Tag: Technology

Podcasting Tips and Tricks

[Below is the text of my presentation at this year’s RECAP conference.]

For the past three years, I’ve been podcasting my lectures in the introductory course in mass communication I teach at West Chester University. Students have often told me that the lecture podcasts have been a valuable study aid, and have helped make the large lecture hall experience more manageable and enjoyable.

Despite an early concern that attendance might suffer from making my lectures available as podcasts, I have not found this to be a problem. A comparison of the Blackboard tracking data for the podcasts I did during the 2005-2006 academic year found no significant correlation between podcast use and attendance. Subsequent surveys found most students use podcasts as a supplement to the class lecture, rather than as a substitute for attendance.

Here are a few “tips and tricks” I have learned from my experience with podcasting lectures…

Pay attention to the audio. A lecture is not very valuable if the students can’t hear it. Sometimes I have used the built-in microphone on my laptop computer to record my lecture, and as long as I don’t stray too far away from it, this seems to work fine. But since I tend to move around a lot during my lectures, I’ve found I achieve better results when using a separate microphone. I have used small digital audio recorders with some success, although it pays to invest in a good one (I use the Sony ICD-SC25). Newer iPods have the ability to directly record high-fidelity audio with inexpensive add-ons like the MicroMemo from XtremeMac; this company also sells a matching lapel microphone called the MemoMic that is ideal for lectures.

Syndicate your podcasts. At first, I simply uploaded the digital recordings of my lectures to Blackboard, but this isn’t really podcasting, as the content isn’t “syndicated” using a “feed.” Since the version of Blackboard we use on my campus lacks the ability to create such feeds, I use the free service at feedburner.com. Feedburner helps me create the RSS feed that I then insert as a content item on Blackboard (or any web page). They even provide me with a free web page for the podcast feed (for example, here’s the feed page for my Spring 2007 course in mass communication). Although they don’t host podcasts, other sites do, including archive.org and putfile.com.

Provide more than just audio. While my first podcasts were simple audio recordings, most of my podcasts now include graphics that can be displayed along with the audio. Sometimes called “enhanced podcasts,” this kind of podcast takes advantage of the ability of digital audio files to store and display graphics that change according to chapter markers embedded in the file. Originally intended as a way to provide “album art” for music files, this feature can also be used to display PowerPoint slides or other graphics that are part of a lecture. A program that I have been using for the past year that greatly aids in the process of creating “enhanced podcasts” is ProfCast (www.profcast.com). This is an inexpensive tool that can work with both PowerPoint and Keynote presentation software, allowing you to record your podcast while giving a lecture. (At the moment, ProfCast is only available for the Mac, although a Windows version may be forthcoming.)

Consider vidcasts. Video podcasts (vidcasts) are growing in popularity, and are becoming easier to produce. Because most of my lectures are an hour or longer in length, I’ve been hesitant to create video podcasts of my lectures, since these can be very large files. But with bandwidth issues subsiding and compression techniques improving, lecture vidcasts may soon become the norm. One promising tool for video podcasters is VODcaster (www.twocanoes.com/vodcaster/). Although it is not as easy to use as ProfCast, it does offer a number of useful features, and it’s free.

Use free web tools. There are plenty of web sites that offer free tools for podcasters. Here are a few:
Splashcast: splashcastmedia.com
Podcast Alley: www.podcastalley.com
Audicity: audacity.sourceforge.net
Our Media: www.ourmedia.org
SpinXpress: spinxpress.com
Freevlog: www.freevlog.org
Blip TV: blip.tv
Veodia: www.veodia.com
Putfile: www.putfile.com
Lifelogger: lifelogger.com
Educational Podcast Network: www.epnweb.org

RECAP, Day 1

Today was the first day of RECAP 2007, the annual educational technology conference at West Chester University. I was the moderator of a student panel this morning where we discussed student use of social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace. The students gave us some fascinating insights into the role of online social networking in the lives of young people today.

Many of the students mentioned that they were planning on closing their MySpace accounts after they graduate, presumably because of privacy concerns. There was some concern expressed by the students that potential employers might get a bad impression of them if they looked at their MySpace and Facebook pages. In general, Facebook seemed to have a better acceptance among the college crowd than does MySpace, which some of the students said was more popular with the “high school crowd.” Facebook also was praised for having better privacy options, although none of the social networking sites are immune from abuse by determined individuals.

In addition to the discussion with the students, we were treated to a presentation of some of the student-produced video public service announcements that were made by students in Chris Penny’s educational media class at West Chester University. The videos highlighted the dangers of online social networking, and the growing privacy concerns of students when their activity is viewed by those outside their intended networks. Most of the videos can be seen online; below is one of the better ones…

Following the panel, I attended a session on “Free Web Tools for the Classroom” by Michele Mislevy and Karen Jogan of Albright University. They provided quite a few links to online resources of value to educators, some of which I had not heard of before. Here are some of the links…

Send a Valentine to FCC Chairman Martin

The media watchdog group freepress has produced a great little video valentine to send to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin Martin. Whether you feel like sending the valentine to him or not, the video is worth watching! Just click on the picture below…

Valentine for Kevin Martin

By the way, the FCC Chairman will be holding a public hearing in Harrisburn on Friday, February 23. For more information, visit Stop Big Media, and/or view the FCC’s agenda for the meeting.

Say it isn’t so Torgeir!

As an American of Norwegian descent (my grandparents came over on “the boat” from the Bergen area) I was particularly disappointed to recently read Torgeir Waterhouse’s reaction to Steve Job’s “open letter” on music and FairPlay, the digital rights management (DRM) system used by Apple on the iTunes music store.

Job’s letter is in part a response to a complaint against Apple filed by Torgeir in his capacity as Senior Adviser to the Consumer Council of Norway. In that complaint (full text pdf here) Torgeir is quoted as saying that iTunes:

“blocks consumers from breaking the copy protection, or DRM, if they want to use other MP3 players than Apple’s iPod. This is a clear breach of the Copyright Act.”

Anyone who has used iTunes, at least in this country, knows this statement is simply not true. No one purchasing music on the iTunes Music Store is blocked in any way from listening to iTunes-purchased music on whatever device they wish. Yes, some players don’t support the AAC format, but that has nothing to do with the FairPlay DRM.
Continue reading Say it isn’t so Torgeir!

The Disappointing State of SPSS

I recently installed SPSS, what is generally considered the premier statistical program for social scientists, onto a colleague’s Intel-based MacBook Pro. Rather than install SPSS for the Mac, we opted for installing SPSS for Windows (version 15.01) on a Bootcamp partition on the MacBook Pro. One reason for this is because our campus has a site license for SPSS for Windows, but not one for SPSS for the Mac. But more importantly, SPSS for the Mac is not currently supported by SPSS on Intel-based Macs (which includes all Mac models released in the last year).

It seems rather odd that SPSS would post this rather confusing disclaimer about SPSS for the Mac on their website:

SPSS does not support the use of any existing version of SPSS for Mac OS X on the new Intel®-based Mac hardware, including SPSS 11.x or 13.0. The use of the Rosetta emulation software interferes with the numerical calculations in SPSS. We therefore are unable to support any version of SPSS on Intel-based Macintosh machines.

In other words, if you want to run SPSS today on a new Mac, you have to run SPSS for Windows using a bootloader (like Bootcamp) or virtualization software (like Parallels or VMWare). Running SPSS for Mac OS X under Mac OS X on a new Mac is not supported, at least not now. SPSS does state that they plan on releasing sometime during 2007 a version of their program that will run on Intel-based Macs. For now, however, the most viable option for Mac users who need to run SPSS on a new Mac is to run SPSS for Windows using Bootcamp (which technically is still a beta product).
Continue reading The Disappointing State of SPSS

Windows Vista and the Experience Index

Windows Experience Index scoreAmong the new features of Vista, Microsoft’s new operating system, is the “Windows Experience Index.” The index is a number that Vista calculates that offers a simple overall assessment of how well your computer can handle the demands of the operating system. Actually, the number Vista provides is based on an examination of five key attributes of your computer:

1. Processor speed (rated by calculations per second)
2. Memory speed (rated by operations per second)
3. Graphics (standard graphics performance)
4. Gaming graphics (3D graphics performance)
5. Primary hard disk (data transfer rate)

For each of these five areas, Vista calculates a score from 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. It then reports the lowest of the five scores as your “Windows Experience Index” in a pretty blue box. Clicking on it will take you to a screen where you can see all five scores, as well as links to more detailed information about the index.

Windows Experience Index details

This seems like a useful feature to help one determine how well Vista runs on their computer and whether it’s time to install memory or processor upgrades. It could also be useful when comparison shopping for new computers.
Continue reading Windows Vista and the Experience Index