September 2007 Archives

A student is on campus for the day and in between classes, she decides to listen to an interview that one of her professors did with an expert in her field to get some ideas for a term paper. So she pulls out her iPhone, goes to the iTunes store, finds her course in Penn State's iTunesU space, and downloads the interview.

I really hope that's how the new iTunes Store on the iPhone is going to work -- but it doesn't look that way. The posting from Apple talks about needing to be at a WiFi hot spot and touts the 6 million songs that will be available, but there is a LOT of other content in iTunes aside from music: TV shows, public podcasts, iTunesU content, movies, games, and ringtones are all available. Most of these can generate income and should be relatively simple file downloads. Okay, granted that downloading a 3+ hour movie to your iPhone may tax the phone and the WiFi network that you're on, but the rest of the content should be free game.

So if any of you know someone at Apple, please pass this along. The next time I'm stuck in an airport, walking into work, or out with friends, I'd like to be able to browse all kinds of content. Honestly, I don't listen to that much music these days, but I consume podcasts like mad and I'm willing to pay for a good show.

In the Fall of 2006, I was asked to investigate a tool called Studiocode. It's tool that lets you play a video and tag the video with keywords. Later, you can go back and quickly call up instances where those keywords applied or intersected. For example, if you're doing research on body language within classroom lectures, you could video record several class sessions and then create keywords like "nodding", "crossed arms", "leaning forward", "doodling", "writing on whiteboard", "student presentations", etc... Later, you could search through all of the video recordings and watch a movie of all cases where students were doodling while the instructor is writing on the whiteboard or when students are nodding during presentations by other students.

This has applications to any type of video-based analysis: animal behavior, athletic events, theatrical performances, weather pattern videos, group dynamics, focus groups, assembly line analysis, user interface testing, etc... If this sounds interesting, here are a few things you may want to check out:

• First, we had a small group of faculty and staff use Studiocode and write a whitepaper that summarizes what it can do and how it can be applied to an educational setting
• Next, Jamie Oberdick interviewed me and Carla Zembal-Saul (from the College of Education) so we could discuss what StudioCode can do and how Carla was using it
• Then, we had Ryan Peck from the Studiocode Business Group come to Penn State and give a training session
• Carla Zembal-Saul and Scott McDonald (College of Education) gave one presentation and John Messner (College of Engineering) and George Otto (Visualization Group) gave another presentation at the 2007 Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium.
• As part of the ETS Talk Podcast, we made the official announcement that Penn State is getting a university-wide site license for Studiocode that will cover all university-owned macs.
• We recently created a Studiocode Forum on the Learning Design Community Hub, for discussion of Studiocode and its uses.

If you want to try this yourself, you can get a demo copy of Studiocode from Sportstec, the company the produces Studiocode. If you have a university-owned computer, you can also get a free license for Studiocode from the Penn State Computer Store. Just do a search for "Studiocode" and buy the license -- there is no cost. If you're a student or other person who does not have a university-owned Mac, you can go to one of our computer labs and try it there. As of September 12, 2007, it is installed and working in the ITS-operated Mac labs.

So there you have it...you're one-stop shopping for Studiocode resources. Additional updates will be posted to the Studiocode Forum in the Learning Design Community Hub.