Cincinnati Edition podcast strikes clear note for iTunes U

October 13th, 2009 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 13 October 2009

Here’s an example from the world of podcasts.

WVXU Cincinnati has a weekly programme called Cincinnati Edition with a Focus on Technology item also offered as a podcast.

The 24 August 2008 edition in particular was of note (MP3). Its strapline says “More and more colleges and universities are supplying computerized tools to their students and the on-line community in general. Ann Thompson reports on the latest initiatives”.

I like these short podcasts (~5 minutes) as they make useful initiators for follow-up by other channels or to stimulate parallel lines of inquiry. This particular podcast features some of the work of the University of South Florida who use iTunes U. Other US iTunes U users include: Stanford, UC Berkeley; and MIT.

In the UK HEIs with an iTunes U presence include: the Open University; University of Oxford; UCL; Coventry University; University of Cambridge; University of Warwick;; University of Edinburgh; and Birmingham City University.

iTunes U screenshot

iTunes U screenshot: right click to display full size image

But are there any alternatives or supplements to iTunes U? In an earlier Auricle posting Open opportunities, open threats? (30 April 2009) I mentioned the University of London’s Computer Centre’s (ULCC) hosting services for the UK HE sector particularly in regard to Moodle hosting. ULCC also offer a podcasting hosting service for those HEIs wishing to avoid the direct technical or support overhead associated with large scale podcast distribution.

But iTunes U is a popular and free hosting service (currently) because it also offers access control. Consequently, material can be be made available to, say, students on a particular course. But as with all such “free” services it’s probably worth keeping in mind that commercial and economic vagaries and turbulence can lead to, sometimes radical, changes in business models and the services they inform. While “free” services like iTunes U do offer an attractive distribution option for both users and content developers it would probably be pretty unwise for any institution’s open education resource distribution strategy to be dependent on any one such service no matter how “free” it appeared to be at the time. Spreading one’s risks and keeping the digital maxim of “lots of copies keeps stuff safe” would seem wisest. Those contemplating iTunes U as part of their education resources support provision should read this Apple briefing.

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Open opportunties, open threats? – Postscript

October 5th, 2009 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, originally posted 1 May 2009, updated 5 October 2009

N.B. The following posting represents the personal views of the author and should not be construed as necessarily representative of any other individual or organisation.

One of the “messages” in my earlier Open opportunties, open threats? posting (Auricle, 30 April 2009) was that users always have the option of voting with their mouse when “official” provision proves to be inadequate, doesn’t inspire confidence, or even becomes an actual barrier to the achievement of their objectives. We should note that there is a similar strand of thinking becoming focused on the nature of e-government and other public ‘e’ services and whether the vast global investments are actually being realised in better user-oriented artefacts and services. One argument is that it would be better for government to focus on making their data accessible for a multiplicity of others to use and present. For example, Princeton’s David G Robinson et al highlight in their paper Government Data and the Invisible Hand (Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 11, p. 160, 2009) that currently:

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Technology Impeded Learning (TIL)?

September 29th, 2009 3 Comments

by Derek Morrison, 25 September 2009

There! … Even in the title of this posting I’ve added my six pence (cents) worth to the concerns of those becoming exercised by the unchallenged assumption that “technologies + learning = good thing”

In my posting J.G.Ballard on the dangers of “inner space” (Auricle, 27 September 2009) I suggested that Ballard’s perspective of “inner space” and the brain as a “virtual reality machine” that may find interacting with other virtual reality machines more attractive than “reality” (my brain is hurting as well) may feed the anxieties of those who are already, or are becoming, exercised by technological negatives or dysfunctions. Personally, I think that that the value of those working in the learning technology arena is enhanced when they consciously avoid becoming techno-evangelists and instead seek to become as aware of the potential constraints and dysfunctions of technology as they are of the claimed affordances. As we know only too well from various debacles the digital world can easily be one of unsubstantiated claim, cost overruns, failure to deliver on early promises, and hubris.

Consequently, in this posting, the Ballard quotation from my earlier posting offers a useful starting point for a consideration of a few of these anxieties and dysfunctions.

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Quote: J.G.Ballard on the dangers of “inner space”

September 27th, 2009 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 27 September 2009

Wilf Self’s review of the life of J.G.Ballard on BBC R4 last night (Archive on 4 – Self on Ballard) contained some direct quotes from the late author whose works included Myths of the Near Future and whose 1984 novel/auto-biography was the engine behind Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun.

About 48 minutes in to the hour long programme Ballard describes his view of a world of “inner space” that may be appreciated by Matrix fans but send a shudder down the spines of those concerned with the new construct of “techno-addiction”.

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Why Mendeley?

September 18th, 2009 1 Comment

by Derek Morrison (first posted 7 September 2009, updated 18 September 2009)

With the strapline “Organize, share and discover research papers” Mendeley is clearly pitching its hat into the academic software ring. There is certainly an interesting mix of people behind this enterprise who have obviously decided that there is a business opening not currently being met by existing ‘open’ academic repository solutions and so have set out to create, in their own words “a Last.fm of research“. It will only prove sustainable if a significant number of inherently conservative academic communities decides that this .com offering offers something of higher value than other contenders in this space. As long as the locus-of-control remains with the user rather than the company they could end up carving an important niche for themselves. But, all such ‘free’ services still need an income stream and it’s kind of hard to work out where this one is going to come from if its ‘academic’ branding is not going to be compromised by advertising. If Mendeley was to replicate the Last.fm business model then a ‘free’ service would be advertising supported or to put in in the words of the Last.fm site subscribing users enjoy: “Uninterrupted radio listening; Ad-free browsing and streaming; Recent visitors to your profile”.

But I’m not sure that a successful business model developed for the recreational listening of audio streams necessarily translates to a context where the ‘streams’ are learned papers particularly when DSpace, EPrints et al and the open access publishing movement are already occuping this space. Mendeley, however, does convey a sense of investment in design and high production values, so who knows, it may gain considerable traction.

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Generation ‘A’

September 16th, 2009 No Comments

More food for thought.

“And Google is scanning every book on the planet. Everything will be scanned into computers the size of Kansas owned by Google, and everything will become searchable — but why would anyone want to search? Because it’s all just data, digital crap floating around. In that environment, young people won’t want to learn very much, because it’s all just out there. Are we entering an infantile, low-engagement future in which nobody ever does anything? … Are we going to look back on this era of individualism and think, ‘It’s over’? It doesn’t seem to be working. That’s become really apparent in the past five to eight years or so — so much information, and it is changing us. I definitely think we’re different now. Our attention spans are shorter and we think we can answer every question immediately — thank you, Google and Wikipedia.”

Brian Appleyard interviews Douglas Coupland author of Generation ‘X’ and now Generation ‘A’ (Sunday Times, 13 September 2009)

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ALT-C 2009: Michael Wesch podcast

September 8th, 2009 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 8 September 2009

For ALT-C 2009, ALT’s Seb Schmoller asked me and a few other long term ‘e’ commentators and bloggers attending or presenting at the conference if we would take part in a bit of an experiment by also assuming a ‘journalistic’ role (with editorial control remaining in our own hands). So to start the ball rolling, last night I interviewed the keynote speaker who will be opening the conference today, Dr Michael Wesch. The work of Michael and his Digital Ethnography group first burst on to the global scene by displaying a mastery of YouTube as a dissemination vehicle with two 2007 productions in particular attracting much attention, i.e. A Vision of Students Today (~3.3 million views) and The Machine is Us/ing Us (~1.1 million views). In the 25 minute interview I took the opportunity to explore the nature of the Digital Ethnography group itself, i.e. how undergraduate students come to view themselves as active researchers. I’ll eventually do a more detailed edit with each question and response being offered as a separate MP3 but for the moment here is the ‘rush’ of the whole 25 minute interview (N.B. please download this rather than run it from the server).

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Michael Wesch, ALT-C 2009 interview (11.4MB, MP3, ~25 minutes)

See also the Auricle podcast archive.

The full Michael Wesch keynote is available from the ALT Elluminate site.

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Technology doesn’t necessarily makes things better

September 6th, 2009 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 6 September 2009

Something for us all to ponder I feel, not just for camera phones.

“It’s funny how in the end, technology doesn’t always make things better, it just makes it more accessible …”

David Bailey on camera phones (Guardian, 3 September 2009)

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Dying newspapers head for the online ‘panic room’

September 1st, 2009 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 1 September 2009

One of my areas of interest is what is happening to the newspaper industry and how, and if, they manage to get out of the nose dive to extinction they currently appear to be in. There’s a lot written about this phenomenon of the digital age but I found Dominic Rushe’s article That’s all folks! See you online (Sunday Times, 23 August 2009) neatly encapsulated many of the of the issues. I was intrigued that the Ann Arbor News had pre-emptively moved online rather than close down completely; the assumption being that is where all the eyeballs have moved to. My view is that

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They’re coming to take your content away!

August 21st, 2009 No Comments

by Derek Morrison, 21 August 2009

It’s hard to think of a more ironic example of the new world order that media companies would like to inflict on us than that recently demonstrated by Amazon’s recent auto-deletion of George Orwell’s 1984 “purchased” by owners of Amazon’s Kindle ebook platform. The story was all over the press but as good an account as any can be found in Why did Big Brother remove paid-for content from Amazon’s Kindles? . NB. The headline of the print version of the story was called Big Brother is watching your data (Guardian, 22 and 23 July 2009).

I’ve now authored a few online articles that fit into this blogs ‘epublishing’ category with probably eBooks and the e-learning ‘filling station’ revisited being the most substantive. In the ‘Filling Stations?’ section of that online essay I stated:

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