Portable Digital Devices & Personal Metadata: creative uses of iPods & iTunes in educational settings: class outline

1. intro - Nicole
- why we are offering this
- what we'll cover

2. iTunes - Pam
- library
- metadata, view options, sort, clean up
- show duplicates
- playlists
- shared playlists
- smart playlists
- radio - streaming
- iTunes music store
- audiobooks
- burning CDs
- ripping CDs
- AAC vs. MP3 - workarounds


3. iPod - Nicole, other MP3 players - Pam
- loading the music from iTunes
- ways to sort: playlist, artist, song title, genre, etc.
- Extras - clock (alarm), contacts, calendar, notes, games
- using it as a hard drive
- DRM, copy protection issues & workarounds:
PyMusique iTunes Store hole re-opened by Jon Lech Johansen


4. Duke project with iPods - Nicole
- office for technology projects with library
- gave iPods to all freshmen
- faculty came up with lots unexpected uses: examples
- add-on for recording (Belkin voice recorder) - examples of recording uses
- when the technology gets easy and usable, people get creative
- portable, digital, easy, cool
- first cool technology, then find uses (instead of opposite)
- a public library loaned out shuffles with audiobooks pre-loaded
- music library loaned out shuffles with music reserves listening
- more on iPods in libraries


5. Podcasting - Nicole
- subscription service for audio files
- uses RSS with "enclosures"
- show client software: iPodderX
- subscribe to a "podcast"
- get the files, put on iPod or other mp3 player
- or play them on your computer: in Bloglines, click on "enclosure" link
- easy to listen on a regular basis
- Podcast Alley: a directory of podcasts
- Bibliocasting listserv : dedicated to a discussion of streaming media in the library environment.

6. Summary and ideas to discuss - Nicole
- personal metadata
- since people are using iTunes, they realize the importance of metadata
- is this related to "tagging" and social bookmarking? (future session on this topic)
- cool technology first, creative uses follow (when is this appropriate?)
- are there opportunities for us in this area?
- copyright, DRM, sharing of music and digital files, philosophy and law

- article: Piercing the peer–to–peer myths
First Monday 10:4, April 2005: "...loss claims have been greatly exaggerated and challenges the contention that recent sales declines are primarily attributable to file–sharing activities."

- article: The Long Tail
Wired News 12:10, Oct. 2004: "...Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream."

- The Long Tail - Wikipedia article

Portable Digital Devices & Personal Metadata: creative uses of iPods & iTunes in educational settings

Dear all-lib,

On April 21 we will offer a technology update session.

Portable Digital Devices and Personal Metadata
- creative uses of iPods and iTunes in educational settings

April 21
3 pm - 4 pm
DIRC

*** remember: iPods and iTunes are NOT just for Macs, they work with Windows, too!***

Questions we’re asking:
- What is all the buzz about iPods? Why are they so popular?
- iPods are NOT just for music….. other innovative and creative uses will be discussed.
- Podcasting - what is it? why are librarians interested in this?

What we’ll cover:
- Duke University’s recent project where all freshmen received iPods
- how iPods and iTunes are used to organize files (personal metadata)
- innovative uses for iPods and iTunes (it’s not only for music)

Topics for discussion:
- when the technology gets easy and usable, people get creative
- how the “cool” factor influences learning
- building and using personal metadata on the fly

All are welcome! (No need to RSVP)

thanks!

Nicole Hennig and Pam Nicholas

RSS feeds - class outline

A. Introduction
- how this came up, why we think this is important
- definitions
- the standards: RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom

B. Subscribing to feeds
- client software: Netnewswire, AmphetaDesk, more readers...
- web readers: Bloglines
- Firefox live bookmarks
- Firefox extension: Sage
- finding feeds to subscribe to: DayPop, Syndic8, Newsgator, NewsIsFree
- feeds in our e-journals and databases: American Institute of Physics
- podcasting (MP3 feeds): Podcast.net directory, "On the Media" podcast

C. Creating feeds
- blogs
- other tools: RSS-xpress editor, "scraping," generate from a database (PHP & MySQL)
- including your feed in other web pages
- others including your feed in their pages

D. Ideas for the future
- looking at what libraries are doing
- new book feeds: Univ. of Alberta new books
- library news feeds: Univ. of Alberta RSS feeds
- librarian blogs (like subject or course pages): cogsci librarian
- blogs for librarians: Catalogblog
- our vendors should provide RSS feeds: Knovel K-News
- some rss feeds at MIT: EdTech Times, MIT News Office, MITWorld

E. Open discussion

What is RSS?

Of course as soon as we sent out the email invitation to all-staff, a question came in: What is RSS? So here are a couple of links:

What is RSS?
http://www.eevl.ac.uk/rss_primer/#three

See also this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Really_Simple_Syndication

RSS feeds & Content Syndication: invitation to all staff

Dear all-lib,

Mark your calendars for March 3, 2:30 - 3:30 in DIRC. On that day we will offer a technology update session on RSS.

RSS feeds & content syndication

- Introduction: definitions, RSS standards

- Subscribing: client and web-based software, live bookmarks, searching for feeds

- Creating feeds: how web authors create feeds

- Ideas for the future: possible uses for the MIT Libraries (new book feeds, etc.)

- open discussion

All are welcome! (No need to RSVP)

thanks!

Erja Kajosalo and Nicole Hennig

A blog for my presentations

Since I'm doing a presentation for MIT Libraries' staff on RSS soon, I decided that an easy way to make the slides and handouts would be to create a blog for it. (instead of Powerpoint slides or HTML slides, as I sometimes do).

We're working on WordPress blogs for the MIT Libraries, but they aren't ready to go live yet, so I got a free "Blogger" account for the time being. So here we are... "Technology Talks." (I guess you could interpret that phrase in more than one way! :)