GCSU iPod Faculty Learning Community

Monday, July 31, 2006

Podsafe Media Resource

In our last meeting I had a request to provide a list of resources for podsafe media. Open Media Directory at OurMedia http://www.ourmedia.org/learning-center/open provides a rich list of materials that can be used safely in podcasts. The directory list archives, such as the Internet Archive, file sharing sites with Creative Commons license agreements, catalogs and collections, and podcasts that feature podsafe music. There are literally scores of resources listed. I can’t vouch for the quality of any particular site, but there’s an awful lot of content listed in the directory.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Resources for creating text notes and video files

I'd like to point out the new resources link on the right sidebar. Frank Lowney posted a list of resources for converting text to iPod notes form, converting video files, and creating podcasts awhile ago on the iPod project developers list. We thought you would find it useful for your work in our FLC. I've edited this a bit and posted it for you to download at
Resources for converting files for use on your iPod and for podcasting-- Word file. We'll be using this resource at our meeting on Monday, July 24th, at 11:00 in the Bobcat Dining Room. See you there!

Sunday, July 23, 2006

GC&SU Profile on Apple Site

Many of you have seen some of the press associated with the various iPod projects on campus. We now have a profile on Apple's Higher Education site, http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/georgiacollege/.

I encourage you to examine some of the other profiles if you want to learn more about how other universities are using Mac-based solutions, http://www.apple.com/education/hed/.

Sync'ing your iPod in iTunes

Using iTunes to sync music and podcasts on your computer is easy to do, and Apple provides several video tutorials to guide you through the process. I'd like to refer you to two: Sync Your Music to Your Ipod, and Subscribe and Listen to Podcasts. Both are part of the iTunes tutorial library.

Sync'ing allows you to automatically update content on your iPod from your iTunes library whenever you connect your iPod to your computer. You've got a lot of control over the ways that your iTunes library and you iPod hook up and update content. However, although you can have more than one iPod sync'd to a computer; your iPod can only be sync'd to one computer at a time. Plugging it into another computer will not automatically delete all the content on your iPod; however, if you choose to link your iPod to that new computer (And you'd have to answer "yes" to a prompt for that to happen.) all your iPod's content will be deleted and replaced with content from the new computer. See the sync your music tutorial for more information.

iPod Tutorial Site

Many of you may know of the video tutorials available on the Apple Support Website. The tutorials cover a variety of topics, from loading and using files on your ipod to troubleshooting. These iPod Tutorials may be found at the Apple iPod Support site. The one titled, Solving Problems, presents the famous 5 Rs for dealing with iPod issues: 1) Reset; 2) Retry; 3) Restart; 4) Reinstall; and 5) Restore.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

iPod Project Evaluation: A Beginning

Probably the simpliest way to start thinking about evaluation is to begin with three steps:

1) Decide what it is that you want to accomplish with your project.
2) Decide what the world will look like if you actually accomplish these things.
3) Decide what evidence you could collect to demonstrate that you accomplished these things, or you could show as examples to others.

We usually think about that first step as defining the goals or specific objectives for our projects. Exploring the second step helps to determine if the goals are measurable. (If we can't describe what is going to be different as a result of the project and what that will look like, then we probably can't measure it.) And finally what data or artifacts would we have to collect to determine (or support our claims) that something had changed as a result of our efforts.

Before we get together and start thinking about assessment and evaluation of our iPod projects, please consider these three steps.