Our technology and download news includes news of
hardware failures and rebuilds, upgrades, new
versions of Firefox, Respondus-StudyMate, Windows media
components for QuickTime, and others. We also
have news of a
Blackboard upgrade--a Service Pack this time, which
means bug fixes, and new Google features.
Beginning with this show we start announcing the
training opportunities for next week, the "plenary"
week as it is now called. We're back in the
training business in a big way. Dave in his
Blackboard feature of the week will do a post-mortem
on the Blackboard SP1 update, and make a couple of
Blackboard announcements, pleas and reminders to
faculty members. Haydn is on hiatus this week,
at the Grand Canyon. Remember Haydn, when your wife
says to step back just a couple more steps to get
that photo, don't do it. My tech-talk-topic is
the Olympus WS-100 voice recorder in particular,
audio recording in general, and how they relate to
our new podcasting solution for faculty members. The
Gizmo of the week for the first time is a service,
not a thing. And what a service.
Palomar Tech and Download News
Training Opportunities
- Academic Technology Training resumes
next week, with orientations for new faculty on
August 15, for part-time faculty on August 17,
7:15-9pm, and for full-time faculty on August
18, 10:45-11:45am in room LL-109.
- David Gray and Haydn Davis will be
presenting a pre-plenary workshop for part-time
faculty on August 17, from 3-5pm in room LL-109
on
Blackboard Essentials.
- Haydn Davis and Terry Gray will be
presenting a
What's New in Academic Technology workshop,
apart from the plenary sessions, on August 24,
from 2-4pm in room LL-109.
- David Gray and Haydn Davis will be repeating
the Blackboard Essentials workshop on Wednesday,
August 30 from 2-4pm in room LL-109.
- Terry Gray will be presenting a workshop on
Windows XP Essentials on Thursday, August 31
from 2-4pm in room LL-109.
- Register for all Academic Technology
workshops through the
Professional Development web site.
Click here to access our entire training
schedule,
here to access the new "competencies"
approach to our workshops, and other training
information.
- Free 1-hour, live online training from
Horizon Wimba on
Voice Tools and
Live Classroom. Select from a range of
dates from August 15-Sept 1.
- For those just beginning to look at their
Fall 2006 Blackboard course shells, and perhaps
staring at the vacancy, there are a series of
screen videos created by the Academic Technology
department which will help you along your way.
Access them at the PCOnline
Faculty Services page.
Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray
David has a multi-part Feature of the week this
time:
- A post-mortem on last night's update of the
Blackboard Learning system to version 7.1 App
Pack 1 Service Pack 1. The new part of
that formula is the Service Pack 1 part.
That is what Dave will be speaking to.
- A call to archive summer courses from summer
2005. They will be pruned from the system
next Wednesday, August 16.
- An announcement of a new "Teaching with
Blackboard screen video and vodcast dealing with
loading publishers' course cartridges.
- That ever popular reminder: Don't
forget to make your Fall courses available so
your students can login to them.
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
12:32]
See
the index of Dave's previous "Blackboard Feature
of the Week" segments.
Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis
Haydn is vacationing this week. See
an index of previous "Teaching with
Technology" segments.
Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray
The WS-100 and Audio Recording
My
topic this week is the Olympus WS-100 digital voice
recorder in particular, digital audio recording in
general, and their relation to our new podcast
solution for faculty members.
If you do not already have a digital
voice recorder, or a means of digitally recording
your audio content,
check out an Olympus WS-100 digital voice
recorder from Academic Technology. The WS-100
is small, easy to use, and is also a USB device,
making transfer of audio files to your computer
simple.
Briefly, here are the specs on the
WS-100:
-
Will record up to 27 hours in LP
mode, 4 hours and 20 minutes in HQ mode
(recommended);
-
Has 64MB internal flash memory;
-
PC interface is USB direct, 2.0
full speed;
-
Records in wma format;
-
Has a voice activated, built-in
microphone (but we recommend the use of the ME15
tie-clip microphone, which we will check out
with each unit by request);
-
Has an earphone jack as well as
a mic jack.
-
Comes with earbuds and lanyard;
-
Powered by a single AAA battery
(replacements will be provided by Academic
Technology);
-
Battery life approximately 13
hours;
-
Weight 1.9 ounces;
-
Stores data in up to 5 pre-named
folders, 199 files per folder max.
For more details about the WS-100 at
the
Olympus web site.
Our intention is to check out these
devices for use by those wishing to create academic
podcasts or have need of recording academic audio in
classroom or remote locations.
For
those wishing to record audio in their offices, or
sitting at a computer, we recommend directly
recording from a Microphone attached to the
computer's sound card to a free program called
Audacity. Audacity outputs in mp3, wav or
ogg format.
For
those wishing a more controlled audio recording
environment, we have an audio recording booth set up
in the
faculty technology center.
Our podcast solution involves
posting your podcast to a blogger.com blog.
Briefly, here's the simple 1-2-3 overview:
Submit
a request to Academic Technology to set up a
blogger/feedburner podcast publishing point for you.
The publishing point will be a blogger.com blog.
The feedburner part provides the podcast
subscription URL. Don't worry about those
details. As I say, Academic Technology will do
it all for you and email you your blog URL and
provide a podcast subscription button for your web
site.
Record
your audio, convert it to mp3 format, if necessary.
If you use our WS-100 digital voice recorder, the
file will be in wma format, and will need to be
converted. We recommend using the free
WMA to MP3 converter from Jodix. If you
used Audacity to record your audio, it is already in
mp3 format (or can be by re-exporting it from
Audacity as mp3). If you used our recording
booth you will have used SoundForge 8 to record your
audio, and, once again, it will be in mp3 format.
Upload
your mp3 file to your web site, and link to the web
site from your blogger.com publishing point (the one
set up in step 1 above).
Click here for a screen video illustrating the
entire process.
The only other thing to do is announce the
podcast subscription URL to your students so that
they can subscribe. If they don't know how
(and most probably will) we recommend they use
iTunes:
Click here for a screen video on how to
subscribe to a Palomar college academic podcast
using iTunes. (Flash player
required).
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
13:34]
See
the index of previous Tech Talk Topics.
Gizmo of the week
Our gizmo this week is not a thing, its a service
called "The
Popularity
Dialer." The tag line from the
web site says it all: "Fake a phone call easily and
credibly!" Yes! At last, a convenient,
anonymous way to impress that certain someone, or,
for those of us who don't really consider popularity
one of our goals any longer (or, perhaps, ever) a
way to be called back to the office, or away from
the office, on an emergency basis. The service
asks you to enter your phone number, when you want
the call made, and what type of call you want to
receive. The choices are 1) popularity call;
2) female popularity call; 3) affirmation call; 4)
return to the office call; 5) cousin in need call.
According to the web site "At the elected time, your
phone will be dialed and you will hear a prerecorded
message that's one half of a conversation. Thus, you
will be prompted to have a fake conversation and
will easily fool those around you." You even
have the ability to choose the type of voice on the
other end--"the boss call" sounds about right to me.
Perhaps most interestingly, according to their web
sites California leads the way--by a mile--on use of
the site. 14% of the site calls go to
California.
How much does it cost, you ask? The site
asks only for a $2.00 donation per call--as in
donation. They go on to say that only 5 free
calls can be made to a particular number "...because
we are paying out of pocket. We are currently
looking for sponsors to defray costs. If you are
interested in becoming a sponsor..." Check the
web site if you are interested.
(Source:
Popularity Dialer - See also
Pogue's Posts)
Music
The
music for today's show was provided by
Magnatune.com,
and is used through their Creative Commons license
for podcasts. Today's album was
"Suerte
Somthing" by
Arthur Yoria. "His uncanny ear for
melody, hooks, and arrangement is paralleled only by
his captivating voice which seems to carry the
weight of a thousand break-ups, but somehow manages
to soar effortlessly to a place where joy, goose
bumps, and repeated listens are unavoidable. "
We
used tracks 1: "Suerte Mijo;" 2: "Encime
de Ti;" 4: "Este Metodo;" 9: "Greek Archaic;" 5:
"Hoy Bostece;" 7: "Only Me;" 10: "Places Everyone;"
and 6: "Something Must Be Wrong."
Visit
magnatune and reward them for their generosity,
and if you like this album, buy it. Magnatune is not evil!
"If we don't
change direction soon, we'll end up where we're
going." ~
Professor Irwin Corey
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Podcast
for August 11, 2006 - Episode 27
StudyMate has been updated to version 1.5.5d.
The primary reason to upgrade is to get a fix
that addresses the new IE ActiveX Control which
requires users to click on Flash objects before
they will work. After the fix, it is not
necessary to click on StudyMate Flash objects
before they will work.
The main reason you may want to upgrade
either or both of these products is to
add the new license key to your installed version. We re-license StudyMate
and Respondus each
year (in August) and it is necessary to enter a
new license key to continue using the program.
Obtain the license key from our
Video Podcasts - Episode 2 of "PCOnline Exposed,"
or PCOX, for short, has been published. If
you subscribe to the vodcast, you will have
received it through iTunes. If not,
We announced this before, but now our
counseling department has reviewed, given
feedback, and largely approved our new "
Because the Fall semester is upon us, we
also wanted to provide a reminder about the
