Here are links to all of the sites I’ll be mentioning in my talk at NECC on Wednesday (and even some ones I probably won’t have time to mention). I’ll post more once I’m done.
Update: The podcast of this session is here.
My family and I arrived in San Diego last night, and I’m busily putting the final touches on my presentations for this year’s NECC. If you’re interested in seeing a session that I’ll be doing, check out one of the following:
I doubt I’ll be making it to many other sessions this year. Stop by and say hello.
Here’s something to consider adding to your schedule for this year’s NECC.
I will be doing a live Savvy Technologist Podcast on Thursday, July 6 from 5:00–6:00 p.m. in California Gold, 31B (that’s the room). I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but I know there will be plenty of audience participation! I’ll probably try to corral a couple guests and then take a bunch of questions from the audience. Stay tuned for more about that as NECC approaches.
My Ed Tech Coast to Coast colleagues and I will also be doing a live version of that podcast. We’ll be recording on Wednesday, July 5 from 5:00–6:00 p.m. in the same California Gold, 31B room. We should have the whole crew there.
I’ve never done a live podcast before so this should be quite an adventure. Don’t leave me hanging. I need an audience!
Right on the heels of my post about custom podcast feeds I found that the other Tim has been thinking along the same lines. He’s discovered a feature over at del.icio.us that allows you to search for particular filetypes in addition to tags and generate RSS feeds that include enclosures.
It’s a cool feature and it’s almost what I was looking for. Unfortunately, it still requires the extra step of separately creating a del.icio.us bookmark for the actual MP3 or other media file. I still think the best solution would take a simple Technorati tag, search the tagged post for an enclosure, and generate the custom Technorati podcast feed from that. The simplicity would mean more content would be included when bloggers and podcasters are at an event like NECC and they agree on a common tag (like “necc“) in advance.
I saw literally hundreds of different products in the vendor hall at NECC. Way too many, in fact, to have much of a look at many of them. One that caught my eye was a new product SanDisk was promoting. Their Cruzer Freedom USB flash drive:
is a uniquely designed USB Flash Drive that lets your students safely carry personal digital files. Powered by FlashCP technology (formerly known as “BookLocker™”, this drive becomes a “digital backpack”. The digital backpack allows easy and safe downloads of copyrighted content including textbooks, novels, study aids, learning tools and much more.
I’ve read about a lot of schools that are starting to provide flash drives for their students as a cost-effective way to facilitate moving digital content back and forth between school and home. The price is certainly right. I was at Costco yesterday and saw a 512-MB Lexar flash drive for about $40.
The SanDisk product isn’t as cheap, however, since they’ve had to license some DRM technology to prevent anyone from redistributing copyrighted content. So I guess the question becomes whether or not it’s worth paying 2× as much for a flash drive in order to take advantage of a select set of publishers’ titles and the ability to search, highlight, and annotate the e-text. If I was going to buy hundreds of these things I think I’d save the money and buy a standard flash drive for now. I’m sure the catalog of available digital content will grow, and I might come to the opposite conclusion a year from now. But do we really want to get our students reading more textbooks when there’s so much content out there that isn’t encumbered by draconian copyright that requires DRM?
My school district is working with Dr. Dennis Harper from the Generation YES project to apply for a state grant to bring the Gen Y program to Minnesota, the only state that doesn’t currently have it. This podcast is a brief talk with Dennis from the Gen Y booth at NECC. I’m not entirely happy with the recording and will be doing some tweaking on my “home studio” setup over the next few weeks. I’d be happy to get feedback on how it sounds to you.
Download: STP-GenerationYES.mp3 (3.1 MB, 6:39)
In this edition of the Savvy Technologist Podcast from NECC I chat with Dave Huber from Barracuda Networks about their flagship product the Barracuda spam firewall.
Download: STP-Barracuda.mp3 (2.6 MB, 5:46)
I took my new podcasting gear into the vendor hall at NECC to see how two mics would work when interviewing someone with tons of background noise. You can hear for yourself, but I think it turned out pretty well. In this, my first vendor-cast, I talk briefly to Peter Schneider our Atomic Learning sales rep. Hopkins has been an Atomic Learning customer since the company began, but I often wonder how I can encourage our staff to utilize the subscription more effectively. I asked Peter and here’s what he said.
Download: STP-AtomicLearning.mp3 (2.6 MB, 5:43)