Serendipity35 - Podcasting

iTunes U for K12

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:31:00 -0400

One of Apple's announcements earlier this year that did not get a lot of attention was that K12 Institutions can now sign up to deliver content in iTunes U. Most of the attention in January went to the news that textbooks were coming to iBooks and that author software to create your own books would be supported, along with a dedicated iTunes U app, which "bundles" courses in a manageable, multimedia package.

The K12 news could be more of a motivator for change than the textbooks in the K12 space. I can see some teachers creating textbooks, but creating podcasts and support materials for iTunes U will be much easier. In fact, many educators may already have some of those materials created and ready to upload.

Of course, K12 is very different than higher ed - especially when it comes to issues like permissions for using students and student work and the probable "review process" that will be required by a school district.

To get started with iTunes U, K12 school districts, universities, and colleges in 26 countries can start at eduapp.apple.com

Anything New At iTunes U?

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:55:00 -0400

Since my last iTunes U post, things have been pretty quiet in there. Colleges continue to add content, but nothing very dramatic has changed. Still, I suspect many of you have not sampled the podcasts in iTunes U. There is certainly a worldwide interest though. I couldn't find any statistics on iTunes U downloads, but just based on the 100,000+ hits on my posts about it here on Serendipity35, I would have to say that the numbers are huge.

The Beyond Campus section has some new content. (You'll need to have the free iTunes installed to view these links.) There are two local New Jersey offerings there: the Newark Museum and the Liberty Science Center. Teachers.tv is a new one. The George Lucas Foundation (also see Edutopia) has a presence now.

I am surprised, but pleased, to see that 5 of 13 sites in the K-12 area are from New Jersey.

In the main universities and colleges section, community colleges are still woefully underrepresented, especially considering the attention and money that is aimed at them this past year by the Obama administration and their rising enrollments sparked by high unemployment.

Want to get a sampler of what is available? Open up the iTunes U Top Downloads page. There's a whole college education waiting to be downloaded for free.

Student-Powered Podcasting

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:10:00 -0400

Creating podcasts is a good way to have students actively create and connect with the world around them. I have been in workshops led by my New Jersey colleague, Chris Shamburg, and what I really like about his approach to podcasting is not just having students develop content, but also learning to responsibly use content created by others in their work. He is good about having students use copyright-free (or copyleft) resources.

His new book is Student-Powered Podcasting (from ISTE) and though it is written for K-12 educators, there are many higher ed instructors and students that could benefit from its clear and straight-ahead approach.

A podcast is a series of digital audio or video files that are released episodically and downloaded through web syndication using RSS. The use of RSS and "subscriptions" differentiates podcasts from other ways of accessing media files over the Internet, such as simple downloads or streamed webcasts. For podcasts, subscribers use special client software applications known as podcatchers (iTunes, Zune, Juice, and Winamp are all popular free ones) that can automatically identify and download new files in the series when they are released.

The book leads Mac and PC users through tutorials for two software audio editing programs, GarageBand (from Apple) and Audacity (a free download for Windows or Mac) that students can use to create podcasts.

A first step with podcasting is simply using podcasts in your classroom, but then having students create their own is far more powerful. Though podcasting has been around since 2000, it is still new for many teachers and students.

Sure, podcasting is a powerful tool for teaching 21st-century literacy (which is the literacy of social processes) and tech skills. But, Chris would argue (and I would agree) that is can also teach students to empathize with others, develop relevant content and "publish" in a real way. What would have been the chances of you as a student prior to podcasting having a regularly syndicated radio or TV program available to the world?

Shamburg says:

I believe that we are at a revolutionary point in our history, a paradigm shift akin to the introduction of writing to the ancient Greeks or the effects of the printing press on Early Modern Europeans. We need to look at our teaching in this larger sweep of history. Twenty-first-century literacies involve the skills and mindsets associated with the digital technologies and global networking of the information age. These skills and mindsets are related to the immediate technologies, but they are also related to the larger and tacit shifts associated with digital technologies and global networking—shifts in social structures, culture, capital, and labor.

Taking a look at the book's table of contents gives you a good sense of the scope of the book. Youu can read a sample - chapter one - of Student-Powered Podcasting.

Section two of the book contains 16 standalone units containing overviews, procedures for implementation, assessment rubrics, and links to examples. These classroom-tested projects are flexible and are meant to be adapted based on your students, subject matter, and resources available.

MORE

The Podcasting Legal Guide from Creative Commons

http://www.chrisshamburg.com

iTunes U List: The Last Update

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:39:00 -0400

Back in May 2007, Apple added iTunes U (the area for colleges and universities) to the iTunes Store and I blogged about the first 16 colleges whose podcasts were being included there. That was logical because NJIT was one of those "sweet 16" schools. I have updated that post several times and included the growing list of colleges with an iTunes U presence.

I think the posts served a purpose and they got lots of views, but this will be the last update. Apple now lists all the colleges within iTunes, so, as long as you have iTunes installed, you can access the up-to-date list there.

Along with the colleges and universities, they also have other organizations offering educational podcasts in the "Beyond the Campus" area.

My only reason to offer this particular update is to direct readers to the latest addition to iTunes U. Now there are K-12 offerings too. I'm very happy to see that New Jersey has the dominant presence in that category as of now!

These links will only open if you have the free iTunes software installed on your computer which will allow you to view, play or download content.

Beyond Campus

K-12 offerings including East Orange schools, Hunterdon Central Regional High School and Montclair Public Schools from New Jersey
List of all colleges available in iTunes U NOTE: There are also schools (such as Rutgers) that utilize iTunes U services for their own students but do not offer open, public content. Those schools are not listed by Apple.

Additional web links

iTunes U information from Apple

List of colleges January 2007

NJIT on iTunes

List of Public iTunes Sites

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:02:00 -0400

Update: Version 5 view earlier versions

Apple has now added universities in the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia to the iTunes U list of schools now offering content. iTunes U now has more than 60 colleges around the world (mostly in North America) plus other types of educational institutions sharing audio & video through the iTunes U portal.

Since Apple launched the version of the iTunes Music Store with an iTunes U link and listed the original 16 colleges last year (NJIT was one of the initial 16 schools), schools have been slower to join the list.Perhaps that was why they opened up the iTunes U area to "educational" organizations that are not universities this year. You can find those offerings in the "Beyond Campus" area including the NY Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and others.

The updated, unofficial, incomplete list below is of schools that have partnered with Apple, Inc. to use iTunes U.

If you know of another school that has a public presence on iTunes U, please add a link with a comment at the bottom of this entry and I'll add it to the list.

NOTE: These are public sites, not those schools that have podcasts available in the iTunes Music Store, but only as password-protected content for their own students.

To open these sites requires the free iTunes software which allows you free access to play or download content. Apple has a simple video on the basics of using iTunes for podcasts.

I welcome your comments below with the URLs to other schools with public access to iTunes U.

This list was first posted in January 2007 when I worked at NJIT and we launched NJIT on iTunes. Though I am no longer at NJIT or involved in iTunes U, I try to keep up on schools that offer a public face in iTunes U both to see what they are offering and to download materials. Although a lot of content is specific to a school (admissions, sports etc.), there are also public course materials and speakers that have a much broader appeal and real educational value.

Free the knowledge!

Podcasts About Cinema, Film or Movies

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 12 May 2008 01:32:00 -0400

As a high school student and undergrad, I was a cineaste and hoped to go to film school. That didn't happen, but I read a lot about film, took film courses and watched a lot of movies anywhere they were showing in New York & New Jersey. I still try to keep up via Netflix and go to the movies just about every week, but the past year, what has really gotten me back into thinking, reading and talking about films has been podcasts.There are a lot of podcasts available about movies, films, and cinema - and, yes, there is a difference.

First up is "The Treatment" with Elvis Mitchell. It's one of a bunch of great podcasts available from KCRW. In Hollywood speak, a treatment is a brief overview of a script that people sometimes use to pitch a movie idea. Mitchell gets big guns into the studio - directors, writers, actors - and they talk widely about film. He's got the background. He was film critic at The New York Times.

It's a professional podcast, as you would expect knowing the host and KCRW. I like that the shows run a comfortable half hour (though when they are really interesting, you wish for an hour).

Next up is Movies 101. It's kind of Ebert & Roeper style (whatever happened to their podcast show?) with three hosts. Bob Glatzer is a film critic and Dan Webster is a Spokane film critic, and Mary Pat Treuthart is a law professor, film buff and Dan's wife. This show also comes out of a public radio (KPBX and KSFC). The shows run under 30 minutes and cover a few films that are in the theaters.

If you want some short (around 5 minutes), insightful reviews of current films, subscribe to the film reviews at KCRW. The reviewer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic from The Wall Street Journal, Joe Morgenstern.

"Out of the Past" is a monthly podcast with an academic sound and feel. The hosts, Clute & Edwards, have focused their aim at film noir. They are academics and their analysis is academic. But they don't sound like radio show "hosts" and the show's production is somewhere below pro and above homegrown. The shows run around 30-60 minutes.

The mix of films is diverse. You'd expect films like The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity and such - maybe not immediately Blade Runner, It's A Wonderful Life or Batman Begins. Good stuff.

The podcasts from the Film Forum in New York City. This one takes me back. A long time ago I used to attend film showings at the Film Forum. These podcasts vary widely. Some are just a brief intro to the film being shown (Coming Home introduced by producer Jerome Hellman or Mary Beth Hurt's odd 5 minute intro to Woody Allen's Interiors) to great free form film stories (Peter Bogdanovich intros his Targets with a tribute to Boris Karloff; Isabella Rossellini on Blue Velvet).

Watching the Directors is a podcast has been going since May 2006 and has 40+ episodes online. This is cool homegrown podcast done by a couple. Joe & Melissa watch lots of movies, have taken some film courses and apparently love making lists. Each show focuses on a director (Hitchcock, Woody Allen, Scorsese, George Lucas, Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Akira Kurosawa...) Some shows also have a companion "Ten Quiz" for that director. Not a whole lot of information on the website about what it's all about, but listen to a few episodes and you'll catch on.

I starting to think of them as this nice couple you know who are really good company at the movies. You watch a movie, then you go out afterwards to get something to eat and have great conversations about what you watched.

They are not pros. That's part of the appeal. Their site says, "Our kids' college fund is going to Netflix." (Unfortunately, the contribution link to PayPal didn't work.) And they also do a podcast called "Watching Theology" that looks at a single film through a theological/philosophical lens.

Many film courses are learning in the dark, but you can join these and listen on a walk in the sun or while you prep the garden for your Jersey tomatoes.

Public iTunes U Sites V4

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:12:00 -0400

Click here for the update to this post.

A year ago, Apple launched a new version of the iTunes Music Store which included an iTunes U link and 16 colleges whose podcasts can be accessed directly from the iTunes application. Happily, NJIT was one of the initial 16 schools.

Since then, they have also opened up the iTunes U area to "educational" organizations that are not universities. You can find podcasts in the "Beyond Campus" area from the NY Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and others.

My updated list of schools below have partnered with Apple, Inc. to use iTunes U. This list was first posted in January 2007 when we launched our own instance of NJIT on iTunes.

Though I am no longer at NJIT or involved in iTunes U, I try to keep up on schools that offer a public face in iTunes U both to see what they are offering and to download materials. Although a lot of content is specific to a school (admissions, sports etc.), there are also public course materials and speakers that have a much broader appeal and real educational value.

This list is not official, definitive or complete - but I'll keep at it here until one that is appears.

If you know of a school that has a public presence on iTunes U, please add a link with a comment at the bottom of this entry and I'll add it to the list. NOTE: These are public sites, not those schools that have podcasts available in the iTunes Music Store but only as password-protected content for their own students. Of course, all these sites will require the free iTunes software to access and play or download content.

NJIT on iTunes U information & launch page or open directly in iTunes

Bowdoin College

Penn State on iTunes U

Stanford on iTunes U

Duke Digital Initiative - Open Duke University's Fuqua School of Business

Harvard Extension School

University of California at Berkeley

Sacramento State - open in iTunes

Arizona State University

Texas A&M

Ross School of Business at U of Michigan

Santa Monica College

University of California at Berkeley

Queens University (Canada)

Wellesley College

Georgia College and State University

Rollins College

Radford College - open Radford

Gordon College - open Gordon College

Lafayette College

Virginia Tech

Guilford Tech Community College

Concordia Seminary

Otis College of Art & Design

College of William & Mary

Villanova University

Florida Tech

Ohlone College

Texas Tech

Wilkes University

Seattle Pacific University

Abilene Christian University

Reformed Theological Seminary

Southwestern College

University of Michigan

Vanderbilt University

New Mexico State University

Agnes Scott College

Aquinas Institute of Theology

East Tennessee State University

UC - Davis

University of Washington

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Free the knowledge!

Podcasting Seminars

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 08:54:00 -0500

I'm no longer involved with iTunes U as I was when we built our site (very successfully, I might add) at NJIT. I've written here a number of times about podcasting and I think it's an important learning tool and a significant marketing tool too for a school to use.

I'd love to see my new home at Passaic County Community College get into that area, but it's not part of my current job. If your school is considering trying to enter iTunes U, I can suggest the seminars being offered by Apple that look at the IT aspects of becoming a participating school. For smaller institutions like PCCC, the size and capabilities of your IT staff might be the biggest factor in successfully making it into iTunes U.

The Apple seminars (which cover other educational areas too, so search by PRODUCT/iTunes U for the current offerings) on iTunes U are listed right now as being in NY, KY & IL and have a cost of $149.

Their description:

Understand the power of iTunes U. Learn hands-on how you can get started delivering educational contentâ€”class lectures, interviews, videos, and other course materialsâ€”that students can access in the familiar iTunes environment anytime, anywhere with their iPod, Mac, or PC. iTunes U is designed as a service that enables schools to easily manage and deliver a broad range of audio, video, and PDF content to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the public.

The content is set to include four IT/admin areas that I would agree are critical to this process:

Initial iTunes U set-up, site activation and preference tracking
iTunes U site planning and templates
Building a transfer script for administrative access
Understanding and using identifiers and credentials

If you need more than just IT information, I'll recommend the on-demand 3 webinar series from Higher Ed Experts that I participated in last fall. The three programs cover the biggest areas a school needs to address outside of IT support.

"Podcasting 101: How to record and produce your podcasts with ease" is the technical & production side of podcasting. Micah Ovadia, from the University of Cincinnati is the author of "PoducateMe, Practical Solutions for Podcasting in Education," and he'll discuss what you need to know to get your institution started with podcasting. He shares a simple plan to get your institution ready to plan, record, produce and publish its first podcasts in 30 days.
Dennis Miller (Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania) covers marketing and how podcasts can become powerful tools to engage students and their parents. He shares best practices and good tips to make sure your podcasts find their audience.
My session is called "To be or not to be an iTunes U(niversity)" and I addressed what it takes to join Apple iTunes U (and if you even should consider applying to Apple ) and how we planned and implemented NJIT on iTunes U in 2007. I also talk about our podcasting efforts before iTunes U and use of podcasting outside the iTunes platform. There are ways you might optimize your presence there, and in other platforms. NJIT was one of the original sixteen schools to be featured by Apple in iTunes U in May 2007.

Public iTunes U Sites Version 2

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:07:00 -0500

On May 30, 2007, Apple launched a new version of the iTunes Music Store which included an iTunes U link and 16 colleges whose podcasts can be accessed directly from the iTunes application. Happily, NJIT was one of the initial 16 schools. You can go directly to iTunes U (as long as you have the free iTunes software installed) by clicking this link.

The revised list of schools below have partnered with Apple, Inc. to use iTunes U. This list was first posted in January 2007 when we launched our own instance of NJIT on iTunes.

I have been trying to monitor schools that offer a public face in iTunes U both to see what they are offering and to download materials. The collected group is building a nice collection of public podcasts. Although a lot of content is specific to a school (admissions, sports etc.), there are also public course materials and speakers that have broader appeal and real educational value.

This list is not official, definitive or complete - but I'll keep it here until one that is appears.

If you know of a school that has a public presence on iTunes U, please add a link with a comment at the bottom of this entry and I'll add it to the list. These are public sites, not those schools that have podcasts available in the iTunes Music Store but only as password-protected content. All these sites will require the free iTunes software to access and play or download content.

NJIT on iTunes U information & launch page or open in iTunes

Bowdoin College

Penn State on iTunes U

Stanford on iTunes U

Duke Digital Initiative - Open Duke University's Fuqua School of Business

Harvard Extension School

University of California at Berkeley

Sacramento State - Open in Itunes

Arizona State University

Texas A&M

Ross School of Business at U of Michigan

Santa Monica College on iTunes U

University of California at Berkeley

Queens University (Canada)

Wellesley College

Georgia College and State University

Rollins College

Radford College - open Radford

Gordon College - open Gordon College

Lafayette College

Virginia Tech

Guilford Tech Community College

Concordia Seminary

Otis College of Art & Design

College of William & Mary

Villanova University

Florida Tech

Ohlone College

Texas Tech

open Wilkes University

Seattle Pacific University

Abilene Christian University

Reformed Theological Seminary

James Welsh has also created a wiki of participating schools (which is probably a better idea than this post) at http://itunesu.pbwiki.com/

Is iTunes U For You?

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 00:38:00 -0500

I was talking last week to some colleagues at nearby Seton Hall University about becoming an iTunes U school. It prompted me to add a follow-up here to the webinar I did this month as part of a series on podcasting from Higher Ed Experts.

Ryan testing our pre-launch iTunes U in 2006.

One thing that makes it easier now to get a school administration on board compared to when we started podcasting in 2005 is that people will at least have heard of podcasting.

I did a Google search on "podcast" on 9/28/04 and there were 24 hits. Ten months later (7/28/05) it came up with 13.7 million. In May 2006 I did the search again for a presentation I was preparing - the result was 307 million on "podcast" and "iTunes" yielded 266 million. (Oddly enough - due to different Google algorithms - the numbers are actually lower today.)

Still, I would guess that less than 25% of your staff/admin stakeholders have ever downloaded a podcast. When we started building our own podcasting site in 2006 and applied to Apple to join the brand new iTunes U initiative, very few people on campus knew what we were talking about, and most saw little value in NJIT joining.

There was a Washington Post Magazine article by Jeffrey Selingo (now editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education) entitled "Is iTunes U for You?" that came out this month. He interviewed a lot of people, including several of us from NJIT about their experiences implementing and using iTunes U. (Only one quote from NJIT made the article - and the statistic is wrong.) I came across a blogger that linked to the article, and his favorite line in the article was a quote from A. Frank Mayadas, president of the Sloan Consortium (promoters of online learning), who said of iTunes U, "I'm baffled at what universities get out of this."

Yeah, people are baffled. And suspicious. I'm often asked, "What does Apple get out of this?"

For one, they get free content that drives traffic to their iTunes store. They need lots of content to keep the site fresh. The music/movies/TV portion is always turning out new product. For schools, this is not their primary work. In fact, Apple added other institutions (museums etc.) to the iTunes U section recently to add educational content.

Many people know that the profit for Apple is quite low on selling content - a few pennies for that 99 cent song download - but the content also drives hardware sales.

On the non-profit side, iTunes U is good public relations for Apple in the education area. Apple has always had a stronger user base in schools than in business, so they need to care about that community.

Finally, I truly believe that Apple has a continuing commitment to education.

It's probably more important to ask what schools get from using iTunes U.

You can talk about Appleâ€™s lead in innovation, large share and marketing power bringing much wider attention to your school and its public podcasts. (87% of mp3 players are iPods; 25 million iTunes users and growing. Microsoft's second version of the Zune has a podcasting tool.)

There's the free half a terabyte of space + bandwidth and the iTunes infrastructure (RSS creation, uploading, authentication) which may mean even more to some of the smaller schools. (You can host your content locally too if you prefer.)

Still, there is that anti-Apple crowd out there. Hence, some myths to bust: 1) You don't need an iPod or any mobile device to use a podcast. The majority of people still watch/listen on a computer. That's slowly shifting and at some point we won't think anything of using our smartphone to listen to a news or course podcast. 2) You don't need an Apple Mac to create or use podcasts. Macs have some great podcast tools included (like Garageband) and there some good third party products (I like Profcast) but you can do it all with Windows too. (Lots of software to help including Camtasia and the free open source Audacity for audio podcasts on either a Mac or a Windows machine.) 3) The school controls access to "private" content (basically that's courses) through your authentication system on campus. You pass a token to Apple that allows users access to materials based on their course registration. You do not pass any private information about students to Apple at all. 4) You own your content. Apple doesn't own it. You can put it up and take it down. You can post it in other places. Apple can remove it if they have a reason to - copyright infringement, for example - but they can't repurpose it or sell it. You can see that that many iTunes U schools also put their podcast content in places like YouTube (check out the channel for UC Berkeley) or on their own websites as embedded media without using iTunes. The NJIT homepage always features links to at least 3 podcasts that are available on our iTunes U launch page but that don't require additional software or a download. We also feature other podcasts along with features on students, faculty and programs.

That last point deserves a bit more detail. Copyright is on the school's responsibilities list. Apple will want to know that you have a a digital copyright policy in place, but you enforce it. We always ask content creators (especially teachers) if they want their content made public. Only about a third of our courses are public. Professors are often concerned about their intellectual property, but those of us in instructional technology are often just as concerned about the copyright or IP infringement issues that some courses might generate if they were public - images used, video clips etc. You know, taking the PowerPoint slides that came with your textbook (or the textbook you used last year or got on a preview) and changing some things does not make them your intellectual property. I worked with a prof who had changed the slide template and deleted all the publisher identifications and he actually believed he still had "fair use" on his side if we put them online.

We were happy with our little podcasting initiative in 2005-2006. Our audience was pretty much just the campus community - though anyone who found the site could download since we had no way to authenticate downloads. We also had a staff of just 2 instructional technology people and 3 media staffers who were doing everything in addition to their regular jobs. Podcasting was a "hobby" but with increasing interest, we knew we couldn't continue recording, creating, encoding, uploading, writing XML files for RSS feeds etc. So iTunes U gave us a much-needed support system.

Don't expect Apple to be your podcasting IT department though. You are pretty much on your own with that. There is a good online community in the Apple iTunes U support discussion areas (Thank goodness for Duncan Bernhardt!) There's even a iTunes U Assessment Support Project now.

When we launched our iTunesU site in January 2007, we were delighted with the increased visitors and downloads, but the numbers went up 10 times after we were one of the first schools to be featured by Apple in the iTunes in May 2007 and those numbers have more than doubled since then.

If I wrote a novel, I'd want Oprah to select my book for her show. If you have a podcast, you want it featured in iTunes U.

Podcasting Made Easier

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:02:00 -0400

If your school has been considering entering the world of educational podcasting and you're searching for answers and guidance, I have to recommend a 3 webinar series from Higher Ed Experts that will be offered next week. Full disclosure: I'm doing one of the three webinars, so, yes, 1/3 self-promotion.

The series kicks off on November 6 from 1PM-2PM ET with "Podcasting 101: How to record and produce your podcasts with ease." This is the technical & production side of podcasting. Micah Ovadia, from the University of Cincinnati is the author of "PoducateMe, Practical Solutions for Podcasting in Education," and he'll discuss what you need to know to get your institution started with podcasting. He will share a simple plan to get your institution ready to plan, record, produce and publish its first podcasts in 30 days.

Dennis Miller is the director of marketing and public relations at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, and he will focus in webinar #2 on marketing and how podcasts can become powerful tools to engage students and their parents. He will share best practices and good tips to make sure your podcasts find their audience. That's on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 (1PM-2PM ET)

My session is on the 8th in the 1-2 PM time slot - a webinar called "To be or not to be an iTunes U(niversity)?" In this webinar, I'll be focusing on what it takes to join Apple iTunes U (and if you should consider applying to Apple ) and how NJIT planned and implemented our iTunes U program over the past year. I'll also address how you might optimize your presence there, and in other platforms. NJIT was one of the original sixteen schools to be featured by Apple in iTunes U in May 2007.

A Model for Using Podcasts for Learning

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:36:00 -0400

I was pleased to read an article online about a professor at the University of Connecticut that is approaching podcasting in a way that fits well with our NJIT on iTunes U philosophy for faculty podcasts. Psychology professor David Miller didn't want to simply record lectures from his large (315 students) General Psych course. He wanted to increase student interaction.

"As the first person to incorporate podcasting into courses at the University of Connecticut in fall 2005, I decided not to simply 'coursecast,'" he says. "Though there are times when coursecasting may be useful, I felt that there was nothing particularly novel about recording lectures. Creating this simple record was not my main purpose for podcasting."

He calls his project iCube. You can sample some of his content there. He sits down for a weekly one-hour discussion of course material in which students meet with him, discuss psychology, and he records the session. It started as a way to make an exam review session accessible to all students in the class, but has gone beyond that.

"We not only discuss course material, but also any other topics of interest related to psychology," explains Miller. "Some students have even switched to psychology because of their active participation. Students who participate in the recordings get to know me very well, and vice versa."

Professor Miller also uses "precasts" and "postcasts." Precasts are enhanced podcasts (images with synchronized audio narration) to give students a preview of important points to look for in an upcoming lecture. He also plays the precast before the lecture for students who arrive early. That's what we called the anticipatory set in my K-12 teaching days when we were introduced to Hunter's direct instruction model. Then, for closure, he creates short audio recordings (postcasts) to address difficult concepts that were discussed that day.

I'm not a proponent of podcasting because everyone else is podcasting, but this approach is one that can really have a positive effect on student learning. Now, to get some of the NJIT faculty to try some pre- & post- casts.