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 Podcast
for January 12, 2007 - Episode 46
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Play time 59 minutes - Program Notes
"Let
us turn out thoughts today to Martin Luther King, and
recognize that there are ties between us, all men and
women, living on the earth, ties of hope and love of
sister and brotherhood." James Taylor
 ,
"Shed a Little Light," New Moon Shine
Happy New Year!
We have news of an Academic Technology birth; lots of
tech and download news which we are going to do
roundtable style, starting with this episode, including
news from CCCSAT; from Bill Gates via his keynote at the
Consumer Electronics Show; from Steve Jobs via his
keynote from MacWorld; from Pew Internet Life Project
regarding social networking sites; a new type of
flexible electronic paper, from Plastic Logic; and news
of the Word-of-the-Year for 2006.
David's Blackboard Feature of the Week is titled "Please
Hold On to the Bar" in which he discusses
things to remember about Fall classes, and things to do
for spring classes. Haydn's topic for the first
"Teaching with Technology" segment for 2007 deals with
the new Visual Presentation tool in Blackboard. My Tech Talk Topic is
"What's New in Academic Technology for Spring 2007."
Our gizmo this week is more serious than usual: a
solid-state hard drive.
Technology and Download News Briefs
-
 We
are extremely pleased to announce the birth of Chloe
Rei Phillips to Shay and Irene Phillips on December
23, 2006. Shay is our valued Academic
Technology Blackboard and systems technician, Irene,
at one time, worked in our Academic Technology labs.
They have now had a blessed event. Chloe is
healthy and all are doing well.
-
Our Blackboard system has been updated with the
latest fixes. The fixes addressed a problem we
had seen related to using the Blackboard visual text
box editor on Mac OS X using Safari 2. It is
now possible to use the visual text box editor on
that platform.
-
The power shutdown to the north end of campus that
we were expecting January 13 has been canceled until
further notice, according to the Facilities Office.
-
CCCSAT
is making a call for entries in its 2nd annual
student film and video festival. "California
Community College faculty and students are
encouraged to submit their best student
 produced
work to compete for top prizes in the 2nd Annual
Student Film and Video Festival.
CCCSAT will
recognize and reward students for achievements in
video, film, broadcasting and animation. Entries
must be postmarked no later than January 31, 2007
and submitted to CCCSAT with the official entry
form."
Click here for entry rules, prizes and further
information, or email
Chris Brown with questions.
-
As many people know, our PCTV department has a
world-class studio, and they are happy to produce
faculty videos for those who want to advertise their
classes, explain concepts in a brief video, even
record an entire lecture series. Now Bill Wisneski,
PCTV Producer, has created a very helpful video on
what you need to do before showing up to tape your
session. To play it, click the link below (Windows
media player required):
-
 "At the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las
Vegas this week, Microsoft previewed its
long-awaited Windows Home Server (WHS) product, a
Windows Server 2003 R2-based server for consumers
that dispenses with the complexities of most Windows
Server versions and provides the core storage,
sharing, and remote access functionality that
digital media and home networking enthusiasts
require" (Supersite
for Windows). Are you ready to become a
home server manager? According to Microsoft,
it's "simple enough even for Mom." Home
network tasks like backup, sharing photos music, and
video. The product should begin shipping
commercially at the end of 2007.
Click here to watch the Bill Gates keynote,
announcements and demos (Windows
media player requires) from the Las Vegas
Consumer Electronics Show.
Click here for the Microsoft at CES blog.
-
Meanwhile, at MacWorld in San Francisco, Steve Jobs
announced two exciting new Apple products: the
iPhone and
AppleTV.
Click here to watch the Steve Jobs keynote,
announcement and demos (QuickTime
player required).
 The
iPhone comes in two configurations, a 4 GB model
that will retail for $499, and an 8 GB model for
$599. AppleTV (a device to stream downloaded
videos to your televisions) will retail for $299.
Lost in the hoopla over those impressive
announcements was a new
AirPort Extreme capable of 802.11n speeds.
Jpbs also announced that the iTunes store has
surpassed sales of over 2 billion songs, 50 million
TV shows, and 1.3 million feature length movies.
Finally, it was also announced that Apple Computer
Inc. is changing its name to simply Apple, Inc. to
reflect the more generic consumer electronics nature
of their business.
- From the
Pew Internet and American Life Project, a new
report reveals that "More than half (55%) of all
online American youths ages 12-17 use online social
networking sites, according to a new national survey
of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet &
American Life Project.
"The survey also finds that older teens,
particularly girls, are more likely to use these
sites. For girls, social networking sites are
primarily places to reinforce pre-existing
friendships; for boys, the networks also provide
opportunities for flirting and making new friends."
Click here for a PDF version of the report [10
pages].
-
Security updates of note this week from Microsoft
included a VML (Vector Markup Language) vulnerability for IE7
(KB929969).
Click here for details and download
instructions.
-
A new podcast directory called "PodcastBlaster"
is now available. Alpha browsing, category
browsing and search all work well.
-
Flexible electronic paper (you know, like in the
Philip K. Dick short story
Minority Report where bullet train passengers'
newspapers change contents before their eyes
revealing Tom Cruise--who is on the bullet train--as
the fugitive) will be mass produced by 2008.
"UK-based Plastic Logic has just secured $100
million in financing to build the world's first
large-scale factory for the production of flexible
electronic paper parts...Frontplanes have always
been quite flexible, but Plastic Logic's key
innovation was making the backplanes flex like a
plastic binder cover. The backplane is an
active-matrix, thin film transistor (TFT) display,
and Plastic Logic has developed a production method
that allows it to "print" the displays by depositing
them from a solution" (ars
technica). With the look and feel issue
resolved, it is only a matter of time and reduced
prices until the dead tree versions of paper
disappear.
-
If you will recall, in
episode
42 we announced an
opportunity to vote in an online poll for the
Merriam-Webster word of 2006. The results
are in, and the word is the Stephen Colbert
invention "truthiness."
1. truthiness (noun)
1 : "truth that comes
from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy
Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005)
2 : "the quality of preferring
concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than
concepts or facts known to be true."One suspects
click fraud on the part of Colbert fans.
The more erudite (?)
American Dialect Society selected "plutoed"
as the word of the year, meaning "to demote or
devalue something or someone, as happened to the
former planet Pluto when the International
Astronomical Union decided the ninth planet no
longer met its definition of a planet."
Click here for the full press release from the
A-D-S.
Listen to the news [mp3 -
26:14]
Training Opportunities
- Academic Technology Training
The
Academic Technology schedule of training workshops
for Spring 2007 has been published.
Click here to access the schedule,
here to read a description of the various
workshops within their competencies and also the new
Blackboard Certificate program and TBA training.
Register for all Academic Technology workshops
through the
Professional Development web site.
Faculty members may notice when they login to
Blackboard this semester that they are enrolled as
students in an "Academic Technology Training"
course. Whether you sign up for one of our
workshops or not, you will have access to the
training materials contained in this class. The
materials in this class will continue to grow over
time.
- The @ONE system training:
- @ONE has announced it's schedule of multi-week, online, instructor
facilitated courses for Spring 2007. Of
relevance to Palomar faculty will be courses on
Teaching Online, Teaching with Blackboard, and Using
Dreamweaver.
Click here for more information and
registration.
- @ONE has also announced its Spring schedule of Lunch'n'Learn seminars.
Click here for the schedule and a registration link.
- @ONE also has a selection of self-paced courses
and streaming videos on demand that address various
technology skills.
Click here for more information.
- Free Microsoft eLearning courses: for a limited time access
to these excellent e-Learning products on Office
2007 is available.
Click here to access a gateway to sign-up for
training in the new Office interface, Access 2007,
Excel 2007, Infopath 2007, OneNote 2007, Outlook
2007, PowerPoint 2007, Word 2007, Visio 2007, and
Groove 2007. You may also download a free
e-book from this site titled
First Look 2007 Microsoft Office System in
PDF format.
- Free online training is available for Horizon
Wimba
Live Classroom and the Horizon Wimba
Voice Tools, both of which we have access to in
our Blackboard system.
Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray
Please Hold On to the Bar
This week has been, metaphorically, filled with
the “click-click” of the chain lift on the first
hill of a roller coaster. (Actually that sound is
due to the Anti-rollback device, according to
Wikipedia.) Everyone’s about to plunge into the
twists and turns of Spring 2007, but first let’s
take a moment and be sure all things Blackboard are
ready.
Old Blackboard Courses:
- Remain available to instructors for one year
after the semester ends.
- Cannot be accessed by students two weeks
after the class ends.
- Should be Archived, just in case something
“unusual” happens. (Instructions for archiving
your course may be found
here
 ).
- May be removed from your “My Courses” list
in Blackboard if you wish. (Instructions for
removing courses from that list may be found
here [PDF]).
New Blackboard Courses:
- Must be made available before students may
access them. (Instructions for making a course
available may be found
here
).
- May need materials copied in from prior
semester courses. (Instructions for copying
course contents may be found
here
).
- And, looking into the distant future, Summer
2007 courses will be available for faculty use
in Blackboard in mid-March.
Some tips to consider at semester start:
- Post an announcement of welcome and general
information in your course.
- Email all your students, with the text of
your announcement, as well as instructions on
how to log in to Blackboard.
- If you are teaching an online class with an
orientation, mention where and when the
orientation will be taking place.
- If you are teaching an on-campus class,
mention where and when the first class is taking
place, too. (Some people forget to check the
schedule, so… why not?)
If you have any problems using Blackboard,
contact
onlineclasses@palomar.edu or (760)
744-1150 x2862. Otherwise, welcome to Spring 2007
and enjoy the ride!
Note: To get to David's vodcast site,
click here.
Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis
Voice PresentationHaydn describes the use
of the new Horizon Wimba Voice Presentation tool.
Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray
What's New for Spring 2007
Within the
Blackboard environment we have four new tools this
semester which should have broad appeal.
 TurnItIn.
We are pleased to announce that Palomar has
purchased an annual subscription to the TurnItIn
anti-plagiarism service. Use it by creating a
TurnItIn assignment within your Blackboard courses.
We have created a brief screen video describing how
to do this:
 Voice
Tools.
Two new
Horizon Wimba Voice Tools have been added to
Blackboard: the voice presentation tool and the
"Wimba Podcaster."
The voice
presentation tool makes it possible for instructors
to display URLs while simultaneously, audibly
narrating them. They are ideal for conducting
web tours or explaining web page contents to
students and can be configured to allow
audible/textual student replies. Replies can
also be public or private.
The Wimba
Podcaster is the easiest way to create a podcast
aimed at your Blackboard course students.
Record and save your audio right within Blackboard.
Each podcast contains auto-generated RSS
subscription buttons for 1-click subscription via
iTunes or subscription in any RSS reader. Now,
if your students subscribe (and subscription
couldn't be simpler) they will receive all your
audio podcasts via iTunes (or their podcatcher of
choice) without having to login to Blackboard.
Wimba podcasts are limited to 20 minutes.
The two new
tools join the four tools implemented last semester
(voice recorder, voice email, voice board, and voice
direct) to provide Palomar faculty members with the
ability to create new and engaging learning content
over the web.
-
Click here for a description of these two
new voice tools from Horizon Wimba [PDF].
- For
detailed instructions on creating a podcast
using the Wimba Podcaster,
click here.
-
Click here for a flash demo of the Wimba
Podcaster (flash player required).
- For a flash
demo of all the voice tools,
click here.
- The
complete Horizon Wimba user's guide for Live
Classroom and the voice tools can be found
here [PDF].
 Pronto.
Also from Horizon Wimba, Pronto is a stand-alone,
course specific instant messaging client. Each
student can download and install (PC or Mac) the
Pronto instant messaging client. When they
login to Pronto they will see all the other members
of their class who have installed the client,
including the instructor. Students can study
together this way. Instructors can hold online
office hours, or make themselves available for
student questions. Group assignments, or just
plain social networking can also be accomplished as
with any instant messaging tool. Pronto has
voice-over-IP support, so conversations can be
audible or textual. Once the Pronto client has
been installed, the user does not have to be logged
into Blackboard to use it. User contact lists
are automatically populated by all other members of
the user's classes who have installed the Pronto
client.
In addition to
these four new tools, we continue to support the
innovations introduced last semester, including
checkout of RF personal polling devices
(clickers),
CPS RF polling software downloads,
checkout of digital voice recorders,
Respondus and StudyMate software,
PCPDF, our web-based PDF conversion service,
our own podcast solution, the
host of new features in Blackboard, the
faculty technology center, and many other items.
Gizmo of the Week
 This
week we have a more serious--and revolutionary--gizmo to
report on. It is the SanDisk 32GB, 1.8-inch
solid-state drive (SSD) meant to be used as a drop-in
replacement for standard mechanical hard disk drives.
At the same time 1-Terabyte mechanical hard drives were
being announced at the consumer Electronics show,
SanDisk announced its large capacity, solid-state drive.
Mechanical devices with moving parts always fail at some
point. A sold-state drive may never fail,
practically speaking. It's not that solid-state
drives are new. We've been using flash-drive
technology for years now. It's that the prices of
flash memory have been dropping so dramatically that it
is now cost effective to replace moving parts drives
with solid-state drives. Solid state drives also
have a huge advantage over moving parts drives in that
they are faster--much faster. The SanDisk drive
claims a sustained read rate of 62MB per second and
random read rate of 7,000 I/Os per second--over 100
times faster than current hard drives. The other
great advantage is instant on. The mind boggles at
the possibilities of video portability, on-the-fly
linguistic translation, realistic virtual reality
worlds, just plain anything that requires speed.
So what's the drawback? The price for this one
is around $600. Look for that to drop real soon,
as mainline manufacturers begin replacing their high
performance failure-prone drives with solid state drives
in the mass market and as flash memory continues to
decline in price.
Music
 The
music for today's show was provided courtesy of
Magnatune, and is licensed under their creative
commons license for podcasts. The album was "I'll
Be Here Awake" by
Arthur Yoria.
"Arthur Yoria is one of those musicians that have the
rare ability to churn out one gem of a tune after
another. 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.."
"If
life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the
impersonators would be dead." ~
Johnny Carson
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