Here’s an easy way to access the presentations and conversations posted here during April.
Week of April 3, 2006

>> Teaching Master Index

Week of April 10, 2006

>> Blogging in Libraries
>> Podcasting in Libraries
>> Leveraging Web 2.0 Technologies
>> Issues in Libraries
>> Making Information Work Harder

Week of April 17, 2006

>> Admissions, Alumni Relations, and Communications and Marketing Master Index

Week of April 24, 2006

>> Websites and Web Development Master Index

Here’s the list of future Skypecasts on similar topics. We’re doing one tomorrow at 1 pm ET, 17:00 GMT. Here is a time converter in case you need one.

Get the .mp3 of the presentation

Spreadsheet mentioned in the .mp3

- Six sigma
- Kaizen
- TPM
- Lean
- TQM

All are various ways to improve the way an industry works. I first learned of Six Sigma from a friend who worked as an engineer for GE. Six Sigma is, at its simplest, a way to eliminate defects in a process. As a Web developer this had immense appeal. As I began researching Six Sigma, I found its sister methodology, Kaizen. Kaizen in Japanese literally means “improvement,” but the first definition I read of defined it as “continuous improvement.” In this presentation I will discuss ways to use Kaizen with Web traffic metrics to continuously improve a site.

The Excel spreadsheet
The metrics spreadsheet was designed so that you can input your monthly traffic statistics on the page labeled “Data.” (Use the IND DATA column to populate the sheets with the IND prefix.) YTD and YTD CHARTS are automatically generated charts showing your traffic changes over time.

Pertinent links:

Wikipedia Kaizen entry

Six Sigma, Kaizen and Lean

Comparison of Six Sigma and Kaizen

Web Analytics Demystified By Eric T. Peterson

Alexa (useful for doing research into other site’s statistics)
Eduweb

“If I want to find my college or study abroad classmates, what do I do? I don’t call them or write them letters. I log into my email, type their names (not their email addresses – the technology does that for me) into the address line of a black email message and send it off. Usually it’s less than four lines, and often it includes a smiley  somewhere in the message. Does this mean I have less meaningful, in-depth conversation with my friends than if I wrote them a letter or called them? Maybe. But it means that I keep in touch with friends I would have long lost were it not for the ease of communication. And I’m not even a member of the millennium generation.” Holly Peterson, March 2006

Several years ago, World Learning, including The Experiment in International Living, the School for International Training (SIT) and SIT Study Abroad, found itself in an interesting position. Our organization has thousands of alumni engaged in international, intercultural and social justice work in nearly every country in the world. However, we had little contact with this great pool of alumni. We needed to find a way to connect with them, and to connect them with each other.

The goal of our project was two-fold: to better serve our alumni base by allowing them to network with each other, and to enlist alumni as advocates for and supporters of World Learning. When we realized that our alumni base is largely young, mobile, and globally dispersed, we knew that we would need to engage them in non-traditional ways, including primarily through new communications technology.

With that in mind, we set out to find a set of tools that would allow us to make these connections. These tools had to be web-based and have strong email and directory components, as well as listserv, blog, and content management capability. They also had to be affordable. Over the course of one year, we research software, met with vendors and implemented our new online community for alumni: OurWorld (ourworld.worldlearning.org).

The PowerPoint, Word document and podcast outline our process, achievements and new goals for this project. We hope it will help others going through a similar process, and will also spark debate about “where we go from here” in using technology to reach students and alumni in an increasingly complex and borderless world.

Get the audio interview with Holly Peterson and Tristan Roberts, conducted by Robert French in March, 2006 (15:39; mp3).

Tags: alumni, social networks

The movement for open access to the scholarly and research literature emerged as a response to the enormous, unsustainable increases in the price of journals and journal bundles for academic libraries. When the internet made possible the dissemination of information for near-zero marginal cost (over the cost to package the information in the first place), both researchers and librarians began questioning the necessity of cost barriers to access.

Educators who are not themselves researchers or librarians have not been active in the open-access movement or the debates surrounding it as yet. Third-world access to research, higher impact factors, faster research dissemination, relieving overstrained library budgets while restoring selection decisions to librarians—all these concern researchers and the research libraries they use. Institutions whose primary focus is teaching can expect little change one way or the other.

Or can they?

Get the podcast of this presentation.

Read this presentation (PDF).

Tags: Tags:, Library, 2.0, open_access, OA, openaccess, library, libraries, higheredblogcon

The purpose of this section of HigherEd BlogCon 2006 is to provide a rudimentary introduction to podcasting. Podcasts are audio files in MP3 format that are distributed via RSS (an XML-based syndication format). To obtain and listen to podcasts, you can download the MP3 file directly from the Web site or you can use a special RSS aggregator called a podcatcher (such as Apple iTunes). Creating podcasts involves using software to record and edit an MP3 file (such as the open source program, Audacity). The podcast sound file must be placed on a Web server and encoded in an RSS feed for distribution to podcatchers such as iTunes.

You can download this podcast presentation here http://www.higheredblogcon.com/library/iliff/highed.mp3.

Links referred to in this audio presentation include:

Podcatchers

• Apple iTunes
• Available for free for Windows and Mac machines
• Doppler
• Free for Windows
• Juice
• Free for Windows and Mac (Linux soon)

Podcast directories

• PodcastAlley.com
• Podcast.net
• iPodder.org
• iTunes Store

Podcast text searching

• Podzinger
• Podscope

Audacity

Web-based Podcast Creation Services

• Odeo
• Podomatic

Storage space for podcasts

• OurMedia (free)
• Podlot ($5.00 per 150MB)
• Podbus ($5.00 per 300MB)
• Audioblog ( $9.95 per 500mb)

Library Podcasts

• Chesire Public Library (CT) Young adult podcast series
• Muskingum College Library (OH) Notable lectures and discussions
• Western Kentucky University Libraries Notable lectures and discussions
• Lansing MI Public Library Podcasts of tech news, info teens, and also for children
• PALINET has podcasts
• Librivox effort to create sound files for public domain books

Other Podcasts of Note

• Podcasting in Education: Great for K-12
• Purdue University: Providing podcasts of lectures, called “Boilercasts”
• Nature: Great example of publisher podcast

Example of PALINET RSS Feed

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Tags: podcasting, podcast, library, libraries, higheredblogcon

Podcasting in academic libraries is still so new that its importance and ultimate utility has yet to be determined. This has not stopped a number of institutions from experimenting with the technology, adapting it for a variety of uses ranging from library tours to database tutorials to recordings of library events. More than any of the suite of social software applications that exist today, such as blogs, wikis, and IM, podcasting adds a new dimension to the library, giving it the opportunity to create a personality for itself, its services, and its greater community.

The Dowling College Library began podcasting in October 2005 with a monthly program entitled Omnibus. Omnibus is a collection of news items, interviews, reports and special segments that focuses on the intellectual life of the library and the college, a medium-sized, private school in Oakdale, New York. When the decision was made to start podcasting, the nature of the library and its collections, of the student body, and of the curriculum all played a part in determining what a library “show” would sound like.

This presentation shows how one library approached podcasting and endeavored to produce a unique, worthwhile, and interesting program that would appeal to its various user groups.

Click here to listen to Chris’ podcast.

Links mentioned in this podcast:

Buffalo State College
http://www.buffalostate.edu/podcasts.xml

Butte College Chronicles
http://bcchron.blogspot.com/

Listen Up
http://gpclibraryradio.blogspot.com/

Podcast 411
http://www.podcast411.com/

Podcast for Teachers
http://www.podcastforteachers.org/

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Tags: podcasting, podcast, library, libraries, higheredblogcon

Colette Vogele
Stanford Law School
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blogs/vogele

Colette Vogele and Elizabeth Townsend Gard will explore the legal aspects of podcasting in teaching and higher education. Colette is the author of the new Podcasting Legal Guide (soon to be available at Creative Commons and the Center for Internet and Society) and Elizabeth focuses her research on copyright in an academic environment. Colette will explain legal basics surrounding podcasting, and Elizabeth will focus on the higher education environment, particularly podcasting the traditional classroom. The presentation will address copyright, trademark, and right of publicity/privacy questions that arise in the context of podcasting in the teaching scenario. Copyright questions have to do primarily with third-party materials that are used in the podcast, and the rights under which the podcasting teacher wishes to distribute her content. Traditional licensing, Creative Commons licensing, and public domain dedications would be addressed. Questions about ownership of the podcast content (e.g., the institution vs. the teacher?) would also be discussed.

Elizabeth will focus the second part on “What questions should we ask when we podcast the traditional classroom?” This will look at at the specifics of Section 110 of the Copyright Act , which includes both exceptions to using copyrighted materials in the traditional face-to-face classroom teaching and the additional recent exceptions added with the TEACH Act. How does podcasting change classroom choices? What choices do podcasters have when podcasting the classroom? This part will also look at the additional issues of ownership of the podcasted lecture and student work that is podcasted.

View part one (30:59, .mov, 42M); requires Quicktime. Get the PowerPoint for part one.

View part two (25:16, .mov, 46M); requires Quicktime. Get the PowerPoint for part two.
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Tags: Podcasting, higheredblogcon