You may have noticed that things have been a bit sparse around here lately…

Well, we can explain that. Most of us here at iThinkEd work at universities, and it’s been pretty hectic — followed by a few happy weeks off.

So in the meantime, while we recharge our batteries (and those of our iPhones), we’d like to wish all of you a happy holiday season. We’ll look forward to seeing you in the new year – with lots of nifty stories (our room, flight, and tickets are already booked for MacWorld!) and some nifty new features we’ll be rolling out in the coming months.

In the meantime, we’re hoping for peace — and a better life for those who are suffering.

Happy holidays from all of us at iThinkEd. 

Recently, U Tech Tips, a site that posts various tips and tricks for educators, compiled an interesting media survey charting the now almost ubiquitous employment of podcasting in higher education. The post discusses articles from the Chicago Sun Times, the Washington Post and the AP that address the growing academic trend.

The Sun Times surveys educators use and requirements of podcasting at US universities, taking a brief look at podcasting leaders like DePaul and Duke. Likewise, the Post conducts a fascinating examination of podcasting lectures especially available through iTunes U and reports Wright State’s plans to unveil library podcasting rooms. The University’s Head of References and Instruction for the Dunbar Library, Sue Polanka, states, “We wanted to bring what’s up-to-date, fun and common for today’s students to the library here at Wright State. Myself along with a few others came up with the idea so students can create digital files, make power point presentations or create videos using our server at the library.”

The AP reports that the University of Gloucestershire is considering assessing students through podcasts and DVD rather than traditional exams. School officials suggest that they would like to see a substantial reduction in the use of examinations at every level of the University and their replacement by more 21st-century approaches to assessment.

Consequently, the tech companies are starting to line up. Aside from providing dedicated space in iTunes, Apple has a collaborative server just for wikis, etc. Apple also now hosts free educational content not produced by universities in an initiative called Beyond Campus. In addition, Cisco has recently announced its entry into the lucrative market.

Our friends over at iPhone Matters have suggested a compelling possibility: a partnership between Apple and Livescribe that would result in the marriage of the iPhone with Livescribe’s forthcoming smartpen.

The smartpen, which will come out in the 1st of 2008, records and syncs audio with whatever you write and transfers your notes and drawings to your PC to backup, replay, and even share online. It also enables you to search for words within your notes to find exactly what you need in seconds.

The folks at iPhone Matters suggest that Apple should partner with or at least allow Livescribe to develop iPhone integration so that pages may be uploaded and then stored on the phone for later viewing without a computer. This would allow an iPhone/smartpen user to take notes on real paper, which would be transferred into notes on the iPhone automatically. Reviewing a lecture would be easy both on the phone and with the pen, and this mobile version could email the pages to others immediately after captured on paper.

If you like the idea and want to hear more, check out iPhone Matters full article.

Last month Nakahara Informatics released iGet Mobile, a remote access package that allows users to retrieve their Mac files from an iPhone or iPod touch (or any other web-capable device, including Windows PCs). The software, which installs on the Mac, allows access to Mac OS X, Windows and other operating systems and includes a lightweight web interface to access the files.

The program also offers iPhone-exclusive document conversion features, which permit larger files to be scaled down to work with the iPhone or RTFD files to be rendered as a PDF. iGet Mobile retails for $39, but is available for a limited time for $29. The program requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later to run.

Nakahara has taken care to preserve the “60-second learning curve.” So, while iGet Mobile offers a sophisticated web interface to your Mac, secure SSL encryption, and great Mac savvy, you can be up and running 60 seconds after you download iGet Mobile to your Mac.

For more information check out iPhone Alley’s full article.

MIR3 recently announced the availability of the first enterprise notification and command interface for the iPhone and iPod touch mobile communications platform. MIR3’s full-featured Web-based management applications run under Apple’s mobile Safari browser to enable IT administrators or corporate executives to initiate emergency notifications and remotely manage enterprise notification systems and response teams using Apple iPhone or iTouch mobile devices.

MIR3’s iPhone interface also functions as an automated mobile command dashboard that allows executives or administrators to instantly notify and initiate live voice conferences among the appropriate response-team members, and access MIR3’s real-time reporting features to track notifications and responses on their iPhone. Amir Moussavian, CEO of MIR3, suggests that “Mobile devices may be the only functional option for decision makers during an emergency, and we believe that the iPhone, with its game-changing communication capabilities, will be a preferred crisis management and emergency communications tool for many of them.”

MIR3’s interface might be a very compelling option for university administrators seeking to implement effective emergency notification systems on campus. For more information, check out the full marketwire article.

Nicholas Deleon of CrunchGear posted an interesting article that describes the recent movement in the Japanese electronic market away from PCs and toward smaller devices that offer similar features. Deleon reports that, in Japan, PC shipments have fallen five consecutive quarters, and analysts are beginning to wonder out loud if PCs have a future in Japan at all. He askes, “Why use Safari on a MacBook when you can whip out your iPhone and do the same thing?”

Similarly, the AP recently featured the story of one college-bound Japanese student who lists headphones, a digital camera and a new video game console as college-life must-haves but fails to make any mention of the need for a PC. For the price, the student says, PCs aren’t worth it. The AP reports that the PC’s role in Japanese homes is diminishing, as its once-awesome monopoly on processing power is encroached by gadgets such as smart phones that act like pocket-size computers, advanced Internet-connected game consoles, and digital video recorders with terabytes of memory.

Perhaps Japan will only be the first major market to see a decline in personal computer use some 25 years after it revolutionized household electronics—could this be the picture of things to come in other countries?

A 2006 Bridge Ratings study reported that “less than 20% [of users] listen to their podcast downloads on an MP3 player or other digital device. This metric has not changed since our initial study of podcast behavior in July of 2005.” In the last year, similar studies continue to challenge prevailing wisdom that podcasters are producing portable broadcasts for people on the go, but two recent updates suggest truly mobile podcasting may be closer than we think.

In September, we noted that the release of the iTunes WiFi Music Store meant that mobile nirvana was just around the corner: automatic, wireless subscriptions to podcasts and educational content downloaded directly to your portable device. Though it’s unclear when iTunes WiFi will add access to free podcasts and iTunes U content or how the iPhone would handle RSS subscriptions, the groundwork is being laid for a new way to take advantage of content on the go.

Last month a second release of even greater import to the future of mobile education came hidden in the release of Leopard Server: Apple’s new Podcast Producer. Many of us at EDUCAUSE in Seattle last month were struck by the power and simplicity of this solution for producing, processing, and publishing content from classrooms across campus.

To continue the alliterative excitement, Podcast Producer partners with the Podcast Capture program hidden in your Leopard Utilities folder. (For a glimpse of the future, launch Podcast Capture and check out the “Help” on screen capture or custom workflows.)

For educators, a solution that combines Podcast Producer in the classroom with iTunes Wi-Fi on the go could finally bring “push-podcasting” to a converged media device near you — a chance to produce and distribute content automatically. With automated encoding, podcasts could be customized with different platforms in mind, simplifying distribution of audio and video versions of the same content. In broader campus-wide deployments, additional iPhone-formatted content could capitalize on the wide screen to make screen captures and detailed bulleted slides more effective.

Apple has previously worked with partners like AT&T to improve convenience and usability through features like Visual Voicemail and seems committed to extending the visibility and access of iTunes U. We hope the arrival of push-podcasting will be another landmark in portable broadcasting — a development tailor-made for the 21st-century classroom.

In my last post I discussed how I have been using the iPhone and Blogger to spark interactive discussion in one of my psychology classes. In this post I want to highlight another useful feature of the iPhone to support a class blog: The iPhone’s YouTube capability.

When you begin your teaching career you generally share, due to your youthfulness, the pop-cultural sensibilities of you students. You watched the same sit-coms and movies. You listen to the same music.

But as time passes (I’m now in my tenth year of teaching) you begin to notice that this shared sensibility begins to fade. For instance, when I started teaching I would often illustrate a point by referring to a Seinfeld episode. But ten years later I get blank stares when I make these same references. Unless the students are sitcom aficionados they no longer “get” Seinfeld references. And this makes me feel very old. How can I keep my lectures and class discussions hip and culturally timely?

Before I answer that question, let me address why I think this is important in the first place. My goal when I connect class material to pop-culture isn’t simply to improve student rapport, to be perceived as “cool.” Of course, those aren’t terrible outcomes, but they are not directly related to the intellectual objectives of the class. Rather, my reason for connecting class material to pop-culture is to create an associative apparatus for my class. Let me explain. (more…)

In a lecture on educational technology, which concluded Purdue University’s “Cybersecurity Awareness Month,” Gerry McCartney, Purdue’s vice president for information technology, asserted that higher education isn’t likely to get as high-tech as many people think.

“There’s going to be technology in the classrooms,” McCartney said. “But I see a high priority to being in a room with other people.” Rather than replace classroom meetings, McCartney believes technology will be used to help students out of the classroom to do things that today require human interaction.

John McEldorf, service delivery manager for Information Technology at Purdue, suggests the key to the future of educational technology will be finding a handheld device that combines all current devices that students can use in any way they like to advance their educations, such as Apple’s iPhone. Because “nobody learns the same way,” McEldorf says students could use converged mobile devices to be as high-tech as they want.

Purdue students generally welcome the technology, as long as their professors know how to use it well. A student interviewed by the school newspaper said he’s been in classes where professors thought they knew more than they did and it made learning more difficult. “A lot of it depends on how instructors coordinate it,” exclaimed the student. “There wasn’t enough planning.”

Addam Schroll, an information technology security analyst at Purdue, said he sees that getting better, though, as people who fill the jobs and who become Purdue students have been introduced to technology at younger ages. “They’re socialized more to it,” Schroll said. “It might make relating it to younger students easier.”

For the full article, check out Purdue’s BoilerStation Online.