podcasting trend

Here is an interesting article on trends in podcasting. During the past 3 months the number of podcasts has increased 10-fold at Feedburner!

the student's perspective

An interview with a student on e-learning

What's available and how to use it

In conversations I have had this past week about our e-learning initiatives, certain issues keep coming up. I will try to makes things clearer by summarizing what we have available and how to use it.

1) Drexel CoAS E-Learning blog. This post resides in this blog. You can access this using a normal browser like Internet Explorer and see what is new for e-learning in the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel. You can also add your comments to any post in that blog.

2) Drexel CoAS E-Learning RSS feed. If you try to view this link with a normal browser you will just get XML code. This is meant to be read by a content aggregator like Bloglines. Just copy the text in the address bar of the XML page into your aggregator to subscribe to the feed. The advantage of this is that you will updated on any new posts to all of your RSS feeds in one place.

3) Drexel CoAS talks This is a blog with links to audio and/or video presentations, seminars and interviews within the College of Arts and Sciences. For files that can be downloaded, just click on the relevant links.

4) Drexel CoAS E-Learning mp3 Podcast. This is also an RSS feed that can be read by a content aggregator. However this feed also has audio files attached that will not be downloaded a text aggregator like Bloglines. In order for the files to be downloaded automatically, you will need a podcast aggregator such as ipodder. The advantage of this is that the files from all the podcasts you subscribe to will be ready for listening at any time, regardless of the frequency of the podcast. You may listen to the audio files either from an audio playing device like an ipod or directly from your computer.

5) Class blogs and podcasts. For an example of how to use blogs and podcasting for a class see the Organic Chemistry II blog.

How to set up a podcast

A few people have expressed interest in setting up their own podcasts. There are many ways to do this but here is a tutorial for the method that we have used. There are a few problems that can arise when going through this, like Feedburner failing to insert enclosure tags if there is a network problem.

If you just want to quickly set up a podcast based on your lecture recordings just let me know and we'll set it up for you.

Podcasting of audio lecture recordings

Here is another great benefit of lecture recording using Camtasia. We can convert the avi files into mp3's and distribute them via podcasting. For an example with the Organic Chemistry class currently running see: http://chem242.blogspot.com/2005/02/podcasting-of-mp3s-now-available.html

We can do the same thing for other types of multi-media files. Let me know if you would like to do the same for your class this term.

Here is an interesting short video introduction to podcasting.

Opportunities for E-Learning in CoAS presentation

My presentation on Jan 19 to CoAS faculty at Drexel is now available for download as an mp3 or to view streaming. I discuss a low risk strategy to migrate a class to an online environment. Screen capture, podcasting and the use of quizzes is discussed.

Audio Version (mp3)

and

Streaming Video Version (rm) You will need Real Player to view

instructions for Camtasia users

It is an exciting time for E-Learning in our College. Several faculty have jumped on board with lecture recording using the screen capture software Camtasia. In order to make life a little smoother for our early adopters, I will put information and instructions here.

1) The overall process involves capturing the audio and what is on the screen of you laptop or tablet PC as you lecture normally. The files are put on a streaming server with Real Media format. That means you and your students will need to install the free Real Player form Real.com if you don't have it.

2) You can download a 30-day free trial of Camtasia Studio to get a feeling for the technology. If it looks like you will be using it contact me for a license.

3) The Camtasia recording will produce a video file in avi format. Expect about 200 Meg/recording hour. The nice thing is that these files can easily be modularized using Camtasia at a later point. But initially you will probably want to just provide the full lecture as soon as possible for your students. In order to do this, drop the file in the "todo" folder in \\Files\departments\Academics\IRT-Encoding. You will need to be on the Drexel campus or have VPN running if off campus. You will also have to be given access to this folder so contact me about this as well if you need it. When you log in, type "drexel\username" in the username field and use your Drexel domain password.

4) Name the file in a systematic way to make it easy to prepare templates of links. You must start the file name with the course designation and term followed by ^^
For example naming the file
CHEM242_w04^^-week1mon.avi
will generate the following links
http://broadcast.drexel.edu:8080/ramgen/classes\CHEM242_w04\CHEM242_w04-week1mon-150k.rm
and
http://broadcast.drexel.edu:8080/ramgen/classes\CHEM242_w04\CHEM242_w04-week1mon-56k.rm

The script that processes your file will remove the ^^ and .avi and append -150k.rm OR -56K.rm

Here is an Excel sheet that will create the link for you. Right click and select "save target as" to download this file. Just put what is to the left of the ^^ in the folder column and what is to the right of the ^^ in the file column then copy what is in the link column.

5) After the file is processed, it will be put in the "done" folder. It usually gets processed within 24 hours. You may then move it to your personal folder at your convenience.

This should get you started.