Apple iTunes 4.9 and podcasting

The latest release of iTunes 4.9 makes downloading and organising podcasts and subscribing to podcast feeds much smoother than the previous version. This article from iPodlounge provides a quick overview tutorial and some additional links to resources. Download not only the latest 4.9 version but also the iPod updater (much larger file).

Eduscape blog

A link to my experimental blog, Eduscape. (cross linked from SouthOz E-Learning blog).
Latest posting on Eduscape extols the virtues of tagging and folksonomy made possible by site such as del.icio.us.

Blogging at NECC

Not able to attend NECC June, 2005 (tyranny of distance) but this link will prove useful in keeping up with education and emerging technologies via a number of blogging and podcasting sites.
Lots of presenters offering interaction especially on educational blogging, podcasting, handhelds and moblogging (mobile devices).

E-School News is also offering informal reports during the conference on its site.

Folksonomic discoveries

More on folksonomic discoveries from O'Reilly including commentary on social bookmarking and tags. He lauds the potential of Flickr and 43 Things in providing a self-tagging mechanism with tags to photos in Flickr and tags to personal goals in 43 Things.
"A context in which everyone can freely tag (and categorize things) has come to be called a "folksonomy". Put differently, a folksonomy is a bottoms-up taxonomy created by the people for the people rather than a top-down hierarchy constructed by experts - the usual model for a taxonomy."
Exploration of popular tags and public tags allows users to build and share knowledge and locate blogs and feeds associated with taggers of similar interests.
Gataga social bookmark search and exploration engine, searches a large list of sites including del.icio.us, furl, jots and more, providing the opportunity to save searches as feeds.

Badfruit plugin for iTunes

This item was posted on the Make blog.
Badfruit is a plugin for iTunes (Windows) that allows you to get podcasts through iTunes for your iPod. No need to wait for iTunes 4.9 as this download works with iTunes 4.8.

Tagging and del.icio.us

I have been busy adding to my tags in my del.icio.us account, exploring popular tags and tracking some interesting tags and blogs. Tags of special interest include social bookmarking and folksonomies.
Library Clips blog and The Shifted Librarian blog provide commentary and a range of resources on RSS, tags and folksonomies.
This article on folksonomies by Joshua Porter refers to "a new user-driven approach to organizing information" Such sites "include two basic capabilities: they let users add “tags” to information and they create navigational links out of those tags to help users find and organize that information later." Del.icio.us is cited as one example of such an organizational site.
Jon Aquino's Mental Garden blog comments on turning any feed into a podcast using Audiolicious with text to speech.
Tracking tags in tagcloud makes use of keywords in specified feeds (up to 250) but 50 would be enough. These hyperlinked tags are displayed in a visual interface with the largest fonts representing greatest instances of a keyword.
Trendalicious! provides a "near real-time view of website popularity trends" by displaying URLs "posted by a minimum of two people" within the previous hour and "ranked by the total number of recent posts".
View the most popular tags on del.icio.us.
Found some freeware tools, websites and blogs over the weekend which were posted in del.icio.us such as MediaMan, a free cataloguing tool for media such as DVDs, CDs, Books etc. Includes cool image import and barcode tools, ability to import information eg from Amazon, add custom fields, icons and subcategories, view in a virtual shelf, track or manage items eg on loan to friends and export (compressed) files.

Videoblogging

Videoblogging has taken a step closer for the masses with this downloadable FireAnt Not TV RSS video aggregator and player program for Mac or Windows. Excellent glossary of terms and 'how to's' for first timers with screencasts to get started.
Other useful sites include http://freevlog.org/ with tutorials on creating vlogs with a step by step guide on setting up a videoblog.
Mefeedia.com is a free aggregator for videobloggers (subscribe and tag videoblogs)
All these tools are free, adding to the potential to publish and share rich content on the web.

Going mobile

How to create a podcast
Tutorial on How to Create a podcast using Garage Band and iTunes.
Create the MP3 and the RSS / XML file for the podCast.
Updated June 2, 2005.
Downloaded podcasts aplenty, now ready to experiment with creating podcasts and explore educational use. Added some links to revisit.

Also experimenting with iPodcast Creator program and dabbling with Garage Band.
Another useful resource from Mike Hall's blog is a tutorial on adding a podcast to your pocket PC using Feederreader. (RSS Aggregator with podcast listening and enclosure support for Windows Mobile/ Pocket PC)
Lots of experimentation to do.

Firefox and SAGE 1.3

Firefox and SAGE 1.3
Sage is a lightweight RSS and Atom feed aggregator extension for Mozilla Firefox browser. Live bookmarks integration is now possible in the Firefox browser using SAGE, which can be installed from this site. Sage can interpret Live Bookmarks, allows the user to subscribe to feeds using an auto-discovery process while browsing with Firefox. Sage has a nifty built-in 'Discover Feeds' function which provides a boon for savvy educators.

EFL (Livejournal, Flickr and Moodle)

Interesting reference from Scott's weblog on an approach (by AP Campbell) to teaching an elective EFL course in Kyoto "Internet Communication", where Japanese students use social networking tools for community building for international communication to progress their language learning. This involves integrating Moodle, Flickr, mobile technology and blogging tools (moblogs). An innovative approach with a few hurdles where the student group is more used to teacher-centred instruction.

Emily's World: Tagging bookmarks with del.icio.us

This is an excellent posting from Emily on her blog about sharing bookmarks of websites via tags. The power of collaboration using new tools and new literacies for professional learning! Emily provides a clear explanation of the role of tags in the popular del.icio.us service with a number of examples of relevance to educatos and students. Also available as a RSS feed.

Example of a tag;
http://del.icio.us/tag/podcasting
and here is the RSS feed to enter into your feedreader ...
http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/podcasting

LAMS Moodle integration

Two open source products, LAMS and Moodle, getting closer together. This posting, by Derek Morrison on Auricle, highlights the differences between the drag and drop stryctured learning sequences of LAMS and the constructivist Moodle learning environment. This walkthrough link provides a cue to the LAMS - Moodle integration i.e adding a LAMS sequence to a Moodle course as an activity or linking to a Moodle activity from within a LAMS sequence.
This link suggests that the integration between Moodle and LAMS is simply a URL link. Future developments are flagged for advanced tools integration.

Room 208 school site with podcasts

Mr Sprankle's Room 208 site contains examples of student podcasts, news from the students and a blog. Obviously a lot of interest in students podcasting as it has been cited in a number of areas, including a reference to the "pod kids" and a link from EPN (Landmark). Subscribe to their feed and keep up to date with the work of the students from Room 208. Well done!

elgg personal learning landscape

Elgg is an open source product under the GNU General Public License. It is a "Personal Learning Landscape" which is easy to use and provides a webspace allowing users to create an online digital identity with functionality such as weblogs, RSS, file storage and sharing, keyword tagging, social networking - personal profiles and FOAF. It creates a community learning environment.
Apcala is a free and hosted service based on Elgg. It provides blogs, RSS feeds, 20Mb file storage, ability to upload photos and podcasts and keyword tagging.
eTeach portfolios (UK) is also based on elgg. It offers a free electronic portfolio, weblog and social networking system, connecting learners and creating communities of learning.