digital digs

wiki cortland

With the help of my colleague in Adminstrative Computing, Josh Peluso, I've set up a wiki in SUNY Cortland webspace (http://web.cortland.edu/wiki).

My intention is to use the wiki in my courses in the fall and to encourage my colleagues to do the same. However, I also recognize that my intentions will not count for much, or at least I hope they don't. If they do, then that means very few people are making use of the site.

I also hope that the site will be used broadly by Cortland students, faculty, and staff. However, that hope has made at least some folks on campus a little nervous. As such, I toned down some of the rhetoric on the home page inviting people to join in. Of course, there are no technical barriers that prevent anyone from making edits or adding new pages, so regardless of the rhetoric, the wiki remains as open as ever.

Anyway, the idea is NOT to create an "official" wiki (the idea of official and wiki don't go together very well in my view). On the other hand, I'm not intending to create some kind of "underground' wiki either (it's as public as any other site). It's just a wiki. Users add material if they want, edit material if they want, or just read it.

Interestingly, a few weeks back, I was at a presentation where the subject of Facebook came up, and our college president raised the possibility of creating some college venue that would attract students away from Facebook. Most of us agreed that, for good or bad, that wasn't likely. I don't think a wiki like this could replace Facebook; they are really different types of applications. However, a Cortland wiki would have the potential of creating an open online community where learning activities from different courses blended with one another and with the interests and goings-on of the community beyond academics.

A year from now, I'll have a much better idea of how this works.

the B- student from Poughkeepsie

I've been doing some prep work for next semester's courses, when I'll be teaching the new edition of Friedman's The World is Flat. I don't necessarily agree with Friedman or share his enthusiasm for globalization, but he does a good job of laying out some of the challenges that face us, at least in terms of presenting an argument to students.

Anyway, there's an anecdote I recall either from that book or something else of Friedman's in which he recounts a conversation with Bill Gates where Gates asks if you'd rather be a B- student from Poughkeepsie or a genius from Shanghai. 20 years ago, perhaps you want to be from Poughkeepsie, now you want to be from Shanghai. Or at least that's their argument.

The point, obviously, is that 20 years ago, a middle-class American student had such a competitive advantage over the rest of the world, simply by being American, that s/he didn't have to give much thought to the possibility of global competition. Now that's no longer the case (and it's no longer the case for that late thirties, B- grad heading into his/her 20th HS reunion).

From my perspective as a SUNY-Cortland professor, teacher to the great B- HS student population of upstate NY (including Poughkeepsie), this shift has a regular effect on how I imagine our curriculum. My guess is that the exceptional American student will continue to have an advantage, at least for some time. And some of our students are exceptional. They come to us rather than Binghamton or Albany as a SUNY school b/c we offer Professional Writing or for some other idiosyncratic reason. However, many of our students are of the more typical American student variety.

Our program is a more liberal arts type of program than a technical program. We don't have many students interested in technical writing. Furthermore, we see the global context Friedman describes as one where technical proficiency will not provide the return it once did.

Instead, our students will require something different. With a liberal arts degree, the "skills" you learn are of a more general variety, reading, writing, cultural knowledge. Professional Writing gets you practice writing in a variety of genres, working with emerging technologies, and experience analyzing different workplace rhetorical situations. But those are really the kind of specific skills you might see listed in a job ad. But the idea is to help our students develop their identities as writers and a sense of creativity that will help them invent a place for themselves in the professional world.

But more importantly, from a curricular perspective, as faculty we have to imagine new approaches. For the most part, these are students who have had no particular success in education, who have not really been sparked by school experiences, and do not identify strongly with learning. They often have ambivalent relations with schools.  I can sympathize with this. I've never identified that well with schools either. However, these students need to find a way to take the opportunity of higher education to make something happen for themselves. Clearly the traditional approaches have not produced great results for these students, acceptable results perhaps, but that's not good enough in this context.

Looking for a new way to make things happen for students. That's a big part of this job.

enhanced podcasts, iTunes U, and higher ed

I just completed my first enhanced podcast using PowerPoint, ProfCast, and the internal mic on my laptop. I haven't included it here for two reasons.

1. The quality of the internal mic is ok but not great
2. The podcast is for a first-year course introducing students to the concept of culture...not all that interesting for you guys.

But I do have a few observations (which those of you who have done this probably already know).

1. ProfCast is not going to pick up any animations or slide transitions in your PowerPoint presentation, so don't bother with any of those.
2. In iTunes or on an iPod your slides will not really be legible (in iTunes you can get a larger image of the slides but you can't follow along with the presentation that way...i.e., the slides won't shift). You can watch an MP-4 file in QuickTime, which is how it would work if it were embedded on a web page. The point is that if you are making enhanced podcasts primarily for use on a iPod, you should recognize that the slides will really only function to help a user identify the various chapters of your presentation.
3. I converted the .m4b file (which is the variety of Mpeg-4 ProfCast produces for an enhanced podcast) to an .mp4 video file. This format can be watched as a video on the video iPod, which means that your slides will be legible. However, there are some significant drawbacks. First, you lose the chaptering feature of the enhanced podcast. Second, the file size is quite larger. Mine went from 9.9 MB to 35.9 MB, so more than 3.5 times the size (it may be possible to compress it further; I haven't played around with that). It is important to note that for viewing on a web site there's no difference between the two; both play in QuickTime. The only reason to convert to MP4 video, at least for me, is to make it playable on the iPod video. However, for me that's a key point as we will be requiring our students to purchase such devices for our learning community next semester. That said, it is possible that I will have to generate two feeds.
4. This is easy to do. It is not atypical for students to be required to make PowerPoint presentations in a class. If a student can create a PowerPoint, than he or she can create an enhanced podcast. The few extra steps of recording the presentation and uploading (which can be done in ProfCast or Garage Band 3) are not difficult.

The makers of ProfCast contend that students primary interests in enhanced podcasts are listed in this order:

1. Good audio
2. Visual representation (a thumbnail to aid in navigating between chapters)
3. Full slide representation
4. Animated slides
5. Video

ProfCast manages to do the first three (though full slide representation doesn't really come through in the way these files playback in iTunes or on an iPod). I suppose I can accept this claim (it conveniently supports the features of their product). And I am quite interested in how students view this technology and how they might use it. However, I also recognize other priorities (like my own).

Students, like many others, may imagine this technology in connection with coursecasting. In that sense, these priorities make sense. The coursecast is really just a supplement (that word always gives me the Derridean twitches) to the "real" lecture given in the class. The point is that students are supposed to go to the lectures and then use the coursecast as notes.

But I am more interested in these technologies as a primary mode of communication. Sure I might record some classes, just to try that, but I also want to produce materials for use in online and hybrid course contexts. In those contexts, a more immersive media experience might be important. I know watching the video of my podcast on my iPod was more engaging than just listening to it with the slides not really providing a strong visual message.

Of course, if I am going to create video, then I might do it in a more full-on way (i.e., I could get out my video camera at least). True enough. But then I am getting into a whole new level of production labor. Here I can easily make slides, record a lecture, produce an enhanced podcast, and then convert it to video.

the scale of academic podcasting

The meeting with the Apple folks went well yesterday. As you might imagine, iTunes U appears quite simple to use. After all, it is really not much more than a means for distributing media files. The challenge, as always, lies in the production of media. In pedagogic terms that means the following:

• having something to say: this generally isn't a problem for academics, particularly in the context of a course.
• having a pedagogic strategy: that is, an understanding of how this piece of media contributes to the overall learning experience of the course.
• producing the content: which is clearly different, though related, to the first two. It means having the ability (or support staff with the ability) to produce image, audio, video, and other media.

Apple wisely has a hands off approach to much of this, leaving it to individual institutions and faculty to determine how to use the technology. However, it is clear that the easiest path into this business is recording and podcasting lectures, as I've already discussed. Obviously, the professor already has something to say; the production issue is quite simple and can possibly be delegated to a work study student; and if the pedagogy aspect is a little weak, at least something can be said for students having the ability to review lectures.

Now my idea is to produce enhanced podcasts (mpeg-4 files) with slides and audio, as well as video, and perhaps to also podcast more interactive flash media, even though the last would have to be experienced on a computer rather than an iPod. The second part is to have informal audio and video communication. Students can post individual audio/video. We can record a skypecast or an iChat or something similar if we are doing synchronous communication. We can record in-class discussion as far as that goes. While you might not want to listen to every class, a student, for example, might want to revisit a class workshop on his or her short story or poem or whatever. The final part is to have students share more formal productions, likely group efforts.

However, I am beginning to see (which should have been obvious) that the ultimate value of iTunes University, particularly from a student experience, is the scale of its implementation in the curriculum. One course, regardless of how well-produced, will be a curiousity at best, and often an annoyance, especially if students feel forced to purchase an iPod for one class (which we would never do, but they might feel that way anyway). An iPod is never necessary for accessing the content, but it does substantially contribute to the overall experience. And my understanding is that a big part of what students like about iTunes U comes from the integration of the iPod.

So while I will continue to value for myself and my classes the idea of producing quality media and uncovering various new ways to use these tools for learning, it is more important for the institutional success of the program to get a lot of courses on board at whatever level they are willing to invest, with recording and podcasting lectures a virtual no-brainer.

For good or for bad, that entry-level model will not work in Professional Writing because we don't do much formal lecturing. Our courses often work on the class discussion or workshop format. And I obviously wouldn't change that, nor do I think it is necessary. I firmly believe new media supports a constructivist pedagogic approach. While, as I wrote earlier, I believe the effort of producing a/v, at least initially, will make it a challenge to adopt, in Professional Writing we have an alternative motive. We recognize that these communicational practices are becoming integral to the cultural and workplace discourses in which our students will pursue their careers. So for us, using these technologies is not simply a means to some other pedagogic end; learning to compose rhetorically effective new media is a primary goal of our curriculum.

As such, though I need to confer further with my two PWR colleagues on this matter, I hope to annouce soon that we will integrate iTunes/iPods across our curriculum, that we can say to our majors that at least half of their courses in our major will include podcast content. Obviously I think it will be an attractive, marketing-type feature of our program. However I also firmly believe that working with emerging media is integral to our discipline. I wouldn't pursue it otherwise.

preparing for itunes university

The folks from Apple will be on campus on Monday meeting with those of us who are spearheading Cortland's involvement with iTunes University. It doesn't seem like discussion on the web has shifted much since I last addressed this issue.

Those who are skeptical or more strongly opposed to the idea

• reject iTunes U as some kind of profit-generating/advertising/marketing scheme
• are concerned the service encourages students to skip class
• believe that recorded lectures are not as valuable as live lectures
• believe that it makes the mistake of equating course content with teaching/learning

Those who are excited

• cite tbe convenience for students
• note the benefits of being able to review lectures, catch lectures they missed for legitimate reasons, and/or access courses in which they are not enrolled
• recognize the importance of connecting with the technopractices of their students

I suppose both sides have "points." The whole "corporations are evil" thing is a little trite for my tastes, at least for this post. As for the other business, both pro and con, it all seems to center on some form of coursecasting or another. That is, the presumption is that the podcasts would be recordings of regularly presented lectures.

Coursecasting, then seems to be the primary interest here. In this context, faculty may look to produce relatively polished media and/or integrate published media. These are products that would likely serve as a substitute for traditional course content, either lectures or readings. They would also be fairly labor-intensive to produce. Inasmuch as one imagines students with video iPods, there is some convenience, but that would have to be balanced against the labor of their production and the change in practices it would require of faculty. It is for this reason that coursecasting seems a more attractive (and likely) product: it doesn't require faculty to do anything different than what they are already doing.

The second obvious avenue for podcasting is in courses where video or audio might already be used and/or where there addition clearly adds value. These would obviously include courses in video and audio production and new media. They might also include foreign language classes, student teaching, phys. ed. (where they are studying body movements), and I'm sure there are others. My courses are included in here as my students are learning to produce and communicate through new media.

In my estimation, the conversation about these two possibilities do little to alter the traditional teacher-student relationship. Overwhelming the flow of media is from teacher to student. There is a modicum of student-to-student sharing, analogous with workshopping rough drafts of papers. And there is student-to-teacher communication for the purpose of evaluation.

However, I am also interested in the idea of the informal media where the flow of information shifts. This shift relies on informality because formal media is too labor intensive for regular communication. That is, if formally produced media are analogous to the lecture or the student essay, then informal media would be the equivalent of a blog post or comment or wiki entry. I am curious to see if this will happen. For example, we read an essay or watch some media, then I post an audio file or a talking head video making some comment or raising a question, just as I might normally do in text. The students then reply in audio or video, equally informally. So here are questions I expect to find some answers to next year:

• Will they do that?
• Will they find it interesting or an inconvenience?
• Will the switch in media make their responses more or less considered?
• Will students (and faculty) compose and revise in text and then record A/V or will they speak of the cuff? (or will they oscillate between the two modes depending on mood, rhetorical purpose, audience?)