CogBlogged from ‘April, 2006’

My commenters Joe and D’Arcy were right- PodPress is dah thing for generating iTunes ready feeds from WordPress. I should have looked no farther than my own blog here which is where I had installed it! It does not require a custom replacement file for the WP standard distribution, has better configuration, and built in players. I happily stand corrected to a 6 hour old assertion.

I’ve been eager to get back to doing audio interviews, and as noted previously, I was trying to track down an iRiver which I had used well in my previous work at Maricopa. The iFP models apparently are phasing out, in lieu of the DRM friendly T10s, which becuase of the “friendship”, are PC only. One was eventually located, labeled as “in stock” at Ritz Camera. I should have listened to my inner alarm bells for that association, as long, long ago, on my only sales job ever, I had worked in a Ritz Camera store hawking cameras in the late 1980s. I was hassled on a regular basis by an annoying district manager (Hi Dave, yeah right), and the last time for my choice of slack– ended up walking off the job to the bar across the street. For good. If we have “Web 2.0″, than Ritz Camera’s site [...]

Just found the WordPress plug-in WP-iPodCatter which creates iTunes ready RSS feeds from a WordPress blog. This became necessary as I dabbled with posting my first enhanced podcast file, and noticed that WordPress never put the *.m4a file in as an enclosure. It turns out, WP is pretty limited on what it seeks for enclosures (mp3 only). But iPodCatter does more as it enables all the other iTunes specific fields that make your feeds ready for the Big Store. There was one needed trick, as our webserver was not configured for the proper MIME type. Failing to get the command write via WebMin, I was able just to add it directly to the .htaccess file in my WP directory (some hosted sites will not take new MIME types this way) by adding: AddType audio/x-m4a .m4a This is part of a new piece of NMC where we will be using a [...]

I am trying some live blogging from the NMC Online Conference. Now up is a keynote… Personal Broadcasting, Education, and the Remix Culture Laura Blankenship, Bryn Mawr College (blogs as Geeky Mom) Wired Magazine feature- not new, there is a history that goes back even to Shakespeare. Now- Writer’s Duel (harry potter Fanfiction) Sampling, remixing, mashing up- done as a critique of our culture. Playing remix of John Lennon’s Imagine and George Bush’s speech… http://www.thepartyparty.com/ “Today’s audience isn’t listening at all – it’s participating” — William Gibson Remixing Education Microlevel ** (individual students and faculty) ** Class Level Macrolevel ** Lifelong Learning At Micro-level implemented examples of recorded class lectures, student presentations as podcasts/vodcasts, videos of lectures, hybrid courses not there yet = building on others’ work- piecing together lecture/class materials from multiple sources, open source and multimedia textbooks, having students build on class materials using other media At macro-level, [...]

Michael Feldstein has written in a few concise paragraphs, one of the best frameworks for looking at electronic portfolios, via a “box of stuff” in the basement metaphor: Anyway, I’ve said on a number of occasions that ePortfolios are a lot like artificial intelligence in that they will be only a year away for the next ten years… The real problem is that, for all the many different definitions of ePortfolios out there, we have a bizillion different sets of application requirements which are not being looked at holistically. We’re trying to solve the wrong problems. … the box of papers in the basement. You know, the one with all your notebooks, your tests, your essays…maybe your thesis…? … does anybody ever really think of that box as a portfolio? Personally, I think of it as my “stuff.” If I want to put together a portfolio, I’ll go through my [...]

As just mentioned, today I presented Podcasting on the Cheap / Thinking Before You Click Record” for the NMC Online Conference on Personal Broadcasting. There is really about 25 minutes of stage time in these sessions, and I knew I had a lot of ground to cover, so it went at supersonic speed. Actually a bit too fast. The presentation is here in parts- you’d need to be registered in the conference to hear the recorded archive, but I loaded must of the links in a wiki at http://cogdoghouse.wikispaces.com/PodcastOnTheCheap. I did this in the continued hope that others will go there and add many more resources than I could muster up. I am fearful though, that as an open wiki, the spam ferrets will get in and piss all over the place. So I have made a backup, and if they do as I predict, I will restore form backup [...]

Having run my first two half marathons this year, I thought IU had a good sense for that finish line feeling, but those pale compares to today’s 5 hour sprint through Day One of the NMC Online Conference in Personal Broadcasting. Between facilitating sessions, doing intros, funneling feedback, nudging people to comment, and also doing my own presentation… all I can say is “whew”. But it was a fantastic first day, and I got to hear form some great colleagues who are pushing envelopes left and right. So the sessions are recorded, but they are in LearningTimes, and you had to register to see the archives. “Membership has it privileges” ? (ducking here). On quick run down, we started with “Hearing the Image” where Beth Harris and Steven Zucker form the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY) shared the way the use podcasts, and Camtasia recorded screencasts, to have “conversations” about [...]

My mind is a leaky sieve. Last year, there was a neat web contest for people to submit an example of a digital story down i video format– with the limit that they had to be under 60 seconds– this was the 60 Second Story site. I was more curious about how it worked, and usually when my curiosity is raised with technology, I jump in. So I quickly outlined a story about my first special dog, a Dalmation named “Dominoe” who ventured west with me in 1987, scanned some photos, laid them out in iMovie, and overlaid an audio track. It maybe was 60 minutes of production.. well maybe more. So my “Domninoe” story made it into the pile: I went back to peek tonight as I was grabbing a video example to use for a podcast demo tomorrow… I needed a clip to toss up Ourmedia, to check [...]

Go ahead and criticize for raving about an upcoming conference my new employer is hosting– but regardless I would still be excited about this week’s NMC Conference on Personal Broadcasting, taking place April 26 and 27 online via LearningTimes: At the leading edge of a wave that will last for the next several years and beyond, personal broadcasting, which uses informally produced personal audio and video content as a form of personal expression and as a means of information delivery, is rapidly expanding into academe as small, easy-to-use devices increasingly allow people to capture and share personal experiences, information, and events. From podcasting to video blogging (vlogging), personal broadcasting has clearly begun to impact campuses and museum audiences significantly. With roots in text-based media (personal websites and blogs), personal broadcasting of audio and video material is a natural outgrowth of a popular trend made possible by increasingly more capable portable [...]

I’m enjoying a brief visit from my colleague Mark from Auckland, New Zealand, who was a generous host when I visited his neck of the woods in November 2004. This was a bit tested, when our guest bathroom managed to develop an timely backup the day he arrived. He got quite a chuckle when the “Rescue Rooter” truck pulled up, and I recalled from my Kiwi slang that in New Zealand, “rooting” has little to do with unclogging drains, and is a reference to an activity I choose not to publicly describe here. Words are just little squiggles on a page without interesting context.