Here are my slides from the ADC Institute as a PDF. It was a fun session, with some really great discussion. Good time. Download it here. Enjoy and let me know if you want to discuss any of it. Read the description Bart Pursel wrote over at blogs@si.
Here is the podcast frothe session as well. Get it via the RSS Enclosure, or go old school and click the link. It is around 11 MB … ADC Talk: Tools That Change The Classroom.
I was just working on my presentation for the ADC Leadership Institute and I thought I’d pass along something that I am going to reference during my talk, iStory. It is a little app that lets you create, “choose your own ending-style” stories that work on the iPod in the Notes section. We’ve done a little bit of work with it here at the Solutions Institute under the direction of Bart Pursel in his Gaming for Non-Entertainment Purposes Research … it is a “game” designed to contextualize and teach Scope Management. He has graciously given me permission to post it here so we can all check it out.
Very simple to use … download it, unzip it, drop it in the Notes folder on your iPod. Navigate to the Notes section in the Extras folder of your iPod and choose the “Scope Management > (000) Title Page” to get started. You’ll see the choices at the bottom of each page that you can select.
I’ve talked with the people writing the application (we are beta testing the Mac OSX version) and they are excited about the use of it in education. Great for the types of things Bart is doing. Bart will be joining me at the ADC Institute, so feel free to discuss it with him. Take a look and let us know what you think by posting a comment here. I am going to discuss this during my session becasue there are more options with the iPod than just podcasting … I know, not as cool (or hyped), but still a powerful way to use a device our students are walking around with.
Go ahead and downaload the Scope Management iPod Game in .zip format (12 KB).
Not sure I buy this, but who knows? The article, IPod Program Did Not Deliver seemed a bit biased and to tell you the truth, I couldn’t even find an author listed. I am part of the Apple Digital Campus (along with Duke, Stanford, Ohio State, and Missouri School of Journalism) and the Duke Freshman iPod Experience was a key piece to that. I’ve listened to the Duke administrators who described the project … not ever really defending it — they said from the get go that this was a pilot. But, they all seemed very excited about the progress.
It surprises me with these results that Drexel University in Philadelphia is giving education grad students iPod photos … here’s a little bit about that project. A quickie:
The Drexel University School of Education, following in Duke University’s footsteps, will distribute free Apple iPods to incoming students next fall in an attempt to integrate technology into teaching.
“A focus for us,” Drexel’s School of Education Director William Lynch said, “is on bringing technology to [solve] human problems and … increasing human understanding through the use of technology.”
Its interesting to me that this news about the Duke project would come out of Mac News World and not be first released via Duke. I do know that Duke is in the midsts of a large assessment … that should be more accurate. At any rate, I may revisit this post later today when I have more time to think about it, but this seems like nothing more than a knee jerk reaction and an incomplete one at that.
I just got done posting about the iPod shuffle as a great tool for education a few minutes ago. I thought I’d follow it up with a couple of slides that indicate the overall impresions of my students last semester as it related to audio posting by the instructor and to students posting responses via audio. I honestly expected this to be more skewed towards them wanting to listen to posts and them wanting to be able to use rich media tools to respond to my posts. I’m not sure we’ll take this too seriously (its only 37 responses), but it will impact how we proceed with the podcasting push. I think the first thing we need to do is educate our students to what a podcast really is and how powerful the whole subscription via rss enclosures model really is. At any rate, some more results to share.
When it came out a couple of weeks ago I was impressed, but not knocked over by it … a small, inexpensive mp3 player will do well in the market, I thought. Obviously Apple knows what they are doing in this space, so I didn’t bother yapping about the lack of a screen and $150.00 price tag, but at the same time I just thought it was interesting … of course I then bought one. I bought one mainly because I have this disease that requires me to own almost one of everything Apple makes … at any rate, I have a shuffle and it is a very cool device — for a lot of reasons.
What I like the most about it is that it gives us a chance to put them in the hands of students. I look around PSU and it seems all I see are white earbuds … its like my wife said this morning, “I notice non-white earbuds now … it used to be that I was impressed to see a couple of white ones around, but now they are everywhere and the non white ones stand out.” Its hit the mainstream … but it isn’t like I am at Duke and can rely on my students to have them for podcasting, lectures on mp3, or audiobooks … but with the shuffle, my College, if I made enough noise, could afford them for all the students in a given class — or better yet, they are actually in the textbook price range now, so you could in effect require an iPod.
What prompted this quick post was this article in Wired today, Library Shuffles Its Collection … talks about how a library is now loaning audiobooks out on iPod shuffles … great idea. And here’s the best part:
In addition, the library has the potential to save a great deal of money. Latini said that most titles on CDs cost the library around $75, whereas in MP3 format, they range from $15 to $25.
“In the end, obviously, we’re literally saving money,” he said. “The units are paying for themselves.”
I think my students would love that … but there are the results from the blog survey to consider … we asked them if they liked the idea of audio posts … well, let’s just say the idea didn’t thrill them. I’ll throw some more slides up about that one later. At any rate, technology is becoming more affordable and the opportunities are there to take advantage of it. And I know my students would love to be “required” to buy an iPod.
Please excuse the blatant rip off from apple.com of the above image … I feel like a criminal … anyway, after I posted my iShuffle thoughts yesterday I got a comment that talked about how important the shuffle feature of the iPod is. I have never been a shuffle kind of guy — just too much junk on my iPod (TV themes, audiobooks, podcasts, and my own awful garage band songs come to mind) that end up getting in the way. I do use a ton of playlists, both smart and unsmart (I guess even though those are the ones I built myself … hmm?) on all my Macs.
My questions for all of you are … what iPod (or device) do you use to listen to music on, do use a shuffle feature, and do you spend time building playlists? This is the first time I am asking for real feedback and I am probably setting myself up for a very disappointing set of results, but go ahead and comment. It might be interesting.
I can’t help myself. I may have a problem, but I refuse to admit to it, that’s for sure. We went to Target today (what else it there to do) for some stuff, but I was really hoping to stumble across a Shuffle. I got there and the sign said something like, “iPod Shuffle Available 2.27.05” … well, that’s tomorrow. I figured it wasn’t like an Apple truck was going to pull up tonight, so I asked a guy who clearly worked around the electronics area, but not in it … he said, “yeah, we have tons of those under the counter.” He borrowed a key, opened it up, and handed me a 1 GB Shuffle. Nice. It is a nice piece of engineering, even if it is a screenless little piece of plastic. Apple touches abound — the little metal bearings in the end cap that hold the USB cover on is a fine example. The packaging is actually very cool as well … pictures below.
The nice thing is that I plugged it into my 12″ PowerBook, it asked me if it should autofill it for me, I said yes and it picked a random selection of songs. I have it on right now and it is in shuffle mode — something I never do with my 60GB iPod photo … just too much stuff to get in the way. It hasn’t played a bad song yet … went something like, U2, Dave Matthews, Grateful Dead … not bad taste if you ask me. Very cool. This is going to make the perfect refillable podcast machine. Exactly what I was looking for!
 |
 |
I just found this on the web at Nixlog … a graphic that illustrates the overall strategy Apple has utilized to go from a forgotten, also run computer company to being on the verge of taking a huge step in market share. Very nicely done.
