Episode 115

Welcome.  This month we have released our tentative summer Tech Camp agenda, announce the availability of Office 2010 from the FCCC for Palomar employees, take a look at some of the Office 2010 tools, examine two types of course syllabi, discuss the merits (or not) of Wikipedia, and even submit for your edification maps that changed the world.

Chris Norcorss’ new blog, The Monkey Wrench, is where the map article is posted.  He is filling in for Dave this month while Dave is on vacation.

Our summer tech camp is fully enrolled, but watch for fall 2010 training opportunities and next January’s winter tech camp.

Keep up with us on our web site, Twitter feed,  Facebook group pages and YouTube channel. We also urge you to subscribe to the ATRC news and events feeds, and our individual blogs:

• Blackboard for Faculty
• Teaching with Technology
• Tech Talk Topic
• The Monkey Wrench

To find links mentioned in the podcast, click here.

Enjoy the show (play time = 35:26):

Episode 114

Welcome to the program notes for episode 114 for May 28, 2010.

This month we have news of the official IS adoption policy on Windows 7 and Office 2010; News of ATRC fall 2010 training, specifically workshops, Blackboard 9 training, and summer and winter tech camps; information on preparing your summer Blackboard course shells, evaluating your just-delivered spring online classes, and a host of What’s New articles on Office 2010.

We also have a collection of news analyses on human/computer viruses, the Dell streak, how to delete your Facebook account, Craig Venter’s amazing announcement of synthetic life, the new Twitter app for iPhone, Google TV and Google’s new web font initiative, and a hands-on look at Kindle for Android.

In our blog segments David discusses how to prepare your summer Blackboard course shell and Haydn explains how to assess your just-delivered online class.  In my Tech Talk Topic blog I have recently discussed new features in Word and PowerPoint 2010 and the Wikipedia Book Creator.  Click here to access the official accompanying newsletter, which contains links to all of this information.

Keep up with us on our web site, Twitter feed,  Facebook group pages and YouTube channel. We also urge you to subscribe to the ATRC news and events feeds, and our individual blogs:

• Blackboard for Faculty
• Teaching with Technology
• Tech Talk Topic

Enjoy the show (play time = 34:45):

Episode 113

Welcome to the podcast notes for episode 113 for Friday, April 30, 2010.  Our theme this month is “Summer Tech Camp.”  If you are a Palomar College faculty member, join us this summer, August 3-6, for a fun, educational tour that will provide you with knowledge of the latest technology tools and how to use them by creating a brief “teaching talk” similar to the famous TED talks.  Sign up by emailing the PD office:   pdoffice@palomar.edu.  The PD Office will confirm with you via email in May.   Click here to find out more.

Keep up with us on our web site, Twitter feed,  Facebook group pages and YouTube channel. We also urge you to subscribe to the ATRC news and events feeds, and our individual blogs:

• Blackboard for Faculty
• Teaching with Technology
• Tech Talk Topic

News Summary

Click here to access the newsletter notes to the podcast.

The Blogs

David blogs on “Dates and Disasters,” where he runs down an end-of-semester checklist for Blackboard users and discusses our recent “Black Thursday episode.  Haydn discusses a recent report by the Instructional Technology Council on eLearning across the country at the community college level.   In my Tech Talk Topic blog I preview the upcoming summer tech camp.  Enjoy the podcast.

Enjoy the podcast.  Play time = 1:00:08.

Episode 112

This podcast episode is unique because it records a long interview with the Academic Technology system admins, Chris, Shay and Dave, as we discuss technology planning at Palomar College.  The college is going through the process of creating a new technology master plan, this one to extend out to 2016 (as if that were possible) and these three gentlemen have definite opinions on how things ought to go.

Keep up with us on our web site, Twitter feed,  Facebook group pages and YouTube channel. We also urge you to subscribe to the ATRC news and events feeds, and our individual blogs:

• Blackboard for Faculty
• Teaching with Technology
• Tech Talk Topic

Here is the audio.  Play time = 1:29:47.  (I said it was long).

Episode 111

Welcome to the podcast notes for episode 111 for Friday, February 26, 2010.  Our theme this month is “Call for Videos.”  We have adopted a new streaming technology based on Microsoft Smoothstreaming and the Silverlight player.  The good news: Better looking and more secure online videos.  The bad news:  All videos need to be re-encoded.  Bring your videos in for re-encoding.  Videos on the current media server will continue to play through the end of this calendar year (12/31/10).  After that, they will not play.  Act now to bring in your videos for re-encoding to guarantee uninterrupted service.  Click here for more information.

Keep up with us on our web site, Twitter feed,  Facebook group pages and YouTube channel. We also urge you to subscribe to the ATRC news and events feeds, and our individual blogs:

• Blackboard for Faculty
• Teaching with Technology
• Tech Talk Topic

News Summary

We will be doing a  2-hour workshop on Google Earth on Tuesday, March 2.  Google has added a “nearby sites” feature to Google Earth buildings; Amazon is the most trusted brand in the US; Google explains, publicly, how to use Google Voice; we link a dozen great free online video  lecture sites; Google adds a location filter to Search; how to keep YouTube videos private; and Apple shareholders vote to reject environmental measures.  Click here for the news items linked from the newsletter.

The Blogs

David blogs on “Blackboard: A Class Act,” where he compares typical classroom activities and show how they might be accomplished in Blackboard.  Haydn, in his role of techno-psychologist (or is it psycho-technologist?) examines “Social Networks and Loneliness.”   In my Tech Talk Topic blog I have interview Mary Cassoni as she describes a Flip Video Project she recently conducted with her advertising students.  I also posted recently on “Do Libraries Need Books?” and would be keen to hear some community responses.

Enjoy the podcast.  Play time = 40:43.

Episode 110

This is our first podcast of 2010, and the first with our new format.  What we are doing now is recording three separate audio files during the month, and then “rolling them up” into a monthly podcast at the end of the month.  The three separate podcasts will be produced in the context of three blogs that we maintain: 1) David Gray’s Blackboard for Faculty blog; 2) Dr. Haydn Davis’ Teaching with Technology blog; and 3) my own Tech Talk Topic blog.  I encourage you to subscribe to each of these.  Subscribing to this present blog will insure that you receive the podcast and the brief notes we produce here.  For more details, read and subscribe to our newsletter.  The “rollup” podcast that appears here contains audio produced earlier in the month, and other materials added on the day of production.

This week the big news was the release of the unfortunately named iPad from Apple.  Is it a game changer?   At its price point, undoubtedly not, though it should help add momentum to the already moving eBook revolution.  To us it looks a lot like a big iPhone that can’t make calls.  For the 3G model with 64GB flash RAM it will cost $959 plus tax plus AT&T data plan of $29.95/month for unlimited usage.  Too steep to drive adoption among the iPod crowd.

Does it do for publishing what the iPod did for music?  That is, have the potential to change the distribution model?

Probably not.  But all the speculation has been fun.  Tablet PCs have never really caught on, but that is because no one has hit the correct footprint/price point tradeoff.  Is this it?  Almost definitely not.

Other news we discuss in the podcast includes the release of Firefox 3.6, getting the Office 2010 beta, Blackboard course readiness, getting to know your students, and using journal database links rather than xeroxing journal articles.

To reference the audio posts “rolled up” here, use the following links:

David Gray & Chris Norcross – Blackboard for Faculty – “Getting Your Blackboard Course Ready“

Dr. Haydn Davis – Teaching With Technology – “Twitter in Academia“

Terry Gray – Tech Talk Topic – “How to Create Links to Journal Databases“

In addition, our podcast brings you a roundtable by the three mentioned above and Chris Norcross about a delay in the implementation of Blackboard 9 at Palomar College, our new streaming media procedures, the workshops we have done lately, and the use of Twitter on campus, among other things.  The podcast runs around an hour.

AT Podcast Rollups: Episode 0

This is just a test.

Welcome to our “roll-up” podcast blog.  Starting in January you will find our individual podcast segments rolled up here into an overall podcast.  This will be the venue for our show notes and other podcast related publications.  The podcast will not be simply concatenations of the three individual segments from our individual blogs (see the blogroll), but will contain new materials as well.

We do not have audio files here yet, so you will want to wait to subscribe in iTunes or whatever your favorite podcast software might be.

If you want to listen to any of our previous podcasts (we’ve been at it for four years) click here to access our old podcast index, which ends in December of 2009.

Here is a test audio file, explaining the concept.