Emerging IT: Podcasting, Video, and a Field Trip
Podcasting is one of the best mediums to hit the web in the last five years (in my opinion). Podcasting is essentially audio or video productions that are distributed via RSS. While podcasts can be listened to directly on the web, the real power is when you combine a program like iTunes with podcasting. With the simplicity of iTunes, its easy for anyone to download and listen to a wide variety of programming.
Today in our Emerging Instructional Technologies class we were introduced to podcasting and how to produce and distribute a professional product. Given that most of the students in our class are Mac people, GarageBand was the tool of choice. It certainly is a nice program for the production of a podcast. It allows simple multi-track editing and comes bundled with a good assortment of stock music.Clearly, there are many uses for podcasting. Best of all, it doesn't take a large budget (or a budget at all) to produce a quality product. As we discussed podcasting, I realized how easy it would be to conduct a guest interview with noted experts in the field and distribute via podcast. For more information on podcasting, visit http://webcastacademy.net/.
Video Production
Video production was also on the agenda today. Again, given the Mac environment, iMovie was the tool of choice. I played around with iMovie for a while, but was frustrated by the Mac interface (I am a Windows person). After playing with iMovie for a few minutes, I switched over to my video editing tool of choice, Sony Vegas Studio. (This is Sony's consumer version of their professional editing tool, Sony Vegas.)Here are two sample videos we produced for our EIT Project. The concept was to give educators a "Then and Now" look at how technology has changed in a short time. In the first video, we used an old film look to give the video a sense of age, but also to drive home to digital immigrants that digital natives view immigrants who are out-of-touch with technology as ancient. So, if you are over 30-years of age and still use your cell phone only to make voice calls, the digital natives in your life view you as ancient as a silent movie from the 1920s. [Note: The videos are part of our final project, which was creating a social network for the South Hardin Middle School.]Social Networking The Good Ol' Days
Technology Today
Team Technologies Data Center
We wrapped up the day with a tour of the data center at Team Technologies. As our guide stated, they are in the real estate business, it's just that the space they rent happens to be perhaps some of the most secure, protected real estate in Cedar Falls. What impressed me is that this data center has three OC-3 connections to the Internet's backbone. I knew that was a lot of bandwidth, but it wasn't until I looked it up when that I realized that each connection has more than 155 Mbit/s. That's a lot of bandwidth!