Tag Archives: ipod

MLB discovers the iPod

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ESPN has an interested article about how a few major league baseball players have discovered that their video iPods are giving them a competitive advantage. Hitters are using video iPods to analyze their swings and pitchers are studying batters to look for weaknesses. From the article:

The Rockies have downloaded video clips into the iPods of 14 players so far. For the hitters, they’ll store every at-bat and download performances of upcoming pitchers. A 60-gigabyte iPod can hold roughly five seasons’ worth of a player’s at-bats. Pitchers can get all their performances, along with opponents’ at-bats.

Of course these ballplayers aren’t taking the time to create their own iPod video playlists. They’ve got “people” for that. If they can use this technology, then all kinds of high school athletes could benefit too. With a simple iPod microphone, music and speech students could record rehearsals for later review. Throw in teacher-produced podcasts of lessons, labs, or extra study materials (don’t forget that you can podcast documents!) and you’ve got the makings of a digital learning interface that most students would crave.

ipod, digital learning, video

Podcasting presentation at the eLearning Summit

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I got a call from the organizers of the 2006 Minnesota eLearning Summit wondering if I could fill in for someone who’d been scheduled to do a presentation about podcasting. So I took a quick trip over to Augsburg College last Thursday and had a great time talking about podcasting to a group enthusiastic educators from K–12 and higher ed.

I didn’t record the session, but it was pretty similar to the one I did at FETC in March. So check out the Podcast Palooza to get the gist of what I talked about.

elearning summit

Skype is throwing down the gauntlet

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There’s a battle royale brewing in the telecom world. Skype just announced that SkypeOut calls to U.S. and Canadian numbers will be free through the end of 2006. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, SkypeOut allows you to call a standard landline number from your computer using the Skype VoIP service. (Skype is a free, but proprietary, download.)

It’s obvious that Skype is trying to get users hooked on the service. This will only incite the traditional telecoms in their effort to rid the Internet of its network neutrality.

I wouldn’t want to be in the business of selling long distance phone service right about now.

Update: Another implication of the free SkypeOut minutes is that recording remote interviews for podcasting just got a whole lot easier. (At least for interviews in the U.S.) Most of the people I’ve interviewed for my podcast have already had Skype accounts, but now it won’t be a big deal to interview someone who doesn’t use the Skype service. I can just call their regular voice landline from Skype on my end and record it as usual.

skype, skypeout, telecom

Windows on Mac with Apple’s blessing

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For most of us who use Macs, OS X is the reason why. Sure, the hardware is beautiful to look at, but that’s just eye candy without having powerful applications available. So when Apple announced their transition to Intel chips last year and the buzz began about the possibility of running Microsoft Windows on Apple hardware, I was one of many people who were probably wondering why anyone would want to do that.

But as soon as the Intel-based Macs became available, the race was on. One contest sprang up and quickly established a $13,000 bounty for the first person to get XP running on a Mac. The prize was claimed pretty quickly and the process of getting Windows installed, though long and complicated, got easier as more and more drivers became available.

Everything changed today. Apple announced Boot Camp and things just got a lot more interesting. From the site: “Once you’ve completed Boot Camp, simply hold down the option key at startup to choose between Mac OS X and Windows. (That’s the “alt” key for you longtime Windows users.) After starting up, your Mac runs Windows completely natively. Simply restart to come back to Mac.”

So you’ve been wanting to try podcasting with GarageBand, but you’re “stuck” running Windows? You can now buy a Mac and dual-boot Windows and OS X. Pretty cool.

windows, macosx, apple

Podcast Palooza

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I think my presentation at Apple’s Podcast Palooza on Wednesday night went pretty well. (There was no audible booing.) David Warlick was there and snapped a photo. At least half the group had listened to a podcast before. I’m not sure how that compares to similar gatherings, but I had the sense that there was pretty good awareness of the broad topic. Feel free to have a listen to the event. We recorded it and posted it on the FETC 2006 podcast page. You can also link directly to the Podcast Palooza presentation, but I would recommend subscribing to the whole collection of podcasts. We’ve been talking to some really interesting people. I spoke with ISTE CEO Don Knezek today, and tomorrow we’ll be interviewing Chris Dede from Harvard, Cheryl Lemke from the Metiri Group, and David Thornburg. Check it out.

The video iPod: a quick little review

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I picked up a shiny new 30-GB video iPod last week. After playing with it for a while I thought I’d share this mini-review with everyone.

The bottom line: it’s really good; better than I thought it would be. I’d seen one up close and personal when they first came out, but I didn’t have a chance to really try it until now. Some thoughts in no particular order:

  • The screen is tiny, yes, but it’s high resolution and very watchable. An entire movie? Maybe not, but I’ve watched it for 15–20 minutes at a time with no trouble at all.
  • Love the photos. My previous iPod was a 4G with the B&W screen. The photos look great and you can store a huge number of them in a little space because the iPod is only storing thumbnails fit for the iPod screen. (You can choose to store the full-size versions on the iPod too just in case you’d like to transfer them to a different computer for printing or other high-resolution display.) I’ve got 3,500 photos on mine so I’ll never be without cute pictures of my kids again.
  • The AV cable is a must-have accessory. It allows you to feed audio and video through the headphone jack into the video inputs of a TV. Even content sized for the iPod looks decent on a television. (Of course, the resolution of standard-definition TV is pretty low.) I bought the 15-minute Rose Bowl summary from the iTunes Music Store and it looked pretty good.
  • Handbrake is really great and a must-have if you want to put a DVD that you own on your iPod. Just for reference, Monty Python’s “Search for the Holy Grail” is about 90 minutes long and compresses down to about 450 MB when converted to iPod resolution. See Mark Pilgrim’s DVD ripping guide for details.
  • I wish the battery lasted longer. A couple hours of video watching is about it. That said, I just plug it in while I’m at work and I never have a problem with it.
  • No Firewire support. This iPod supports USB charging and syncing only. Not really a big deal, but it’s interesting to note that Apple is clearly moving away from Firewire.
  • I’m using the iPod as portable storage more than I thought I would. Once you configure it in the iTunes preferences, the iPod shows up as an external drive that’s pretty handy for transporting large files that won’t fit on a USB thumb drive.
  • I ended up buying the 2-year Applecare plan for it. It was a no-brainer for my laptop, but I’m wondering if a $60 warranty on a $300 device is worth it. Time will tell.

ipod, handbrake, dvd, video

TIES 2005 will be here soon

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The annual TIES Education Technology Conference is coming up December 3–6 in Minneapolis. I’m honored to be a “featured speaker” at this year’s conference. I’ll be presenting a pre-conference workshop on Saturday entitled “Introducing the Read-Write Web: Weblogs, Wikis, and RSS,” a session on Monday called “Podcasting 101,” and facilitating a session with some colleagues from schools called “Life in a One-to-One Computing Classroom.” Whew! A lot of prep, but it will be fun. I’m planning to podcast all of my sessions and I’m trying to get the TIES organizers to do some other official podcasting too.

John Pederson beat me to it when he suggested that all of us used the “ties2005″ tag for this year’s conference. Makes sense. He’s also trying to organize a blogger/podcaster dinner. Count me in!

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Scott McLeod: Legal and Ethical Issues

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Here’s Part II of my recent conversation with Professor Scott McLeod from the University of Minnesota. I had quite a bit of feedback on Part I of our conversation on data-drive decision making so I hope you will enjoy this talk about legal and ethical issues facing educational technology leaders. I won’t repeat all of the background information about Scott in this post, but it’s important to emphasize that he is a lawyer in addition to a professor of educational policy. So while you shouldn’t take anything you hear as official legal advice, you can be sure that Scott knows what he’s talking about.

Of all the interesting things that Scott shares, the most useful for me is the notion that we don’t need to put ourselves in the endless cycle of inventing new policies, rules, and regulations to deal with every new piece of technology that our students bring to school. If fact, it’s just the opposite. I think schools are in a much stronger position when they apply the old, tried and true policies. Kids already know that they shouldn’t bully, disrupt class, interfere with their colleagues’ learning, etc. Camera phones, MP3 players, Web sites, and all of the other technologies that can cause trouble occasionally are just the latest verse to a really old tune.

The more we set technology apart from the rest of school life by making all sorts of special rules about it, the more marginalized technology becomes with respect to the curriculum and the more likely it is that students will view the rules as yet another reason that school is irrelevant. Does your high school ban iPods or other MP3 players from the hallways during passing time? I know of some that do. Have you walked down the sidewalk of a major metropolitan area lately? Those aren’t cotton balls in everyone’s ears.

Download: STP-ScottMcLeod-2 (20.5 MB, 44:48)

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