On my way to Tri-C Wednesday, I heard a very interesting piece on NPR about the rise of the Game Design Industry.

We will be covering some aspects of “game” in the 3D Simulation class and I expect that we will have our 3D Game Design course rolled out (this summer/fall). The entertainment industry is the biggest employers of 3D Designers. I thought this was worth a listen.

No threat to a Wacom, but kind of cool use of a trackpad…

Talk of the Nation: Science Friday has a great piece on 3D animation and 3D projection. Listen to it here.

My Bluetooth microphone woes have come to an end after four months of frustration.

Bluetooth audio in OSX 10.5.x has been rendered just about useless. The short back-story is that I have been looking for a wireless microphone for classroom screencasts. I figured Bluetooth was going to be my friend. I tried several headsets and countless Bluetooth dongles (not too mention the built in Bluetooth on mac & macbook pro). Suffice to say that it did not end well.

I turned to a few alternative audio devices including an FM transmitter from RadioShack and a Revo Labs wireless USB mic. My audio quality was equivalent to screaming across the room into a desktop microphone… Not good.

During the last semester I have settled for tethering myself to the teaching station during technical demonstrations with a Logitec headset. The audio quality was very nice but I ran the risk of choking myself each time I felt the urge to move about the classroom. This made for an awkward and distracting presentation.

Finally, along came the CallPod Drone. During initial tests the Drone Bluetooth dongle seems to solve all of the problems plaguing Bluetooth audio in OS 10.5.x. The Drone handles the Bluetooth internally and passes the audio off to the OS as a USB device rather than Bluetooth, seemingly bypassing the operating systems Bluetooth protocol. I paired the Drone with a Plantronics 665 with out too much fuss. The audio quality is not quite as good as having a direct wire USB device a few inches from your face but I’ll take a minor setback in audio quality for the wireless freedom it affords. We’ll see if it holds up in a classroom environment.

I recently wrote a grant for a Plantronics CS50 wireless USB microphone system. Once I get the hardware in I will compare the Drone/Bluetooth to the Wireless USB. The Plantronics USB costs about $300. The Drone & headset cost about $150.

I’ll post results in the near future.

I have spent the past couple of semesters teaching hybrid classes. Hybrid courses combine traditional on site classes with distance learning supplemental coursework. Hyrbids reduce the seat time of a traditional class and provide a great deal of flexibility to students.

The technology of distance learning can create as many obstacles as opportunities.

The following is a list of tools I find very useful in supporting distance learning in a Macintosh environment.

WordPress – WordPress is a free blogging platform. Wordress allows for simple web publishing with sophisticated organizational tools. Blogging is a great way to share resources and information with an audience. Blogging with WordPress is a simple as writing an email. WordPress requires a web hosting account with PHP and MySQL. There are many alternatives for blogging. Blogger.com is free ad does not require hosting or installation. Movable Type is comparable to WordPress and has recently released a free version at www.movabletype.org

This website is driven by WordPress

CyberDuck – Cyberduck is a free opensource FTP (File Transfer Protocol) utility. It has a no nonsense drag and drop interface. CyberDuck is a great tool for uploading resources to a website or other and local destination. The download comes with an FTP widget. Cyberduck is a quick an easy way to update your WordPress themes.
Alternatives include Transmit and Fetch.

Desktastic – Desktastic great little screen markup application. With Desktatstic you can draw on your screen just as if it were a whiteboard or more appropriately, a transparency board. Desktastic can sit on top of any application. Drawing on screen can really help with explaining complex or abstract concepts. Desktastic costs around $12. You can take Desktastic for a test drive by downloading it at http://www.panic.com/desktastic/

Skype – Skype is a free application that has put VOIP (Voice over IP) in the hands of the Internet community. Skype allows real-time voice communication of a broadband Internet connection. Skype’s interface follows the convention of other “chat” application. Once you have an account a panel shows the online and availability status of users in your contacts list. Double-clicking on an available contact will initiate a call. Once connected you can carry on just as if you were on your cell phone. Skype needs a microphone and speaker to take advantage of VOIP capabilities. Skype also support video and traditional chat modes. Skype has a free version that will provide most of the functionality you need for VOIP. A Subscription tier includes some interesting enhancements including voicmail.

Skype is a great way to connect with friends, colleagues and students.

IshowU – Of all the educational technologies I have been using in the classroom, IshowU has proven to be the most valuable. IshowU is screencast utility that records any activity on you Mac. In addition, IshowU can record system audio and input from a microphone. IshowU provides a tremendous amount of capture and compression options. IshowU has proved to be very stable even during very long captures. I have been using IshowU to record class demonstrations, provide tutorials and answer complex questions via email or Skype. At $20 IshowU is a steal. For an alternative tool, you might consider Snapz Pro.

I just purchased the recently released IshowU HD Pro which is a new product with a greater feature set. IshowU HD Pro is a bit more expensive than its little sibling at $60. IshowU HD Pro boasts a greater feature set allowing for capture of multiple audio sources, PIP from a webcam or video cam feed, real-time scaling or re-sampling capture size and more. I expect that HD Pro will displace IshowU in my classroom in the next week or so.

If you are going to purchase either of these applications, I would highly recommend getting the “Stomp” discount bundle. Stomp is an excellent compression utility and is well worth the purchase price.

More information on IshowU products at: http://store.shinywhitebox.com/

Videos in the RSS section of this site were created using IshowU & Stomp.

The recent Tegrity pilot really motivated me to streamline my screencast process. Tegrity has some real strengths with its automation, particularly with it’s RSS option.

I spent the Labor Day weekend laboring over a PHP script that will help syndicate the contents of any directory. Oddly enough, I could not a find a preexisting script, so I had to roll up my sleeves stumble through the coding myself.

It’s been about 3 or 4 years since I had to code anything significant in PHP. It took me an afternoon to clean the cobwebs from that part of my brain and the rest of the evening to implement the logic. I would imagine it would take a programmer a few short hours (if that) to go from logic to proof of concept.

The script is relatively simple in it’s logic. It opens a directory on a web server, scans the directory and loads the title of the files into an array. The array is flipped to print most recent files first and then looped to spit out appropriate XML for an RSS feed.

I have the RSS feeding into a WordPress widget on right side of the screen, titled:  Dynamic RSS Video Test, You can subscribe to it through your iGoogle page or any other RSS reader at the following link. (updating link, be back soon)

I will be updating and organizing feeds based on course categories. I will also refine the code over the course of this week and try to integrate with some existing applications. More on that in the near future…

You can find the first iteration of script here. Feel free to use it and improve on it.

Coming Soon: Five must have tools for Mac Educators