February 21, 2010

Dr. Alice Christie's Web Design Resources for Educators

I took a look at Dr. Christie's Web Design Page and found it to be quite interesting. It made me take interest in school websites, so I took a look at the website for my old high school, Theodore High. I discovered my old site to be highly obsolete and lacking on updates as though whoever designed the site updates it once a month and calls it a day. I even found the navigation to be a pain, which was one of the two criteria that Dr. Christie claims makes an excellent school website.

Thanks to Dr. Christie's guide I can probably use this to maintain a decent website for students and, if it's good enough, possibly even the school website. Make it easier to navigate, relevant to what people want to know, and entertaining to be at. I can also use it to make sure I don't step on any copyright issues that I never seem to realize I've crossed until it is too late... Which is bad...

iTunes U

Just the idea of iTunes U is quite amazing. The fact that you can give lectures as podcasts, with the ability for it to be able to download from anywhere you have access to iTunes. That means that I can hear anything my teacher has to say from anywhere I have signal from my iPhone!

I learned more about iTunes U from watching the video:

First of all, it's absolutely brilliant how they thought this through. They take what seems to be just a norm that every college student just happens to have an iPod of some sort, and they create an entire podcast genre based solely around college students in an attempt to continue their education by use of a product pretty much every student has. I used to think that iTunes U was nothing more than a digital text book for whatever subject you wanted, but this has made me realize that this is so much more than that. It's also a networking system in itself that helps every student who subscribes and listens to it, can be completely up to date with the news current events of their school. Does South Alabama have an iTunes U Channel?

iPods in Instruction

In 2001, Apple created the iPod which started off as nothing more than a fancy mp3 player. However, 9 years later, it has become a device that is a part of everyday life. Aside from providing background music for your morning work out or your quiet day at work and an amusing video game player, it can now provide people with class lectures, life philosophies, and even recipes for dinner that night!

In August 2004, Duke University tried an experiment with the Fall Freshman class and provided each of them with a 20 GB iPod and a Belkin voice recording device. They evaluated exactly how often these iPods were used and for what purpose. About 60% were recorded using them for academic purposes, showing that the iPod's conventional uses, i.e. music and movies, are becoming more and more about it's less conventional features, such as podcasts and lectures.

Though music shall forever remain the main function of the iPod, as time progresses, having it solely for that purpose will become less likely. Since their primary target audience are college level students, the more academic features that will be developed over time will more than likely become the new primary function of the iPod.