161 Exabytes
March 6th, 2007The Washington Post reports that the amount of digital information generated by the world last year totaled 161 exabytes; that’s 161 BILLION gigabytes. In 2003, researchers estimated that the world produced 5 exabytes of information, so the increase in 2006 is quite significant.
Where is the information coming from? Included among the data gathered were phone calls, Emails, instant messages, video, audio, and images. With the increase in HD video and other high quality digital mediums, the quality is - of course - increasing but so is the amount of storage space needed. At least by going more towards a digital realm, paper is probably being conserved - assuming that people aren’t printing out every Email and instant message that they receive.
Wikipedia in Academia
January 30th, 2007This article brings to discussion an important and emerging question that academia has been facing in recent years: the role of the internet in academia, particularly in regards to research. Although some (perhaps many) would consider Wikipedia to be a reliable source of information because of the constant editing and checking by others, how reliable is it for research, and should it be acceptable as a citation in that academic papers? Should it be completely forbidden as a citation or should it be seen as equal to more traditional resources? This question - and others - will doubtlessly be coming to the forefront more often.
Academia
January 30th, 2007First posted April 20, 2006 by Lauren
What constitutes Academia? What creates that fine distinction between academic pursuit and pursuit of a more general interest? These are the questions I pose!
Podcasting (hopefully) explained
January 30th, 2007First posted April 3, 2006 by jschwab
First, I’m going to introduce you to a couple of terms that may be new to some: feed and aggregator. Perhaps the best way to explain the relationship between a feed and an aggregator, and at the same time help define the terms, is with an example. Let’s suppose that there are about 15 or so news websites that you like to read on a daily basis—you like to stay informed. You’re just that kind of person. However, as an informed individual, you’re also very busy. You don’t have time to check 15 websites on a daily basis, or more often when there is breaking news that interests you.
If the websites you like to read daily publish a syndicated feed (either an RSS, Atom, or XML feed) at the same time as they update their website, then you can use a feed aggregator to collect all those feeds in one place. An aggregator can be a downloaded program on your computer (BlogExpress for Windows or NetNewsWire Lite for Mac) or an online service (Bloglines.com) that allows you to go to that one program or that one website and see quickly the newest information from the websites you like to read. Using an aggregator only works if you read websites that are updated often, such as news sites or blogs, and only if those sites publish or create those feeds for you to see. Most news sites and blogs create a feed automatically. If you happen to be a blogger, and use Blogger, MovableType, or WordPress to blog, then you don’t even have to think about the feed for your blog—-it is created automatically when you update your blog.
Where do podcasts come in, you ask? Podcasts use the same technology that blogs and news sites do in that they use feeds. However, a podcast incorporates an audio element, and you are no longer reading the information but listening to an audio file instead of or in addition to seeing text. The feed for a podcast contains information about the podcast as a whole, and about each episode in a podcast, as well as a link to an audio file (in some cases, an image file, too). Some might call this metadata and data. While you can go to the website that contains the audio file whenever it is updated, a published feed allows a listener to automatically get the newest episode automatically through an aggregator. An “aggregator” of sorts that allows you to listen to podcasts is Apple iTunes (which has the benefit of automatically downloading the audio content to your iPod if you’d so desire). Other aggregators for blogs or news sites can be found in this list at Wikipedia.
Please note that even though I used the word “iPod,” a podcast really has little or nothing to do with iPods. You can download the audio content from a podcast to any mp3 player, or even just to your computer. However, if you download to your computer, you lose one of the features of a podcast that makes it interesting–its portability via mp3 players. The other thing that makes a podcast different from, say, audio on a website is the fact that the news feed allows a podcast to be episodic. You can create a feed for your podcast that includes information for future episodes of your podcast series, and on the correct days, the appropriate podcast audio will be available for users.
Right there, you have the basic background information to understand podcasts. They represent a convergence of technology, both past and present. Podcasts are reflective of radio shows or news casts (old idea), only they are on the internet, downloadable to a computer (not really a new idea) or an mp3 player (slightly newer idea there), and they are easily updated and accessible because of feeds and aggregators (somewhat new idea, unless you’re a blogger).
Apple Podcasting and Blogging Seminar
January 30th, 2007First posted on February 2, 2006 by jschwab
Note: This post has been sitting unpublished since February 2, 2006. Sorry for the delay in putting something up.
Recently, a few of us from the CCLC attended an informational session on podacasting and blogging in education presented by local Apple representatives. For obvious reasons, we were intrigued by the idea behind the seminar and felt that there was no way we could not attend. What follows is a summary of my impressions regarding the seminar, which was very interesting, exciting, and a little frustrating at all the same time.
I’ll start by saying first that the presenters were very good, and despite their use of a slide presentation via Keynote, I found no major objections to their integration of presentation software. (Such software–PowerPoint–is too often misused, especially in academia. In speaking to an academic audience, I was glad to see the typcial design sense that Apple usually shows shine through even a slideshow presentation.)
My main complaint about the presentation was that the presenters weren’t clear about the two sides to podcasting. Any user has one of two roles in relation to podcasting–you are either listening to a podcast, or you are creating a podcast. While the presenters showed some useful software, such as the new Garageband that comes with iLife ‘06, they only talked about how to edit audio or still images in Garageband to create your podcast content. They didn’t really talk much about what makes a podcast actually work. It’s not just putting audio on the web.
A podcast is different in that it has a feature common to blogs and news websites–a syndicated feed. This means that a podcast can be episodic. The other strength of a podcast is that the content is downloadable, not just to your computer, but to mp3 players (such as an iPod, but it’s not necessary to have an iPod to hear a podcast). This means that your podcast is both episodic and portable. While the presenters at the seminar did not talk about how to create a syndicated feed (I guess Garageband will magically do it for me?), they did do a great job explaining how a podcast has the advantage of being updateable (if it’s not a word, it is now!) and portable. However, I think the part of podcasts that most people have a hard time understanding is the syndicated feed.
I did enjoy the lists of podcast or feed reading software that the presenters shared, even if they did (understandably) focus most on how Garageband and iTunes will help in making and using podcasts.
Overall, it was a good presentation. The presenters explained podcasts well, and explained how a podcast really has little to do with Apple’s iPod, which was a nice touch. However, I was left feeling a bit undernourished as far as understanding the distinction between using and listening to podcasts and what goes into creating a podcast.
iPod + Congress
January 30th, 2007First posted February 1, 2006 by jschwab
This website has an interesting idea about demonstrating to politicians and senators the realistic impact of digital rights management by buying iPods pre-loaded with relevant content for senators campaigning around legislation that affects technology. It sounds like a strategy that could work well for DRM legislation and other legislation regarding technology–show the legislators in a relevant, hands on way how the technology works, what possibilities there are with the technology, and what possibilities will be affected by legislation. I hope it works the way the instigators want it to work.
Mmm… del.icio.us…..
January 30th, 2007First posted January 30, 2006 by jschwab
Curious what sorts of websites we in CCLC find worth bookmarking?
What?
You aren’t curious?
Oh. Well, then, I’m still going to tell you about our del.icio.us account anyways. If you haven’t heard of del.icio.us, it’s a social bookmarking tool that uses tags for organizing information. It’s meant to be an online bookmarking service for websites. As you browse the internet, you can quickly add pages to your account, and others can search or see what pages you’ve bookmarked using del.icio.us. Here–have a quick link to their about page.
Check out what we’ve bookmarked so far. Admittedly, some of it is more interesting than other pages.
Another FU Blog
January 30th, 2007First posted January 17, 2006 by jschwab
Once again I find myself blogging about the Furman Blogosphere, as the Theatre Department is once again pushing forward with using blogs to entice and promote interest in one of their projects. This time, however, the blogger at the FU 10 Minute Play Festival Blog is using podcasts to add to the interactivity of the site. Fellow Furman innovators–we at the CCLC Blog salute thee.
A few more blogs to check out
January 30th, 2007First posted November 18, 2005 by jschwab
We’ve added a few more links to our sidebar. These are links to other weblogs that are thematically related to our work in CCLC. The first is Friends of Writing Center Journal, an blog about writing centers (with a great list of resources and links). The other is Kairosnews, which is in their own words “A Weblog for discussing rhetoric, technology and pedagogy,” all things we’re always interested in here in CCLC. If you know of something interesting you think we’d like, let us know!
I Vant You to Read This Blog!
January 30th, 2007First posted October 24, 2005 by Katie
For good old-fashioned spookiness, I would like to offer official CCLC approval of Dracula Blogged. The guru behind the project, Bryan Alexander, has taken the journalistic publishing style of the blog and inserted Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Because Dracula is an epistolary novel — our fancy English-major word for a tale comprised of letters and journal entries — the blog format is a natural progression.
Each journal entry, letter, newspaper clipping, or telegram has been posted on the appropriate day — and when applicable, at the appropriate time of day. Since the beginning, readers have been excited that the blog format gives them a true appreciation of how long characters may spend traveling or trapped, or how much sometimes happens in a short span of time (well, maybe we don’t need that lesson, being Furman students).
I just said “readers have been excited” because of course one of the fun parts of blogging is that it allows for feedback! While occaisionally the Dracu-blog’s comments include spoilers, the community of readers is generally careful about acknowledging the fact that they are about to give something away. Despite this, the comments are definitely worth reading: Dracula experts point out details and connections that the casual reader might miss. A bit like footnotes, only with the occaisional joke or snide remark thrown in!
The blog has been going since early May and will continue into November, so there’s just enough time to catch up before the grand finale! Go ahead…meet a few vampires.