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HERE to listen to The bobCast #29
In this bobCast we cover the news and events on the latest in the podcasting efforts at BCC.
1. On March 17th we held our first training session for our new iLeaders. The iLeaders program provides the money and equipment for specific faculty members on each campus to act as podcasting gurus and work with faculty on that campus who might want to get started with podcasting or who might need help along the way.
North Campus– Marci Carabelli and Bobette Woselensky
Central Campus– Susan Finazzo, Steve Obenauf and Mary Diaz
South Campus– Dominique Charlotteaux and Abe Biggs
College-wide – Robert Buford you can reach me on South Campus at 8925 or by email at rbuford@broward.edu.
We plan on doing additional training this semester and by the end of the summer and the start of the new academic year in August these folks should be up and running and we will be shifting podcasting here at the college into high gear.
2. In April, I attended the A.D.C.L.I. which stands for Apple Digital Campus Leadership Institute. This was held at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, GA. This Institute centered on preparing ourselves as Faculty and educators to deal with the Digital Native student.
A. Students for whom cell phones are their chief form of communication or at least it seems that way. I was born into a world where only a few people had telephones. The world of “party lines” and operators who were real people and sometimes you knew their names.
B. Students who write few letters but hundreds of emails, and take their classes on line.
C. Students who many times prefer to “text message” someone as opposed to speaking with them personally.
D. Students who do not remember what the world was like before the personal computer.
E. Students who are the “Youtube”, “Facebook” and the “My Space” generation.
The members of the Institute talked about how they used Macintosh based technology and podcasting to provide instruction to their students and many of the faculty brought their students to the sessions and demonstrated the projects that they had completed. I saw a young female student who had done a video project that I was sure was a graduate project,and when I commented on what a good project this was for a graduate student, she informed me that she was only in her second year.
It is a different world and we must be ready or like Douglas Mc Arthur said about old soldiers, we might just “Fade Away”.
3. Dr. Patrick Ellingham and I wrote an SPD grant, which has been funded, to establish an experimental student radio station on South Campus using podcast technology to “broadcast” our students programs to the world. With older student radio stations the radio signal could only extend out about 10 miles or less. With podcast technology the podcast can be made available to the World. Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can “receive” our radio shows. We hope to set that facility up over the summer and have it in operation in the Fall of 2007.
I would like to thank Dr. Ellingham for all the support and encouragement that he has given to the “Podcasting” efforts here at BCC. Thanks to Pat and the SPD committee we have a better podcasting program than many of the larger Universities not only in Florida but around the country. I also owe a big thank you Russ Adkins and the Instructional Technology Department who had the vision to make podcasting a part of the distance learning efforts of the College.
4. If things go as planned, BCC will become a part of iTunes-U in the near future. On May 23 Dr. David Armstrong the Chancellor of the Community College System for Florida will sign an agreement that will allow all of the Community Colleges to become part of Apple’s iTunes-U.
What is iTunes-U? It is apart of the Apple iTunes system that allows schools to have their own iTunes page on the iTunes system that Apple uses to market it’s audio and vedio products. This has several things going for it:
A. Our students already know know how to use the system. It is the same one that they use to download music and videos for their personal use.
B. It gives the College and Faculty their own iTunes page where their can post their podcasts either on a public or private basis. This would allow students easy access to their assignments and review materials.
B. And it gives the college an additional 500 gigabytes of storage in addition to our present terabyte of server space.
We will join the ranks of the big schools such as Stanford, UC Berkeley and many other schools across the nation.
As soon as the iTunes-U becomes a reality at the college I plan on making it the main topic for a podcast focusing just on iTunes-U and how to take advantage of oll the things it has to offer.
5. The bobCast has made it to the “Funny Papers” ! On April 30 “NON SEQUITUR” featured a cartoon of The bobCast. It showed a old guy named Bob sitting on his porch with a telescope and a sign that read “Ask me about the neighbors”. The caption read “Before there was podcasting there was bobCasting” and I though Adam Curry was the first podcastor.
A special thanks to Holly Gilly, Fred Searcy and Jerry Enloe for thinking enough of the bobCast to send the clipping to me in the mail.
THE FUTURE
We hope to start doing more video podcasting in the near future. We have some new equipment coming on board and hope to start working with people to produce podcasts that can not only be heard but seen as well. Video is such a powerful medium that we need to start producing as much of this as we can.
The Sciences and Nursing are two areas that jump right out but there are others as well.
I hope you enjoyed this podcast and hope to be back real soon.
