Obama is coming to town

It’s official.  Barack Obama will be coming to West Chester University this Wednesday afternoon. But it’s not for a stump speech or an open discussion.  No, Obama will be on a TV show that is being hosted on campus.  And not everyone can get in; you need to get a ticket if you want to see the show.

So this afternoon, I got a ticket. Here’s a picture of the ticket itself.  I found the wording interesting: “West Chester University of Pennsylvania presents ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews’ 2008 College Tour with Special Guest Senator Barack Obama.”  I wonder how I should interpret the statement that WCU “presents” this event.  Should I take this to mean that WCU is sponsoring this event? Or does it mean that MSNBC (the cable channel that airs Hardball) is just using WCU as a remote venue for the program?  Is it costing WCU something in order to bring this show to town?

One thing this event IS costing us is the use of a parking lot for two days.  Tomorrow and Wednesday, the parking lot next to Hollinger Field House will be closed.  This is a pretty big lot, and it means that a lot more people will be trolling the remaining parking lots looking for a spot to park their wheels.  At least the Sharpless Street garage has announced that they are providing free parking during the lot closure.

When I picked up my ticket, I was told that “no backpacks will be allowed,” and I’ll need to present my WCU ID card along with the ticket to get in.  They would only give me one ticket, so I couldn’t bring my wife along.  Oh well. I guess she’ll have to watch it on TV like everyone else.

So if you’re watching MSNBC Wednesday afternoon, look for me in the crowd.  Or not.

Chelsea Clinton visits West Chester University

So this afternoon, Chelsea Clinton visited our campus. I expected there would be a crowd, but didn’t expect this big of a crowd. The Sykes Union television lounge was filled to capacity, and the overflow crowd extended upstairs to the second floor. I had to struggle to get close enough to take this picture!
5CBXg.MPVHqVGB3MAM.jpgAs for her comments, I didn’t really hear anything out of the ordinary. She was stumping for her mom, and the crowd was primarily routing for her. She spent most of the time responding to questions, and there were plenty of them. I thought she handled one question about the Bush presidency particularly well when she said that 2008 really should have been the last year of a Gore administration. Chelsea spoke with grace and dignity, although sometimes she was a bit difficult to hear in the crowded environment.

Many people were wearing the Hillary stickers they were giving out. I might have worn a button if they were offering them, but I guess political buttons are a thing of the past. Maybe I’m old-fashioned (or just plain old) but I’d take a button over a sticker any day. Stickers are just so…disposable. Not to mention sticky.

There were also quite a few students holding up “McCain for President” posters, which you can see in the picture. I didn’t see them giving out buttons either. The McCain supporters were persistent but reasonably polite, and they didn’t seem to faze Chelsea.

I did see a lot of video cameras documenting Chelsea’s appearance, and quite a few big guys that looked like Secret Service types.

Anyway, one nice thing about the extended nomination process for the Democratic candidate is that it’s making Pennsylvania’s primary an interesting one. And it’s great to see so many students interested in the political process.

By the way, I hear Barack Obama will be coming to campus next Wednesday. MSNBC plans to bring Chris Matthews and his “Hardball College Tour” to West Chester University for a live broadcasts at 5, with repeats at 7 and 11 that evening. I suspect the crowd for Obama next week will be even bigger than the one for Chelsea today.

Another Vivian Boo-Boo…and a bit of history

No textbook is perfect, but a good text should at least get people’s names right. I have earlier complained about John Vivian perpetuating mistakes in his text, The Media of Mass Communication, which I use in the large lecture course in mass communication I teach at West Chester University. I like the book, and I will likely continue to use it, but the careless mistakes in it are annoying.

So I wasn’t surprised when one of my students pointed out another mistake to me today (thanks, Laura!). Near the end of chapter 13, in a “Media People” pullout box, is a brief bio of hip-hop star Nelly. The textbook states that Nelly “was christened Cornell Hayes, Jr.” Nelly’s last name is Haynes, not Hayes. My student wrote that this mistake is significant “because he even refers to his name in one of his top songs, Number One, where he plays off the relationship between the underwear brand Haines and his last name Haynes.” (Actually, I believe the correct way to identify this song is #1, with a pound sign and a numeral, but that’s beside the point.)

I might add that while I was looking over this part of the text, I found another mistake in the same section. In the caption below the picture of Nelly with Christina Aguilera, a reference is made to the “MTV Music Video Awards.” Ooops. It’s the “MTV Video Music Awards,” not the “MTV Music Video Awards.” It’s been that way since they were started in 1984, and they are often referred to as simply the VMAs or VMA Awards (although technically the second is rather redundant, since the “A” in VMA stands for Awards).

Many people might wonder why it’s called the “MTV Video Music Awards” when the term “music video” is more widely used today than the term “video music.” So let me just share a bit of history…

In the very early days of MTV, the term “video music” was commonly used to describe this kind of television programming. I even used it in the title of the thesis I wrote for my master’s degree back in 1983 (Future Radio: Video Music and its Effects on Radio Listening.) Keep in mind that this was at a time when the genre was just coming together, so people weren’t sure what to call what MTV was doing.

Music was a popular form of televised entertainment long before MTV came on the scene. The Ed Sullivan Show regularly featured musical performances, and helped propel Elvis Presley and The Beatles to stardom. A number of TV shows were built around music performances, including My Hit Parade and American Bandstand. But most musical performance during TV’s early years emphasized the music, and rarely attempted to visually illustrate a story. They were essentially the video equivalent of a concert performance.

Monkees_season2.jpgOne of the first successful TV shows to integrate music into a visually-supported storyline was The Monkees, launched in 1966 on NBC. Although many critics at the time panned The Monkees as a cheap knockoff of The Beatles, the program quickly became a smash hit, and even won two Emmy Awards. A typical episode of The Monkees featured a simple and often campy comedic story that would culminate in a musical performance which was integrated into the storyline. These performances were not simply shots of the band singing and playing guitars; the musical performances were a key part of the plot of each episode. The technique was similar to the narrative approach used in filmed musicals, like Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, as well as the approach used in presenting The Beatles in the films A Hard Day’s Night and Help! But while The Monkees was built on these traditions, it was a pioneering adaptation of this storytelling approach to fit the constraints of television. It would also spawn other pop-music based TV shows, including The Partridge Family and The Archies.

Then in 1977, one of the original Monkees, Michael Nesmith, produced a “conceptual” video clip to help promote his song Rio. Although Rio was not a major pop hit in America, it was a modest success in Britain, and inspired many musicians to experiment with video as an art form itself, and not simply as a visual recording of a musical performance. Rio would later be incorporated into Nesmith’s hour-long video masterpiece called Elephant Pants, which won the very first Grammy award in the “Video of the Year” category in 1981. It wasn’t until 1985 that the Grammys started calling this category “Best Music Video,” since the term “music video” didn’t come into wide use until well after MTV was launched in 1981.

Nesmith also created Popclips, a program which many historians identify as the most direct predecessor of MTV. Popclips aired on the Nickelodeon cable channel (which today is one of the “sister networks” of MTV). The program featured videos of mostly pop music performances, hosted by on-camera “Vee Jays” (including the relatively unknown Canadian comic Howie Mandell). Nesmith would eventually sell the Popclips idea to Warner-Amex, which developed it into the Music Television cable channel (which would soon be known simply as MTV).

So when MTV started the VMAs in 1984, it was at a time when many people still thought it more appropriate to use “video” as an adjective for this kind of music, rather than use “music” as an adjective to describe this kind of video. Some people still prefer the term “Video Music,” and I for one am glad MTV has stuck with it in the name of their award program.

Now if only we can get Vivian to get the name right in his textbook…

A GameBoy for learning?

The GameBoy has been a big hit for youngsters (and oldsters, too), so I’m not surprised that Innovations For Learning’s new Teachermate handheld computer looks a lot like a Nintendo GameBoy. The size, button layout, and color scheme all give the impression that this is a fun gadget that Mario or Sonic would be pleased to call home. But upon closer inspection, the Teachermate looks like it could be an intriguing educational tool.Teachermate

At the moment, the device is designed for elementary reading and math applications, but the SD card slot suggests that it could be used for much more than that down the road. If Innovations for Learning releases an SDK for it, I for one would be very tempted to get one just to try it out. They only cost $50, which is considerably cheaper than a GameBoy (although as I write this, they are listed as “out of stock” at Amazon).

In addition to the SD slot, the Teachermate has a 200 MHz ARM processor, half a gig of RAM, built-in speaker, headphone jack, and built-in microphone. Its battery can be charged up via an AC adapter, a USB connection to a computer, or using the optional “Synch and Store” device that can recharge and synchronize a classroom’s worth of Teachermates.

While I got the impression that this is a product still under development, it does look promising. Of particular interest to me were two research studies (funded by grants from the Spencer Foundation) showing positive results in early trials of the device. This is certainly a technology to keep an eye on. Read more about it at http://innovationsforlearning.org/.

NERCOMP – Wikis for collaborative work

The last session I attended at NERCOMP was a presentation on the use of wikis at Bridgewater State College. Eric LePage and Timothy Wenson showed off their “BSCwiki” to a rather large audience (perhaps owing to the fact that the last time slot of the day only offered three breakout sessions).

The BSCwiki was built using MediaWiki, the same open source wiki software that runs Wikipedia, as well as comwiki.org, the wiki I set up for our department’s use back in the summer of 2006. The BSCwiki appears to have the familiar MediaWiki interface with only modest modifications.

One of the first classes to use the wiki was a computer science course in networking. Students were assigned to groups that then collaboratively authored wiki pages on course topics. The instructor maintained a “to do list” as a wiki page, and students could refer to the list and update it as the work progressed.

The BSCwiki was also used beyond the classroom. For example, it was used for project planning for a trial of moodle (moodle.org) at Bridgewater State. BSCwiki was integrated into LDAP for user authentication. While only authenticated users were allowed to create and edit pages, anyone could view the wiki. The wiki is also deployed on a secure server (https://wiki.bridgew.edu/mediawiki/index.php?title=Main_Page).

While Eric demonstrated how to create a wiki page, I spent some time examining the BSCwiki at the link above. I went to the “all pages” page by going to https://wiki.bridgew.edu/mediawiki/index.php?title=Special:Allpages, and noticed that they only have about 100 pages in the wiki. That’s not bad, I guess, but then I noticed that quite a few of the pages were either empty or skimpy “stub” pages. As a former broadcaster, I noticed a wiki page for “Writing for radio and TV” that was actually a brief plug for a program on WRAP, 106.9 FM (which sounds like it is probably a student-operated radio station).

The demo of the features of MediaWiki was a bit boring for me, but it was nevertheless interesting to hear how wikis are being used in higher education. I was particularly encouraged by the number of people in attendance.

After Eric had completed his demo, Timothy talked a bit about the technical aspects of installing and configuring MediaWiki. The software is open source, and can be freely downloaded from mediawiki.org. There are also a variety of extensions on that site that are available to extend the functionality of MediaWiki. One of the extensions added to the BSCwiki installation enabled LDAP authentication.

At this point I raised my hand and asked a question: “Is this why you have your wiki on a secure server?” The answer was yes, that running it on a secure server kept LDAP passwords encrypted so they wouldn’t be sent as clear text. I was curious as to whether SSL was essential, and found this blog post on Library Web Chic that suggests that recommends it (http://www.librarywebchic.net/wordpress/2006/04/20/wikiperiments/).

This session confirmed for me that wikis have great potential for fostering collaborative work in higher education. Still, getting people interested in using wikis more broadly takes some effort. My experience has been that most wikis have a relatively small number of active contributers.

NERCOMP – Student retention through tech

Northeastern University (Boston) has developed a CRM (customer resource management) application to help increase student retention, by improving communication with faculty, students and advisors. This session was a demonstration of this application and a discussion of its impact. Kostia Bergman, Director of Undergraduate Education in Biology at Northeastern, began the presentation by presenting some background on the project.

The university wanted a more effective system for communicating information. Supported by a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation, the university adopted the platform behind salesforce.com. This platform is web-based, user-friendly, and integrated well with existing technology. It provided the ability to track and view student interactions, trigger automatic e-mail alerts, and automate reporting.

The system was phased in over last summer, and was fully online by the Fall semester. A user task force was charged with monitoring the progress and offer suggestions for refining the interface. The name adopted for the system was FACT, an acronym for Faculty Advisor Communication Tool. It is built on two applications: a faculty J2EE web application for submission of cases, and the salesforce.com front-end for advisors and administrators. Salesforce.com is a per-user license-fee hosted product, while the J2EE was developed in house.

Vanessa Ritz then demonstrated the Northeaster CRM system. As I watched the demo, my impression was that the interface was a bit cludgy. Lots of web form elements (buttons, checkboxes, pop-up menus), extensive use of tables, and rather plain data display. This may just reflect the limitations of the web interface, as the data itself is stored on salesforce.com. Much of that data is in turn drawn from the student information database at Northeastern.

A demo of the salesforce.com web interface followed. This was a more polished interface, although there was still quite a few web form elements, and not a lot of “Web 2.0” flavor (no noticeable use of Ajax, for example, although I suspect I only saw a small subset of the interface).

There did seem to be a rich data store available for advisors. The salesforce.com interface provided a mechanism for communication between advisors and faculty. I take it that faculty don’t serve as advisors at Northeastern, or at least there is some degree of separation of advising and teaching functions.

So far there has been positive response to the new system among faculty and advisors. The university hopes to expand the use of this technology among more faculty in the coming year.

This seems like an interesting effort to improve communication on campus, but it appears to me that it is still in a rough state. Also, it wasn’t clear to me the specific advantage of using salesforce.com over an in-house CRM solution. Finally, the extensive use of web-based form elements seems a bit dated compared to more modern user interfaces.