Hevel.org: A Chasing after Wind

Apple has quietly been putting together one of the best resources for higher education on the web, their collection of university sponsored and uploaded content called iTunes U. I have bragged on it a couple of times, as have many other bloggers. The new iTunes 9 software, however, is a game-changer. For the first time, users can manage the iTunes U content on their iPods separately, as they have long been able to manage podcasts, videos, etc.

Notice the screenshots below. One can manage settings for iTunes U in general, or for individual subscriptions. In the settings within the iPod, one can choose to sync all items, all new items, or some number of the newest or the least new items. That last bit is something that used to bug me before they fixed it. Even with normal podcasts, often I don’t want to hear the most recent unplayed items, I want to start from the beginning and work my way forward.

This new functionality is in addition to an important change made in the iPhone 3.0 software, the ability to download and manage iTunes U content directly on one’s iPhone or iPod Touch.

Here is Apple’s introductory page for iTunes U, and here is a page spotlighting new iTunes U content.

I am currently working through ways to put some of my course material online in a publicly accessible way, and these new developments have convinced me that I don’t need to reinvent the wheel (i.e., create my own website), administer a complex CMS (i.e., Drupal) or put up with clunky hidden gardens (i.e., Moodle). The extra piece that Drupal or Moodle gives you is the conversation and feedback, but there are plenty of dedicated forum and commenting systems that are relatively easy to setup and can be used alongside the iTunes delivery mechanism.

An important objection is that this system ties people to Apple’s software, music players, and handheld devices. Yes and no. First, one can view all of this material on the computer in iTunes, and so is not required to buy an iPod. For watching or listening on the go, an iPod is necessary, but I am willing to accept the limiting nature of that in exchange for Apple’s market penetration. [I would not have said this 5 years ago, but I am getting more practical-minded in my old age. Am I selling out, my young firebrand friends?]

Schools that are not already on iTunes U (hello, Furman?) need to look into it as soon as possible. Browse through the Duke University offerings (one of the first schools to embrace iTunes U a few years ago) to see the possibilities. In addition to courses, lectures, and dialogues, they feature at least one podcast (Mark Goodacre’s excellent NTPod) and student generated content associated with particular campus organizations.

On the religion/Bible front, there is some good content on there, but the conservative schools (RTS, Fuller, Dallas Theological) seem to have a big head start. I love that they are on there, don’t get me wrong, but let’s get more full courses from Duke Divinity, Candler, and, yes, Furman to balance the spectrum a bit.

Finally, I am not going to rehearse my arguments for putting scholarship online, but I will reiterate a bottom-line point: this is an amazing marketing opportunity for universities and individual scholars. The days of the “public intellectual” are gone; let’s have public academia!

[UPDATE: See this post about iTunes U management on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This is an integral piece of the puzzle.]

I saw this on Kung Foo Grippe. Be sure to stick with it; the last minute gives me so much joy to watch.

Jonah Reviews Movies, Episode Six: The Incredibles from Ben Compton on Vimeo.

I’m going home to play with my boys…

In my Freshman Seminar this semester, I tried something a bit unusual. Instead of assigning the printed version of the first class text (Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book), I assigned the audiobook version.  I had three reasons for doing this.

First, I have designed the course to be a romp through different genres and media forms.  We are reading a book for children (The Graveyard Book), somewhat lighter plot-driven novels (Stardust, Neverwhere, Good Omens), serious “adult” fiction (American Gods, Anansi Boys), and one part of the Sandman graphic novel series (Part IV, A Season of Mist).  In addition, we will watch movies such as Stardust, Beowulf, and Princess Mononoke.  To complement this diversity of form, I have assigned the audio versions of The Graveyard Book and Anansi Boys (the first and last books of the term).

Second, the audiobook versions of these two books have some benefits to readers over the printed versions.  These novels both rely a good bit on the nuances of accent, phrasing, and mood.  A skilled audiobook performer can help the reader enter into an alien world through artistic coloring, phrasing, and expression.  In these cases, Neil reads the Graveyard Book himself and although he is not a professional reader, he does an excellent job with the accents and especially with the mood/feeling of the writing.  There is a point near the end in which a main character transforms from a kindly gentleman to a ruthless killer, basically evil incarnate.  Neil’s reading of this moment is truly chilling.  He won an Audie for his performance, by the way.  The reading of Anansi Boys is done by Lenny Henry, a British comedian who handles the various British, American, and Caribbean accents wonderfully.  Neil has declared it his preferred version of the book, saying that he had Henry’s voice in his head while he was writing the book.

Third, the Freshman Seminar program is intended as an engaging entrance into college life, courses that challenge new freshmen to think and converse seriously and deeply, and to find their writing voice.  I find audiobooks to be fun and rewarding, and I hope that students will enjoy the unsettling aspect of hearing a book read to them rather than the (sometimes) sterile academic reading process.  I want them to engage the material beyond simply doing the “reading assignments” and checking off items from the syllabus.

That said, we are past the first book, and results were interesting.  In their weekly reflection pieces, most of the students expressed some frustration with the audiobook form.  There were some complaints about the performance itself. (Nothing serious, but rather things that reflect the fact that Neil is not a professional actor.  In general they liked his reading.)  Mostly, however, they felt out of their comfort zone and reported that they either had trouble paying attention or following the details of the story.  Whereas they might stop to write some notes in reading, they couldn’t do that while listening.

Some of this is a matter of experience and strategy.  I encouraged them to listen while walking around outside rather than sitting at their desk (too many distractions!), and to pause/rewind to hear sections again or to make a note.  They have one more audiobook to go, the last assignment of the semester, so it will be interesting to see how they respond differently then.  Anansi Boys is more complex and longer than The Graveyard Book, so they will definitely need to develop a strategy for getting the most out of the audiobook experience.

Do you like audiobooks?  Does academic learning require a printed text, do you think?

I know what I said in my last post: “the time will come when the vast majority of the world’s knowledge will be available in portable, archivable, and justly-distributed electronic form.”  I believe that, and I want to help make it happen.

This, however, is just silly. A Massachusetts prep school has gotten rid of 20,000 books in their library in order to make room for giant computer monitors and a $12,000 espresso machine.  The idea is that students will read books on their computers or on one of 18 ebook readers that the library will lend out.  I love my Kindle, but it’s not ready to replace printed books, for heaven’s sake.  It augments, it complements, it expands the possibilites; it does not replace.

Here is the end of the article:

Dan Visel at the if:book blog linked to a great article at Pitchfork on the social history of the MP3.  Dan draws this analogy to the printed material industry:

I don’t know that there’s a direct analogue to the way the publishing industry is attempting to transform itself in the face of the digital, but Harvey gets it right by noting how the social use of digital media is more transformative than the move to the digital itself. Simply generating electronic versions of existing print books won’t be enough: forward-thinking publishers need to think about how reading changes when it becomes networked.

Exactly so.  You want to know the other thing that didn’t work with music and won’t work with the printed page?  DRM “rights management” schemes intended to tie particular electronic copies to particular paying customers.  When the music industry realized that they were providing the source material (i.e., CDs) for the millions of MP3s traded on Napster, they at first did stupid things like install root kits whenever their CDs were played on a computer.  When that little bit of devilry didn’t work, they reluctantly embraced digital media with restrictive rights management to prevent those songs from making their way to the P2P black market.   Now, DRM in music files is dead.

Electronic book publishing will follow a similar trajectory, in my opinion.  The seeds are all there.  First, there is a vibrant (yet small by mp3 standards) black market in electronic books.  The quality there varies greatly, and there is a lot of seriously crappy merchandise.  In other words, it’s a smaller version of Napster circa 2001.   Second, some of these pirated ebooks are the result of cracked electronic editions, but the majority come from the work of individuals who have scanned and OCRed printed materials.  This is a relatively difficult, time consuming, and technology-heavy undertaking, but is getting easier and easier.  In other words, the creation of ebooks is about where the creation of MP3s was in 1999-2002.

Don’t forget this maxim:  anything that can be read on a page or on a screen can be digitized, copied, and distributed. Nothing the publishing industry can do will change this fact.  They will fight the inevitable for a while longer, and be more successful than the music industry because fewer hackers like to read than like to listen to hip hop.  However, the time will come when the vast majority of the world’s knowledge will be available in portable, archivable, and justly-distributed electronic form.

Jen’s brother recently sent us pictures that he took on our family Topsail Beach vacation this summer.  I saw these as we were preparing for Joseph’s first day of K-4.  It’s sobering to think how fast your kids grow up, but watching them strike out on their own is exhilarating.

[On a technological note, this is the first time I've embedded a Flickr slidehow, and it's slick!  I could see using this for all kinds of teaching tools.  Click on the icon with the 4 arrows (lower right) to expand to full screen.]

Danny has captured my thoughts exactly.  A snippet:

Blah? Blah blah so many blah blah’s. Blah blah, cha-ching blah! Blah— blah blah blah NIV is satanic blah, blah blah ??? blah.

Jim West has posted information about the SBL’s project in development, The Bible in American Public Schools, which aims to help public school teachers address the Bible in their classes.  Here is a page of general information and here is the “e-pub” Teaching the Bible.  I am rooting big-time for this project.  This is the first thing I have seen from SBL that makes me think about checking that “extra donation” box on my registration form.

As an aside, I have already been helped myself by this site in my own teaching.  First, they provide this link to an interactive chart about different biblical canons, which is something I will be talking about in class on Friday.

Also, they link to the Bible Dudes, a site that is new to me, but I will now recommend to all of my youth minister friends.  The Bible Dudes, for example, have this page discussing the most important archaeological finds relating to the Bible.  This is something you can find elsewhere, but the list here is nicely comprehensive (Ketef Hinnom!) and the descriptions are balanced and careful.  Take a look, for example, at their discussion of the almost certainly fake inscription on the “James Ossuary.”  They point out that most scholars question its authenticity and end with this editorial comment: “Dude! Like collecting ancient artifacts is so totally bogus! The BibleDudes agree with Indiana Jones: artifacts belong in a museum!”

Right on, dude!

This is exceedingly good news.  Here is the press release:

Society of Biblical Literature Receives NEH Award
August 17, 2009

Atlanta – The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) has received a National Endowment for the Humanities planning grant to develop an interactive website that would improve public understanding of the Bible and its contexts. This website, “The World of the Bible: Exploring People, Places, and Passages” will feed the large public interest in matters biblical and will draw on the work of SBL members.

The Project Director is SBL executive director Kent Richards, who will oversee the planning phase for the website from September 2009 to September 2010.

The SBL, founded in 1880 to further the academic study of the Bible and related literature, is the world’s largest organization of biblical scholars with 8,700 members, including 2,400 outside North America. Non-sectarian in approach, the SBL includes professors and graduate students from both public universities and religious institutions of higher learning.

While the SBL continues to foster biblical scholarship through academic meetings and publishing, its strategic vision promotes sharing member expertise with diverse audiences, including students, religious communities, and the general public.  “Service to the wider public helps embolden scholarly research.  When communication between scholar and wider public is taken lightly or not engaged at all, both are diminished,” says Richards.

The SBL will work with the New York design studio S2N Media to develop a site that is attractive, easy to navigate, and fully interactive. The website is in its early stages of development. An advisory board meeting at the 2009 annual meeting in New Orleans will set the approach, style, and direction of the site.

Wayne Booth, in his presidential address to the MLA in 1982:

When we fail to test our scholarship by making its most important results accessible to non-specialists, we also lose our capacity to address, and thus recreate in each generation, the literate public who can understand its stake in what we do.

Now take the idea of “literate public” and think of it in terms of the church, and you see the pickle we’re in.  Much of the bad theology and uninformed practice found in the church has been made possible by the widening gulf between the people who believe the Bible and the people who study it seriously.  Writing for the church is not all that biblical scholars do, but it is certainly important.

Via John Ogden, commenting on this fantastic post from Gideon Burton.