Does Your Department Blog? - Why Not?

@micamonkey recently posted a comment on Twitter.com in which she mentioned that at least three departments at the National University of Singapore (NUS) had department blogs. I asked her who these were and she sent me these three links:

• Sociology Dept. - http://socioblogsg.wordpress.com/
• Biodiversity research group in the Biological Sciences Dept. - http://nusbiodiversity.wordpress.com/
• Industrial Design Program - http://moduleblog.nus.edu.sg/blogs/id4104/default.aspx

The differences among these three blogs is interesting. Here a are screen grabs of their headers along with a few comments from me:


The Sociology blog page is used almost entirely to announce events. Tabs on the blog provide basic static information, like a traditional web 1.0 website.


The Biodiversity research and education group's blog is more diverse than that for Sociology. Blog postings include announcements of an NUS library blog and the promotion of a professor, a job announcement, and several posts linked to news stories about NUS's discovery of a lung-less frog. The "Blogs, et al." link is a substantial list of blogs and online journals associated with research and classes (called "modules" in Singapore) related to the Biological Sciences Dept. More static links go to a list of classes and the student club, which seems to be responsible for this blog.


The Industrial Design program's blog at NUS is called "ID @ NUS" and describes itself as:

This blog serves as a platform to provide design information to industrial design students in the National University of Singapore (NUS). It also serves as a flatform to demonstrate the teaching outcomes in NUS ID programme, in particular, the final year studio and thesis projects.

Most of the current blog posts are about forthcoming design competitions. Unlike the other blogs, there is no static information is provided on the blog site -- at least not yet.

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This relatively random selection of three department/program blogs shows the considerable diversity of ways that department can use blogs to keep their students and the general public up to date on their activities. They range from the more social networked engaged to the more straightforward announcements (almost like an email list), and from the more narrow sites to broader information dissemination.

Blogs offer a very easy way (in my opinion) to keep the different populations served by academic departments informed and up to date on department activities. It can supplements the traditional alumni newsletter that is common in the US (I am not sure how common they are elsewhere) with more timely information updates. They can help build alumni support, as well as engage current students and recruit future students. And they can give department accomplishments more exposure both within the university and to the larger public who pay a good part of the budgets of state/government universities.

Blogs also allow for RSS subscriptions, which are widely appreciated and used by those of us who are more into the social software realm. But more importantly, RSS allows these blogs to be re-purposed in other ways across the Internet, thereby giving each blog the potential to reach well beyond the immediate links above, and thereby exposing them to larger audiences. The blogs can be reposted on other websites and subscribed to in RSS readers, such as Google Reader (which is what I use).

So, when @micamonkey wondered in hwer tweet whether or not departments should blog, I think yes, absolutely -- every department should blog. It is possible to set up a group blog that includes most of the faculty and principal administrative staff in a department. It is possible to install "blog this" utilities on their computers so they can quickly and easily post to the blog without needing to go to Wordpress or Blogger.

Despite my own participatory preferences, we might not want all faculty members to have access -- given the politics that can exist in some departments. And, of course, not everyone would want to blog, either. I am a geek and am often considered a little too far into the future by others in my department. In fact, I could imagine general resistance to this whole idea from some people in my department. Despite that, I still think it is a good idea!

(BTW - you can follow me in Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/alew)

Putting Lectures Online - Podcasts, Streaming, and more

I just returned from the 2007 Educause conference in Dallas, which had some 8,000 university IT and eLearning attendees, and almost as many vendors. There I learned of several companies in addition to BoxPopuli (see my previous blog entry) that offer classroom recording/podcasting products similar to BoxPopuli. My impression is that these tools are more robust (more features) than is currently offered by BoxPopuli, but then they may also cost a lot more.

To start, I suggest that you check out this online lecture at Mediasite.com. Yes, it is a sales pitch, but it gives you a good idea of what is possible with these lecture capture and recording tools.

• Emerging Trends in Classroom Webcasting - Presenter:A. Sean Brown VP, Market Development; Date:7/11/2006; Length:1 Hour 4 Minutes 51 Seconds

Mediasite.com (by Sonicfoundry) is both a tool for putting recorded "navigable" lectures online, as well as a directory of lectures that can be viewed from the Mediasite webpage. Like all of the other tools listed here, as well as Box Populi, they offer both a hardware box and software to manage the lecture capture and upload.

Others who offer similar tool are (descriptions of each are copied from their websites):

Tegrity.com -Tegrity Campus is the first student achievement system that impacts learning across the entire institution, improving retention and student satisfaction. Tegrity makes class time available all the time by automatically capturing, storing and indexing every class on campus for replay by every student. With Tegrity, students quickly recall key moments or replay entire classes online, with digital notes, on their iPods and cell phones.

Horizon Wimba Voice Tools - Perfect for language learning and creating vocal exercises in any subject, our web-based voice tools facilitate and promote vocal instruction, collaboration, coaching, and assessment. Increase the interaction and student engagement level of any online class by allowing faculty and students to easily embed vocal interactions into the page level of their CMS (Course Management Systems. Wimba Voice Tools are now perfect for Podcasting and iPods.

Anystream's Apreso - Apreso Podcast software can be affordably, and unobtrusively, installed on existing podium computers in any classroom where lectures are to be captured. This "capture station" automatically interacts with classroom audio sources to record the professor's remarks. It encodes the lecture audio into a podcasting-ready MP3 version of the classroom experience, called an "Apreso," which can then be accessed on-demand from iTunes or other portals, and synchronized to iPods for later replay.

Techsmith.com's Camtasia Studio with Screencast.com's web hosting - Camtasia Studio 4.0 helps you keep pace in a mobile world by making it easy to publish videos and MP3 files for iPod and other portable media players. Now your marketing message, screencast, lecture, or just-in-time training video can reach your audience practically anywhere – on the bus, in a coffee shop, or while they’re jogging. Camtasia Studio videos are simply designed to share....You can publish your videos directly to Screencast.com from Camtasia Studio 4.0. Then, send your viewers to Screencast.com to see your content, or use the site’s built-in RSS and iTunes functionality to automatically deliver the content to them.

Accordent.com's Capture Station - Offered as a fully integrated system, the Accordent Capture Station seamlessly records and synchronizes audio, video and data output from any presentation device (notebook PC, document camera, smart board, etc.) and instantly turns it into an online rich media presentation. Version 2.0 gives administrators the ability to remotely provision resources such as classrooms and encoders as well as automatically stop and start the presentation capture process from a centralized location with Accordent's Event Scheduling & Notification module.

There may have been a few others, but I can't remember them all after three days of higher ed IT overload. I would be happy to add others to this post if anyone lets me know about them.

Box Populi + Meedu = Podcasting for Academia

I came across Box Populi (formerly Webcast in a Box) at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo last week in Ontario, California. The event was a podcast feed-fest! I found almost all of the booths in the exhibition hall of interest, though there was not much that was focuses on education. Among items of potential interest to educators, the guy at Libsyn told me that they are planning to roll out university version of Libsyn Pro (their corporate podcast tool), and Box Populi was showing their almost turnkey podcasting solution.

Box Populi is basically a computer running software that is designed to automate the podcast creation and posting process. It is targeted specifically toward universities that want to podcast lectures. Lecturers would connect a wireless mic for recording themselves and insert a USB thumb drive to identify themselves and their class, and start the recording. When they are done, they remove the UBS drive to stop the recording, which is automatically formatted and uploaded to a server for distribution. The box costs about $1000 and you would need one in each classroom where lectures are being recorded. The Box Populi software (which is open source) can also be configured to run on other computers. The wireless microphone is extra, I believe.

Meedu.org (pronounced Mee-djoo) is a podcast hosting service at UC San Diego that is currently offering to host academic podcasts for free on the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Podcasts can be public or have restricted access.

In talking to the two guys from Box Populi at the Podcast Expo, it sounded like they have a very simple to use, almost turnkey lecture recording and podcast posting device that should enable any school to emulate Stanford on iTunes. I have not yet seen a list of schools who have adopted the Box Populi tool, though there is a quote on the Meedu.org website from Fullerton Community College.

NEW: Marcus at BoxPopuli sent me a partial list of schools (and a few media sources) that have purchased their device. This contains 30 entries, among them: UC's Berkeley, Irvine and San Diego, San Jose State University, Oregon State University and the University of Oregon, Princeton, and the Naval Postgraduate School. Non-university buyers include CNN, Powells Bookstore, Intuit, and Atlanta Water and Sewage.