 60, 80, or 100 GB iPod that has iPhone iPod features? You know touch screen and those dual viewing orientations. I would have dropped down cash on the spot Tuesday for that — just to touch my music!
I am also sort of wondering why Apple went with iPhone as the name … this thing seems to be so much more than a phone … almost in an all new category. At the same time, it sorts of fits the philosophy of hte iPod naming convention. I always sort of got the feeling the iPod was named the iPod because it could evolve over time into whatever the market (or Steve told us) wanted. This iPhone is an iPod to me — just the logical next step in its evolution. When I say logical, it is only logical now that Apple has shown it to us. I wouldn’t have dreamed those features on Monday could be real. At any rate, this thing is my new iPod.
I think one reason it will be a while until we see an iPod that looks and works like the iPhone has to do with Cingular. Now I don’t pretend to understand how the cell phone industry works, but it seems to me that the carriers subsidize the cost of the phones they carry. I just have to wonder what the true cost of the iPhone is without the contract? Anyone know? I imagine that to pack the advanced OS, larger hard drive, big screen, and all that touch stuff into an iPod would have to cost $500.00 on its own. At any rate I am left holding the 5G iPod and all I can think about is that Apple has turned their own device into an also ran — sort of like the Rio I sold way back in the day to get an original 5 GB iPod. Is it greedy to hope I can have all the iPod features of the iPhone without the phone? Is that silly and where can Apple take us next with their music/video player platform? There is a brand there that must grow — can it grow next to a revolutionary product or is it now the ugly step-sister? Anyone …
The Mother of all Web Apps
At the end of the day email has become the application for communications … I’ve written in the past about how much it drives me crazy and based on some of the comments I received related to those posts it convinced me I’m not alone. You can say what you want about blogs, wikis, and other new-school communication, work-flow, and content management tools but they do not even come close to matching email on many levels. Here at PSU email is the mother of all web apps … I am sure it is the same on most campuses. Here’s an example … we have noticed that students are changing the way they are interacting with the machines in our labs … instead of spending hours at a machine they are spending something like less than seven minutes — they are doing the following three things checking email, updating their Facebook entries, and logging into ANGEL. BTW, the email part is the only thing we actually “own” end to end.
I am becoming more and more amazed at how much time and energy we all put into managing enterprise email across higher education. Clearly it is the communication standard on all of our campuses. Many of the people I know here at PSU are making a switch that is of great concern to me from a host of perspectives — they are forwarding their email into whatever free service they use. Most of them are on Gmail, but some are sitting in Yahoo. I can understand that the features associated with something like Gmail is very interesting, but the fact that people are opening themselves up to the potential security issues associated with free email services is alarming. I think at this point we’re all going to have to really think about it all. I am not alone in this concern as I hear it more and more … this morning the New York Times ran a story about it that is worth reading.
I am wondering why so many people do this and what should we be doing about it all. Any thoughts?
iPhone – Worth the Fuss
Rumors and all the other stuff floating around the web the last couple of weeks have driven me crazy … especially all the iPhone stuff. Here’s why, when Apple gets into a business they really get into it. The new Apple iPhone is perhaps the most revolutionary portable device in my lifetime. Is that too much to say? I guess if you throw in medical devices and other life saving items this pales in comparison, but I have to say Apple blew the doors off this one. I guess the thing that gets me is that they did everything we all thought they couldn’t do — deliver a device that packs all phases of communications and access into an incredibly small and sexy package. One thing I find very interesting was Steve saying that he is after 1% of the cell phone market. I’ll obviously be part of that … now I must get one … damn it!
You got that right, Steve.
Photo, Engadget.