I'm going to begin the conversation by grounding what I have to say in a recent article ("Managing Courses, Defining Learning") from the Educause Review. The authors conducted a study across several campuses about their feelings about their Course Management Systems. It's a long and thorough article, so I'm only going to cover the first half, which discusses the survey results. Tomorrow I'll cover the second half, the commentary from the authors.
The general consensus of the survey seems to be that Course Management Systems do some things well, but that the systems are generally not able to keep up with current developments in technology, such as blogs, wikis, the use of cellphones and pdas, etc. Students are especially frustrated by this and cited a problem with the inability for CMSs to allow them easy access to other resources (i.e. searching the library databases from within the system). Integration with other campus systems is not as seamless as anyone would like, even with the addition of portal systems.
The systems also fell short in the area of useability. There were, faculty suggested "too many clicks" to accomplish simple tasks. Administrators and students both complained that the features of the system were not being used to their fullest by faculty. Administrators further suggested that faculty could not really integrate the feature functionality with "traditional teaching styles." I'll just note here that if you're trying to replicate "traditional teaching" within a CMS, it'll work, but it won't be very compelling for your students. This is one of my biggest complaints about the (mis)use of CMSs. They should, if they're any good, help a faculty member rethink the structure of their class. Unfortunately, I think they don't do this right now and faculty certainly don't always approach them as ways to motivate learning. At least that's been my personal experience.
One thing that CMSs are built for is managing the administrative tasks of a course--enrollment, grades, sending email--but even there, people have found fault. Grading, especially, has been problematic. I've had several people using tablet PCs to comment on papers. The process falls apart at the CMS level.
Students and faculty both expressed dismay that the systems were so dumb. They wanted to see Amazon-like recommendations, more reminders, etc. Students especially, noted that faculty rarely make use of the customization that's possible within the CMS system, such as enabling discussion boards or peer review.
What do people want in a Course Management System? One huge response: control. Most CMSs are very locked down. If a feature doesn't exist within the system, it's either impossible to add or will cost money to add. For example, one of the features the survey respondants said they wanted was the ability to store content from course to course or to share content between courses more easily. That kind of ability exists for our system if we purchase an add on at a pretty significant cost. It's also difficult to enable students to contribute content to a course that can be shared with other students as well as the teacher. The system is set up primarily for content delivery from the teacher to the student.
Here are some other features students and faculty would like to see:
- Students want to be able to access and store content over the duration of their degree work, to have access to material for all their courses in one location, and to have access to and from systems both within and external to the college or university. Students also want to be able to return to a former course and locate materials and resources that were useful to them.
- Students favor currently free and popular communication technologies such as IM (instant messaging), Skype, and podcasts and spoke of their desire to see these tools integrated in the course experience. When “in the course,” students want to interact with other learners in the same way that they now interact and communicate with their friends and colleagues.
- Faculty said that they would like to be able to easily record their voice as a reply to an e-mail or as comments to an assignment.
- Faculty and students want more technology options built into the course experience: audio, video, easy-to-use IM and SMS (Short Message Service) tools.
- Students spoke of a desire “to move the course to” where they were: on the move and on their mobile devices. To be able to pull up key resources from their smart phones and to be able to receive course e-mail at any desired location were high on the list of students’ requests. Students also talked about a PDA-enabled L/CMS.
There are a lots of places where one can blog for free. Bryn Mawr, and many other colleges, are hosting blog sites for use by the community. We have a Drupal-based site and a handful of Movable Type blogs. Both of these platforms involved installing software on a server, though end users can sign up for accounts (the BMC blogs site is open to all; the MT sites are for select groups only). If you're interested in blogging elsewhere, however, there are plenty of options. I'm going to cover the three most popular, but a quick Google or Yahoo search will likely uncover several more.
Before choosing a particular platform, think about what you might want to do with your blog. If you want to have a class blog, for example, you might want everyoneto contribute in the same place. You'll need to make sure the platform you choose allows for that. Alternatively, you can let eachperson choose their own platform and set up their own blog. There could be a "mother" blog that links to each individual blog.
Also, you might want to be able to add your own links or photos or whatever to the sidebar of your blog. For that you'll need to be able to edit your template. Some templates are easier to edit than others.
Most hosted blog software these days is pretty flexible and getting more flexible by the minute. Blogger, for example is undergoing a major overhaul, allowing, for example, widgets to be dragged and dropped into a template. No HTML knowledge necessary! You can create an inviting and interesting blog without having to know anything about web design.
Blogger: Create your Blog Now -- FREE
Blogger, now owned by Google, is one of the earliest blogging platforms. It's free to sign up for an account. They have easy-to-use templates, allow commenting, and also allow editing of your template (so you can add cool bells and whistles). They also allow more than one person to contribute to a single blog.Like most blog software, writing a blog post is easy. All you have to do is click the create new post button and a text box you can type in appears. In most browsers, you also get a formatting bar, including an "insert link" button that makes it easy to format and add links to other sites within your post.
As blogger migrates to a new system, features are a bit in flux, but the basics remain the same. Here's a great post on the features of the new system and of course, Blogger has its own documentation. I have several blogs under the old system and have not yet been invited to migrate, so I'm less familiar with the new. I have set up a new account on the new system, but I have only poked around at it.
One of the downsides to Blogger in its current state (and it seems not too much has changed in the new state) is that a lot of typical blog features are not included and you have to use third-party plugins. For example, site statistics are included in many blog software platforms. You can see how many visitors you've had, where they've come from and how long they've hung out at your site among many other things. Blogger doesn't include those. So you have to look around for something and know how to embed it in your template (though many services will do this for you automagically), which can be painful. They have added labels (or categories), so that visitors can surf your blog by topic.
TypePad is another great platform. TypePad, however, costs money. It's only $4.95/month at the basic level. I know many people who are happy users of TypePad. A paid service may not be a good option for a class, but for your personal use . . .
Like Blogger, it's very easy to set up a TypePad account. They offer many different template styles and layouts. They also have all kinds of widgets you can add to your template. The widgets allow you to embed content from other sites, such as del.icio.us and flickr. So if you store links at del.icio.us and photos at flickr, you can easily add them to your site. Lots of stuff to play with there.
Unless you purchase a pro account, you can't customize the template's design. Add widgets and change the layout, yes. Play with the HTML or CSS, no. But if the acronym game isn't your thing, this may not be a deal-breaker. Besides you can add links and gadgets to your heart's content without messing around under the hood.
WordPress › Free Blog Tool and Weblog Platform
Finally, another free option. WordPress offers a hosted option (at wordpress.com) or an installable version (which Tim Burke at Swarthmore uses). I have a blog hosted at WordPress. It offers many different options, including multiple templates, group blogging, categories, and site statistics. I find the templates for WordPress to be very clean and professional-looking. And they can be edited. You can also add widgets to your template.
WordPress offers comment moderation (as do Blogger and TypePad) and statistics. The statistics are more limited than many third-party systems, but still useful. All-in-all, it's a nice platform. It's easy to use and offers enough customization to make most people happy.
My best advice is to just try some of these out for a couple of days and see how you like them. Play with the features. See how easy they are to use. See if they fit your needs. If none of these suit you, look for another option. And feel free to ask for help!
technorati tags:blogging, wordpress, typepad, blogger, education
I've written about blogging a couple of times before, mostly on how to write blogs. What I want to discuss now is how you might use blogs in classes, not just writing (though that's one key aspect), but reading and exploring them.
You're reading a blog right now. A blog is basically a frequently updated web site. It's typically comprised of entries presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs also allow for reader feedback, something standard web sites don't allow. For example, anyone, even folks outside of Bryn Mawr, can leave a comment here. Blogs also tend to be somewhat personal. Usually bloggers write about news, technology, and other issues from their own perspective, providing sometimes a unique insight into certain issues. For example, a great many soldiers in Iraq keep blogs as well as Iraqi citizens. That gives us a very different perspective on that area than we get from the news.
Blogs can be used in the classroom in many different ways. As I mentioned before, one could require students to keep a blog, either on the Bryn Mawr blog site or elsewhere. Students can write about their reading assignments, about topics and issues related to the course, or can construct rough drafts for papers. Another possibility is to have students read blogs written by experts or regular people about a particular topic. This would bring a different perspective on the topic and might even present more up-to-date information than one can get from tv shows or newspapers or journal articles.
There are, for example, a huge number of science blogs. Science Blogs, run by Seed Magazine, hosts 48 blogs written by scientists in various fields. I have three favorites there myself: Adventures in Ethics and Science, written by a woman whose primary work is the philosophy of science; Pharyngula, a blog by P.Z. Myers, an evolutionary biologist who covers primarily politics and science, but also we get to see pictures of squid; and Thus Spake Zuska, a blog that covers the role of women (or lack thereof) in science, especially in university research labs. All three of these are well-written and thoughtful and easily understood even by a novice like myself.
Want early modern history? Try Carnivalesque, a monthly collection of blogs posts on early modern and medieval history and literature. Or find another topic at the blog carnival index. There are teaching carnivals (great!) and feminist ones and political ones. Take your pick.
If you want find more specific topics, try Technorati, where you can see the most popular topics, most recent topics, or search for specific interests. Almost anything you want to have your students read blogwise, you can find via Technorati or Google Blogsearch.
Tomorrow, I'll post some resources for those who might want to have their students actually write blogs (or who might want to write blogs themselves).
RSS: Definition in the Wikipedia
Odeo
Bryn Mawr Blog site
By the way, in making this podcast, I realized that you can convert to mp3 in iTunes. Just go to preferences in iTunes and to Importing. Choose the mp3 format and then select the file you want to convert and choose Advanced-->Convert to mp3. Create your m4a and then convert away.
powered by ODEO
Download the mp3.
Any time you want to modify audio, whether it's to edit, convert, or record something, you usually need some kind of audio editing software. On the mac, a great option is Garageband. I've just starting playing with this after using Audacity for a long time (which I still recommend). Garageband makes it very easy to create podcasts with enhancements such as video and photos and chapter markers, but it might be overkill for simply trimming a sound file. For that, a good option might be QuickTime Pro. Easy Media Creator on the PC also comes with an audio editor. Some online sites offer audio editing online (which I think is amazing!). I've used Odeo with some luck, but for more powerful editing, for now I'd recommend a desktop software.
Most audio editors will open any kind of audio file. Some will allow you to convert files to other formats using via a "File--Save as" option or an "Export" option. To save an audio file in a different format, all you need to do is open it in your chosen software program and then save it in your chosen alternative format. Both Audacity and QuickTime offer several different audio options.
Recording your own audio (or having your students do so) is also easy. Both Audacity and Garageband offer recording options. Below is a screenshot of what my demo audio looked like. 
The top track is a "podcast track" where you can put pictures, video, text, all kinds of things. But you don't have to put anything there. Then there are two tracks for voices and two tracks for other sounds. I recorded my voice by selecting the female voice track and clicked the red record button between the two panes. I imported a music file and trimmed it using the bottom editing pane. By clicking and dragging to select sections of the track, I was able to delete most of it. On the right is the track info where you can add effects to the track. I also faded out the music. The included help documents are easy to follow.
My suggestion is to start simple. Use a single track. Trim the beginnings and ends or cut out sections that you need. Then you can add tracks or pictures or start working with video (I'll talk about video more later.) When you're ready to save your file, you can choose file-->save or you can choose Share-->save to disk which creates an mpeg 4 file appropriate for submitting as a podcast.
Audacity is not quite as friendly-looking as Garageband, but it's just as easy to use and it works on Mac, Linux or Windows. Like Garageband, Audacity can have multiple tracks. To import music into audacity, simply choose Project-->import. From here you can edit the file, apply effects or simply save it in a different format. You can add tracks by going to Project-->New audio track. Like Garageband, too, Audacity could be used to do much more complex audio creation and editing, but it's still useful for simple edits.
Tomorrow, I'll explain how to upload these files to Blackboard, to the web, and into a blog.
technorati tags:audio, garageband, audacity, howto
One of the most common things people want to do with audio is to take existing sources--from CDs, cassettes or formats--and use them in the classroom. They might want to post a sound file on Blackboard or use it in a PowerPoint presentation or create a whole new CD out of a set of sound files. I'm going to cover how to extract files from CDs, how to make simple edits to them, how to post them somewhere and some issues about copyright (which we always have to think about in using source material).
Let me preface my explanations with the information that I am primarily a mac person in that I prefer to uses macs for most of my work; however, I am proficient with both Windows and Linux. I will cover the mac way first, and then the Windows way.
Extracting files from CDs.
Note: If you want to extract sound files from an analog source (cassette or LP), visit our tip sheet, From Waves to Digits. It requires a little extra hardware and a little extra work, but it can be done.
The easiest way to extract files from CDs is to use iTunes. When you put a CD in, you will see the CD icon along the left-hand side. Usually this is highlighted by default. If it's not, simply click on it and on the right-hand side, you'll see the list of tracks on this CD.
To import a single song, first select all the songs, right click (or ctrl-click) and choose "Uncheck selection." Then go back and check the selection you want and click the Import CD button in the top right-hand corner of the window. It will only import the tracks you have checked.
The file will be an m4a file which is a standard format for Apple audio files. These files can be uploaded and played by many players--iTunes and Quicktime being the most common. More information about this format is available here.
We'll talk about converting the file to some other format momentarily.
iTunes may also be used on a Windows PC, but most people will use Windows Media Player. Ripping a CD (extracting tracks) is similar in this application to iTunes. Place the CD into the drive and then open Windows Media Player. Like iTunes, the CD tracks will be listed on the right-hand side of the screen. Also like iTunes, you can check the tracks you want to extract.
Click the Rip Music icon in the upper right. Unlike iTunes, you can choose a format. The default is Windows Media, but you can choose from several other formats. When you click the rip music icon, you'll be presented with an option to keep your current format (it will tell you what that is) or change formats. If you choose to change formats, you'll be take to another screen where you can select a format. The most common compressed format is mp3 and that would be a good option.
Generally speaking, most computers these days come with a variety of audio players and can play most any format you throw at them. So start with defaults and if you have problems, you can convert them to something else.
Linux, too, offers ways to rip CDs. Many distributions come with iTunes-like software or you can use grip for Gnome.
There are also other programs that do CD ripping among many other tasks, such as Roxio's Toast and Easy Media Creator.
Tomorrow I'll cover editing or converting files to other formats, and a few copyright issues.
technorati tags:audio, education, itunes, windows media
I'm not referring here to the many acronyms generally associated with technology, but a way of organizing some technology-related topics for presentation. Over the coming semester, I will take one topic at a time and write about it here, linking to resources, providing screencasts, etc. I will also be providing hands-on sessions on the topic. To participate in these workshops, simply respond to my email announcement or email me anytime (lblanken [at] brynmawr [dot]).
Here's the tentative order of events:
- A is for audio
- B is for blogging
- C is for course management
- D is for digital storytelling
- E is for elearning
- F is for flock and firefox (browsers) and flickr
- G is for google (searching) and games
- I is for iLife (mac applications)
- O is for open source/open learning
- P is for pictures
- S is for skype (voice over ip)
- T is for Tagging
- V is for video
- W is for web 2.0 and wikipedia
- Y is for YouTube
As you can see, not all the letters are taken. Is there something you'd like to learn more about that fits one of the missing letters? Let me know.
Look for the first installation on audio later today!
technorati tags:education, technology, educational technology, instructional technology
Even if you're not interested in blogging, Dave has lots of other helpful tips from managing email to using wikis. It's well worth a read and a blog I'll be adding to my blogroll for sure.
technorati tags:education, blogging, technology
Even if Elliot's affiliation with Microsoft had nothing to do with her objections, it's odd to see so much objection to open source and open content. The report itself is interested in issues of transparency in higher education, so it's puzzling that in the area of technology, someone would want to advocate for closed systems or not advocate for more transparency.
