MED 308: Class 2

The second class went really well- for those that were there.

There are seven people in the class and 4 people showed up for class. By the end of class there were only 3. So, you might be thinking that class was a complete waste. Wrong! We talked about a lot of great things, and were able to get through some really important demonstrations.

To accommodate all of those that were gone (and to learn how to do a couple things) I tried to capture the class in two different formats: Adobe Connect, and just plain audio. Here is what I learned:

Adobe Connect: For those of you who don't know Adobe Connect is a web application that allows various forms of media to be streamed over the internet in virtual rooms or "meetings" as they call it. These meetings will allow for a video feed, audio feed, desktop sharing, document sharing, presentation sharing (it does a great job with PowerPoint files because it converts it to a flash format). It also has a built in chat tool, notes, polls, and it makes the most tasty salsa you have ever had. I have been trying to convince colleagues at various institutions to use Connect but without a lot of success. I love Connect, BUT . . . something always goes wrong. I don't know that I have ever recorded a meeting and though "that went off just the way it was suppose to". Wednesday night’s class was just the same. There were two important parts that didn't work. Neither of which were Connects fault. The web cam I used to get a video stream never worked. Second, the microphone that I used didn't pick up the audio from the class. I can deal with the web cam not working- I don't find web cam streams of classes to be all that useful, but I can't deal without the audio working. The thing that is frustrating is the microphone I used is a special array microphone that is designed for picking up audio in a classroom for Connect. It cost like $350! I'm not sure what went wrong, all I know at this point is that the Connect recording has very little audio. Lessons learned: get a better camera and don't try to set it up 30 minutes before class, don't rely on microphones that seem to good to be true.

Regular audio recording: Along with the array microphone I also used a cheap wireless lapel microphone from RadioShack. It cost about $50. I wore it the entire class. I had it plugged into my laptop which had Audacity running on it. It worked great! Well, it worked great at recording what I had to say. It didn’t do so well at recording when the learners were saying- and so much of class is the discussions and comments that are made. I was however able to use audacity to amplify the parts when the students spoke- so the mp3 that I made is a little more useable. Only problem was the amount of time it takes to select all of the quiet parts and amplify them- so I only did it on the second half of class. Lessons learned: if you are going to record audio a cheap lapel mic is better than a do-everything microphone, but still not good enough. I suppose the lapel mic would be great if this was a lecture class. It is difficult to lecture to 3 learners. The best way to do this is to probably increase the complexity- which doesn’t work for most educators. In a perfect scenario I would use two or three microphones, mix the signals from each of them and then output them.

At the beginning of class, the learners (I've been trying to say learner rather than student lately) asked me about what I thought was not going well with the class. I told them, with some discussion, that the class was going well and they were doing a great job of picking up on things early- I have been pleasantly surprised by that. My only two problems are: I wish the learners would take more ownership of the class wiki, and I’m concerned I have too many redundant assignment/activities. Right there we decided to put an end to one of the assignments: the personal blog. The purpose of the personal blog was to learn about various blogging tools and to help the students get in the habit of blogging. Both of these goals have been or will be met if we end that assignment right now (requiring 1-2 posts rather than 5). I’m not sure if changing the amount of work required is a great idea. I guess I’m concerned about losing credibility. However, I think back on some of my professors and I wish they had the humility to say “I think this is going in the wrong direction . . . I want to fix it by . . .”. So, I have tried to keep that attitude in my teaching.

Last part I promise. I have created an mp3 of the class. So, did I “podcast”? I do not believe that a podcast is just a recording of a class. A podcast is when multiple audio recordings (or video if it is a video podcast) are put into an RSS feed so that the listener can use an aggregator (such as iTunes) to allow for easy updates- so new sessions are automatically loaded onto an iPod (or similar device). I have asked the class to record some audio this week. This is not making a podcast, just record an mp3- which is the first part of creating a podcast. Hope that is clear.