I gave a talk at the ITS Forum yesterday with a colleague here at Penn State related to Podcasting and Penn State on iTunes U yesterday. Jimmy V focused on the hard core technology behind making the iTunes U system work in our environment, while I did a more general talk focusing on why we would do podcasting at the Institutional level, an update on the state of podcasting in general, and a full on demo of our iTunes U space. Reaction was fairly positive … at any rate here is a QuickTime file of the slides without audio or any real content, but there they are … there is a podcast and a videocast of the session being produced — I’ll link that when it is available.
Enjoyed the presentation, although Jimmy V’s hard core tech stuff was way out of my league. I’m still struck by the number of comments/questions around the public v. private issue. To me the real value of course experiences come from interactions around interesting problems – the co-construction of meaning. The “lecture†material is just (some of) the content around which we interact. Who cares if it’s out there? Merely hearing a “lecture” does not a professional make.
I would love to see a real push by someone on our campus to embrace open courseware … I really don’t think it needs to be a centrally controlled project, but I would love to have a hand in it. I wonder what College would be a good model? Carla, any thoughts?
Hmm. An entire College sounds big and unwieldy. What about a program? I happen to know a group that likes to work on the edge and press boundaries. Seems like a core group of faculty who embrace (to use your word) open courseware AND study the implications for teaching and learning could be interesting and powerful. So what does having a hand in it mean for you?
A hand in it means helping and being a part of it. There are great models out there for us to look at and model … this could be one of those unique occasions where we should talk about it — maybe even over email 😉 … if there is a program on campus willing to think about it I am interested.