When I began working with iPods at my school, I had little knowledge and many people helped me along the way. After the presentation this May, I wanted to give back. It’s taken three months and hours of work to fine tune my production. Most of my time was working diligently to follow copyright guidelines and be a model for other educators. Unfortunately, my interactions with Apple were less than productive (see timeline below).
Regardless of this rough patch, I feel confident that this video will inspire others to the possibilities of using an iPod Classic in education. Please feel free to comment and stop by the iPodject Wiki (currently under construction currently) to expand the collective knowledge on how iPods are bridging the gap between school and home.
May 2008 - My NEF Breakfast presentation was composed of student video, student presentations, and inspirational PowerPoint put to last 1:40 of Vanessa Carlton’s Home (permission from Universal Studios granted for one time use only).
Early June 2008 - Reworking and expansion of the inspirational portion begins. Two weeks of searching for copyright friendly music yields nothing viable. Eventually a piece is found off of the open source page of the Internet Archive. I wrote the artist and was granted permission for this educational video.
Late June 2008 - Classes start up again and progress on the video slows. I refer to Apple’s Legal page and follow their guidelines on copyright and trademarks. I then asked the musician and my district public relations department to look over and critique my production using a private wiki.
After trying just about every email available at the Apple Legal page and only getting automated responses, I call Apple Corporate and describe my frustrations. The switchboard operator put me in contact with Sue Carroll (Marketing & IP Legal). Our initial interaction on June 26th (phone tag ->voicemail ->emails) are positive. She promises me that direct my “…request to the appropriate teams at Apple for their review” (Carroll, 26 June 2008).
Early July 2008 - Classes continue and I near my comprehensive exams (don’t pass ‘em, don’t continue with the doctorate). My lead with Sue Carroll has led nowhere. I email her once(7/5) and call her twice more (7/1 & 7/9). We finally connect late on July 1st. During this conversation she again promises to pass me onto the proper departments and also says she will email me with Apple’s response. While she cannot give me a “blanket approval”, she says she will put this noncommittal response in writing.
Mid-July 2008 - I never hear from Sue Carroll after our July 1st phone call and I don’t receive the email statement she promises. On July 12th, I attempt one more email, complaining about the misplaced hope from her initial June 26th promise. Without any help from Apple, a mutual decision is made to distance this production from my District and release it independently.
Late July 2008 - I finish my last required class and pick up my comprehensive exams. Two-thirds of the way through my son is born. I work nights in our hospital room to finish my comprehensive exams and finally get to spend time with my new family member.
July 28, 2008 - I’ve already reserved myself to the fact that I won’t be celebrating my birthday this year. I’m thankful for my wife’s healing, my daughter’s adjustment, and my healthy, six day old son. While this is enough of a present, after all this work, I thought I might give myself a present. Thankfully after a few minor adjustments, the video is ready for release this evening.
References
Carroll, Sue. “Re: RP3463.” E-mail to the author. 26 June 2008.
Second School Presentation - March 28, 2008
I haven’t had much time to blog since March because the end of the year was quite the whirlwind! After a few successes with a handful of teachers, I asked my principal for time to present the iPods to my staff again. This time I had more experience, practical examples, and a host of other ideas on how to use them. I also had the additional twenty 30GB iPod Classics a local Beebe family donated to the cause, bringing our total to 25. This completely changed the game now that each student could have their own iPod. I also presented for the second time without PowerPoint, using my private wiki Beyond4Walls. Several teachers were more interested and more receptive afterwards and I was happy to hear their ideas and support them in the classroom.
Web 2.0 - May 2, 2008
The following week I presented Web 2.0 to our district Library Resource Center (LRC) Directors and some of the technology department heads. As David Jakes said when he visited last summer’s doctorate technology class I took, Web 2.0 is not something he felt he could give us a grasp of in two to three hours. Unfortunately, I only had twenty minutes with the LRC Directors, and they walked away humbled. It probably didn’t help that i had decided to drink one of those Monster energy drinks for the first time, although it did help me to cover ground quickly! There were several requests for follow-up meetings discussing specific applications we could use in the LRC.
NEF Breakfast - May 8, 2008
The largest of the three presentations was my presentation on iPodject before the entire district at the annual Naperville Education Foundation (NEF) Breakfast! Two students and I worked through a three tier presentation: 1) video montage of interviews with staff and students using the iPods in their classrooms, 2) two students shared their personal projects and learning using iPods, and 3) an automated PowerPoint I made sharing other possibilities on how to use iPods in education. I’m happy to say that all three of these went well, but the last one inspired me to think that maybe I could use it to share our successes?
iPodject Video - Currently Testing
With that in mind, I spoke with the students who helped write the grant about releasing the last portion of my presentation (the automated PowerPoint) to TeacherTube or YouTube. I worked on this the last two weeks of school and the past three weeks of summer break. The most difficult part was not expanding upon the idea (I already know a variety of ways to use the iPod for educational purposes), it was following copyright rules! Originally the music I used was the last segment from Vanessa Carlton’s Home, which I wrote Universal Studios and asked permission for this one time use. I spent the first two weeks looking for copyright free and/or noncommercial music. Thankfully I found the works of John Holowach on the open source audio page from the Internet Archive. He was very receptive to my inquiry about using his music for an educational video about using iPods in education.
My second problem was taking an automated PowerPoint presentation and changing it into a video with high quality music. I tried several methods, including Window’s Media Encoder to make this transition, but none of the free or trial programs I used worked…well. Strangely enough, I found that the free site, authorStream, and it’s free companion software, authorPoint Lite, did the best job and could distribute my video through their site, send it to YouTube, and allow you to download it in iPod format all from the same place. Perfect!
At the moment, the video is privately uploaded and being reviewed by the musician, my district PR department, and Apple for copyright compliance. This has been the largest step thus far and slightly irksome, if you consider all the red tape it takes to reach that moment of self-publishing gratification. I was thinking of creating an additional wiki to publish some of the schools I found who do use iPods and encourage others to share/edit the list if they do too. Seems kinda like what Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod did with their video Did You Know? The link to their shifthappens wiki generated a lot of discussion in the educational community and is still impacting us today.
Who knows where this will go, but it’s a worthy discussion and one I would like to continue. If the video goes over well I’ve already asked John if I could use another one of his songs for a follow-up video. Here’s to hoping!
This is a big week for iPodject. On Friday, March 28th, I’ll be presenting the iPods to my school for the second time. This time I’ll be backed by an additional twenty at our disposal, a bit more practical experience, and a plethora of educational examples. Using ideas collected from Learning in Hand, Apple, and my own collection of ideas, I hope to persuade more teachers to use the iPods in their classrooms.
From this perspective I welcomed Tony Vincent’s recent blog and podcast on iPod photo ideas. This collection of freebees (phenomenal choice to spur invention by demonstrating it) encapsulates the educational heart of what I’m trying to accomplish by using iPods in education. I commend you on this work and I will be happy to share my uses/creations as well. Sometimes I wish I had Tony’s job…learning about a subject you’re passionate about, helping other teachers and students, and creating content! Now that’s a good gig, people.
My final component is one I just recently read about in Multimedia & Internet @ Schools. The Visual Learning Company recently launched the Digital Science Video Library. This collection of elementary and middle school science videos is one of the first formatted specifically for iPods. According to the representative Stephanie, customers can either purchase a VHS/DVD for $89 only usable in one player/classroom at a time, or for the same price you could have the video streaming from your school server and download content onto as many iPods as you want (via iTunes).
Whether I have one or twenty-five iPods, this is the choice to go with! Multimedia & Internet @ Schools (2008) reports that, “Teachers have the option to play the clips and full videos at individual computer workstations, project them to a larger screen, or sync them to an iPod”. The Visual Learning Company (2008) also notes that “each title includes a full show, 7-10 content clips, metadata for enhanced search capability, and a teacher’s guide”. With research I’ve noted in the drafts of my dissertation, Mayer (2001) suggests guidelines on students receiving multimedia instruction. In the area of video, he suggests “a shorter presentation primes the learner to select relevant information and organize it productively”. With this study in mind, it appears that shorter clips (like the ones offered through United Streaming and VLC’s Digital Science Video Library) are the way to go.
While the collection boasts H.264 format, the blogs and news updates I’ve read haven’t persuaded me that THIS format is all that it claims to be. I’m currently awaiting a sample which is being sent to my school, and I will update this entry as I find out more. The representatives were extremely helpful and had loads of information about their products and the new iPod features. As an additional educational selling point, I give the Visual Learning Company props for noting a top five reasons “why teach with iPods” at the bottom of their page. You had me at iPod…
Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia learning. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Multimedia & Internet @ Schools. (2008, March 6). News & xtra features. Retrieved March 19, 2008,
from http://www.mmischools.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=13575
Visual Learning Company. (2008). Digital Science Video Library. In Visual Learning Company.
Retrieved March 19, 2008, from http://www.visuallearningco.com/ipod_video.htm
During a recent class my professor brought up the works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the book Flow. While I only had the chance to read chapter three, I quickly agreed with the simplistic nature of flow, “joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. xi as cited in Smith and Wilhelm, 2002, p. 28). Many of his later works detail this “state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter” (p. 4).
When we began to look at the concept of flow and how people learn, I realized the true engagement that was inherent with this state. Csikszentmihalyi suggests that more than anything else, men and women seek happiness (p. 1). They do not seek happiness through pleasure alone, rather through enjoyment. For “after an enjoyable event we know that we have changed, that our self has grown: in some respect, we have become more complex as a result of it” (p. 46). Whether through sports, reading, cooking, or a myriad of other activities, people can and do experience flow.
Could this enjoyment in learning be created in today’s classroom? Smith and Wilhelm investigate young men, literacy, and what gives them the flow experience in Reading Don’t Fix no Chevys. Near the end of chapter two, they discuss video games, sequencing of experiences, and flow. Think of the steps that go into creating a video game: conceptualization, developing, playing, sharing, and revising. Creating a video game has the same higher order thinking skills that many of our school seek today. Couldn’t creating a video game become a final project to apply or transfer learning? In some high schools and technical colleges it already has.
After presenting at ICE this year, Mother Mika told me that the conference was a buzz about Scratch. This simplified video game creation tool makes “programming like playing with Lego bricks“. To understand more, I suggest a short article from the Chronicle of Higher Learning or simply watch the video report. After a few minutes to download and go through a brief tutorial, I was creating a moving object. I stopped my progress and looked at the completed games others had done with the simple programming language. Amazing!
What does this have to do with iPods? I don’t want “creating a video game” to be one of the many things David Warlick, David Jakes, and Alan November say kids do outside of school. Mihaly says, “to improve life one must improve the quality of experience” (p. 44). Scratch has the possibility of making learning an enjoyable and truly a flow experience for many of our students. Playing Scratch reaffirmed the reality that our clientèle and world has changed and we need to adapt our instruction as well (see Did You Know and A Vision of Students Today).
At the end of our discussion my professor summarized the experience of flow as just the right balance of ability and challenge tempered with appropriate feedback (Thomas, 2008). Can educational use of video games create flow for our learners? Thanks to the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, I think so.
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Enjoyment and the Quality of Life. Flow the psychology of optimal experience (pp. 43-70). New York: Harper & Row.
Smith, M. W., & Wilhelm, J. D. (2002). Reading don’t fix no Chevys literacy in the lives of young men. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Thomas, J., Dr. (2008, February 2). What is flow? Class discussion presented at Aurora University, Institute for Collaboration.
This unfortunate event, however, brought me to find a rather useful library of articles and ideas from the OEDb. According to their web site, “…the Online Education Database offers comprehensive reviews of online colleges and degree programs. Unlike other online education directories, our database only lists accredited online colleges so you can be sure that these degrees will be respected by potential employers. OEDb allows you to browse by colleges, degrees, or programs. We also have a library of articles that covers the basic topics of attending an online university” (OEDb, 2008).
A press release from PR Leap (2006), describes the site as a continuation of the online educational community using open source documents. “OEDb.org features reviews of dozens of online universities and colleges and hundreds of distance learning degree programs which can be completed online. Degree subjects covered include business, medical, legal, arts, and more. OEDb also features a library of articles regarding online education and financial aid.”
While I have only done minor cross checking of this site and it’s resources, I will continue the investigation as I delve into the 100 Ways article. At this time I do not plan my study to be focused on higher education, but no doubt some of these ideas will come in handy for K-12 as well. Some other recent articles/posts collected at the library might be useful as well:
Skip the Tuition: 100 Free Podcasts from the Best Colleges in the World
Online Educational Database. (2008). Recent articles. In Library of online educational articles andadvice. Retrieved February 17, 2008, from http://oedb.org/library
PR Leap. (2006, September 16). OEDb: Online education database launched. PR Leap Press Release. Retrieved February 17, 2008, from http://www.prleap.com/pr/48450/
February 8, 2008, 5:41 pm
Filed under: ipods, research
I finally sent off my inquiry to various listservs calling for educators who use iPods. I’m extremely hopeful that I will get a solid return. Within hours of distribution I gathered fifteen leads and seven schools using iPods currently! I will have to compile this information not only to post a “hit”, but also to present to my committee chair in relation with my design for the study.
I thought it couldn’t hurt to post my email on the blog as well, hoping that I might find additional input from my readers. Below is the informal call for iPods and educators:
Colleagues,
I’m a school librarian and teacher of ten years seeking a doctorate of education at Aurora University. Our grant to use iPods at Beebe Elementary has led me to a formal study investigating iPods in education. Before I actually propose my study, I need to gather an idea of the schools that actually USE iPods in the educational setting. Despite my insistence and literary proof, my professors doubt I will find many schools in the nation (let alone IL) that use iPods. I know you’re out there, but I need to prove it!
In order to do this, I have distributed this email to LM Net (School Librarian/Media Specialist listserv), Ed Tech (Educational Technology listserv), SIG-HC (ISTE’s Handheld Special Interest Group listserv), and a few other online technology colleagues to begin gathering this information. I hope that once I compile this list, I will connect with educators interested in participating in the study, but that’s a step ahead of what I’m working on.
Please consider responding to me off-list:
I DO work with iPods…
…let me tell you a bit about myself, my school, and how we’re using them.
I DON’T work with iPods, but…
…I know someone who is! Let me tell you about him/her.
…I read something about iPods in education and I would love to share the
article.
Thank you for any support or leads,
Josh Mika
Doctoral Candidate
Education: Curriculum & Instruction
Aurora University - Aurora, IL
January 30, 2008, 10:43 pm
Filed under: donation, ipods
Didn’t I say the donator was offering twenty first/second generation iPods?
Tuesday I was out of school participating in a discussion on multicultural literature with Junko Yokota from the Center for Teaching through Children’s Books when my principal met with the local parent who was donating the iPods. When I returned she said she had a present for me and brought a bag of 20 fifth generation video iPods each with USB cords, clear plastic cases, and outlet adaptors! It took several minutes for the reality of the situation to sink in…
But when it did…oh, but when it did! The past week my mind went over and over again how I could use these iPods to fill the audiobook gap in our school library, but now the curtains parted and I had a working classroom set of 25 video iPods. This changes the game completely, as I told my co-grant writer, and there’s so much more we can do…
Regardless of these new possibilities, I talked with my Project Idea and co-grant writer about creating a video presentation on how we’re using the iPods and sharing this with the donating family. I also talked with them about the way he had restructured the basic menus for his pharmaceutical company. IF we could do the same thing it would rectify several of the problems I’ve had with the iPods in opening trials with the students.
The most important revelation from this opportunity: giving back and moving forward. The NEF grant we received was a seed that has now taken root at Beebe. As the project leader I want to push forward with the many ideas and make them reality for our school and our students. I set up a small meeting with the donator for tomorrow’s Open House to discuss his use and manipulation of the menu structure for the iPods. I’ve also ordered Tony Vincent’s revised Handhelds for Teachers & Administrators (2nd Edition) as well as ISTE’s Educator’s Podcasting Guide in hopes that they will complement our growing need for reference and ideas in these fields.
iPodject has shed its first leaves and has begun feeding itself. IF we can spare some of our remaining funds to order a few more iPods, we’ll reach a “true” classroom set of 30, opening a one-to-one experience with the handheld devices. These goals, and many others, are truly taking root and nurturing themselves. Pride doesn’t express my sentiment tonight.
January 25, 2008, 8:15 pm
Filed under: donation, ipods
Thanks to the promotion of our grant to the teachers and students, a community parent contacted me about donating iPods to our school! Next week, a local businessman and parent of Beebe, has offered to donate over 20 first/second generation iPods for iPodject. It is hoped that these iPods will be in working order, but also a cheap/easy way to actually check in/out audiobooks from the school.
In our original grant proposal, the five $250 video iPods were just too much responsibility to entrust to a Beebe student outside of the school setting. However, the donated, older iPods from this local parent/businessman would allow for the audiobooks to be checked out easily and without concern for loss!
The iPods are scheduled to arrive this week and I will challenge myself to look into constraints of the older models with our audiobook needs. Currently we have the audiobooks available from the grant for checkout:
+a variety of Dr. Seuss books
+a variety of Bernstein Bears books
+Magic Treehouse (books 1-10)
+Charolette’s Web
+Tale of Desperaux
+Eragon
+Harry Potter (books 1-6)
This donation is a HUGE celebration for iPodject and its goals. I offer my sincere thanks to the Beebe community and I will endeavor to make great use of these donations. IF any other local or outside community readers have iPods they would like to donate to the project, we will gladly accept your donations and I thank you in advance for thinking of us!
I’ve been working diligently in my spare time to get the iPodject Companion Site up and running, get teachers and students interested in using the iPods, and setting up a web log of the process. While I sometimes wonder if this blogging thing is really worth investing any of my precious time (2-6 AM this morning, unfortunately), I do see a benefit in sharing my progress for other educators experimenting with iPods in education. I can thank my online communications with Tony Vincent of Learning in Handand Mark van ‘t Hooft of ISTE’s Handheld Special Interest Group for that.
Currently I’m working on actually getting the audiobooks onto my external hard drive. I’ve continually run into problems with iTunes defaulting back to my C Drive rather then the external drive. After a post on the Educational Technology Listserv Ed-Tech, Dan Craig replied with this:
“It’s kind of a pain, but I’ve been going through this since getting my first iPod. I’ve never wanted to store my collection on my laptop’s HD, so it’s on an external HD.
I do this with a PC, but I’m assuming it’s similar (if not the same) on a Mac.
1) Map the drive so you get the same drive letter each time you connect.
2) Open the iTunes Music Library.xml file in a text editor (in your iTunes folder)(it’s a good idea to save a backup version at this point).
3) Use find and replace to replace the current path (your C: drive) to the external drive. Just replace everything before the iTunes folder name.
4) Sometimes I have to restart iTunes to get it to load right. I’ve also had to clear the library in the past in re-import it (save a copy of the iTunes Music Library.xml file in another location prior to doing this).
Like I said, it’s a pain, but it doesn’t take that long to do.
Daniel A. Craig
English Instructor
Seoul National University
Foreign Language Education Center, Yongon Campus”
I truly appreciate this and I will give it a chance when I get back to my school this week. Of course I need to figure out how to “map a drive” since my district technical support analysts have done this previously.
There were several requests for follow-up meetings discussing specific applications we could use in the LRC.
My final component is one I just recently read about in 
When we began to look at the concept of flow and how people learn, I realized the true engagement that was inherent with this state. Csikszentmihalyi suggests that more than anything else, men and women seek happiness (p. 1). They do not seek happiness through pleasure alone, rather through enjoyment. For “after an enjoyable event we know that we have changed, that our self has grown: in some respect, we have become more complex as a result of it” (p. 46). Whether through sports, reading, cooking, or a myriad of other activities, people can and do experience flow.
I finally sent off my inquiry to various listservs calling for educators who use iPods. I’m extremely hopeful that I will get a solid return. Within hours of distribution I gathered fifteen leads and seven schools using iPods currently! I will have to compile this information not only to post a “hit”, but also to present to my committee chair in relation with my design for the study.
But when it did…oh, but when it did! The past week my mind went over and over again how I could use these iPods to fill the audiobook gap in our school library, but now the curtains parted and I had a working classroom set of 25 video iPods. This changes the game completely, as I told my co-grant writer, and there’s so much more we can do…
iPodject has shed its first leaves and has begun feeding itself. IF we can spare some of our remaining funds to order a few more iPods, we’ll reach a “true” classroom set of 30, opening a one-to-one experience with the handheld devices. These goals, and many others, are truly taking root and nurturing themselves. Pride doesn’t express my sentiment tonight.
