Learning more about Creative Commons and itunesU

I have been working with a fun bunch of faculty, support folks and Apple experts these last few days, and learning bits and pieces more about how to use various iOS apps and what to consider when starting a course in itunes U.

So, here some of may take-aways"

Copyright, Fair Use Creative Commons

One of our concerns when putting content online is of course the responsible use of material/content created by other folks.  As our amazing Apple educator pointed out to us, it is easy for us to tell students that they should not use other people's materials for their own work, but even better if we model this behavior for them.

Consider this for a moment - how many of us go online and find the first image that works for us when we put together a presentation for class?  And do we then always have at the bottom of the slide or at the end of the presentation an attribution to the source?  One way of modeling to our students responsible use of other folks' content is to show very explicitly where we get our content from, and, possibly even more important, make sure that this content is marked Creative Commons.

Creative Commons image, Kristina Alexanderson, flickr

One web site that makes it quite easy to find Creative Commons content is CC Search (http://search.creativecommons.org/).  This search engine allows for keyword searches across multiple creative commons areas and for targeting particular kinds of media in this search.  Try it out and see if the search results work for you.

Notice then, that each of the items that come up through this search have a Creative Commons license.  These come in different levels and give you a sense of what kind of use you can get out of the material.  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ gives you an overview over the options.  These options are available to you as well, so if you believe that your content should be out there for other folks to use in some shape or form, get it out there in this kind of way.

Itunes U

You may have gone into itunes U in the past to marvel at the courses and podcast series that are being produced by other universities around the world.  Itunes U is a great spot to get a free course or free materials about a subject matter that otherwise may not be that easily available to you.  What is the course or subject you are going to pick?

What you may not know is that you can also design your very own itunes U course.  While it may not be as easily distributed if you cannot connect it with a particular institution (and I am sure it is worth checking out if your institution already has an itunes U presence), you can still send folks an enrollment code.  To get started, go to https://www.apple.com/support/itunes-u/course-manager/ as this is the place that gives you an overview what is possible and the starting point to create your own course.  While you can just go ahead and click on Creating a New Course, it may make more sense for you to map out what you want your course to be like.  Best course of action:
1.  Look at the organization of some other itunes U courses.  Note that they all have an Overview, Posts, and Assignments.  Map out what you want to put into these different chunks.
2.  Think of Overview as the Outline, Posts as what you want to say to your students, and Assignments as what you want your students to do.
3.  Remember that you can embed into assignments web links (either off a regular web site or from other parts of itunes, including chapters out of books or segments out of other courses), your own materials, links to apps, links to video and audio files.
4.  You have to have a square image of yourself that is at least 300x300 pixels and a square image for your course that is at least 600x600 pixels -- so make both of these images a little larger than needed to be on the safe side.
5. You can add up to 4 other designers to your course so that you do not have to do this all alone.

Learning stuff about my ipad

I am sure there are plenty of web sites out there explaining all the great features you find on your ipad, so I am not going to cover everything in great detail, but just a few things I learned about today that I had not discovered on my own.

You may have been wondering how folks can send emoticons and other icons from their iOS devices.  Turns out this is one of the keyboards you can select.  You find the keyboard called Emoji under Settings, General, Keyboard, Keyboards.  Select any and all languages you think you may use at some point, including Emoji.  Now, when you are in an app, like Notes or email, and you want to change the keyboard to, say, German for an Umlaut, or Emoji for an icon, click the globe key on your keyboard (you will only have this as an option if you have more than one keyboard selected) to toggle to the next keyboard layout.  And then emote away.

You may have also been wondering about how you can have your iOS device read to you.  Under Settings, General, Accessibility, you have Voiceover that allows you to have the device read to you.  You also have Speak Selection in this area that, when enabled, will highlight a word when it is spoken.  This may be useful for folks with reading difficulties

For the ones among us who need to be able to increase the size of items, you have two choices.  If you simply want to adjust the default size of text displayed, you will find an option for adjusting Text Size under Settings, General, Accessibility, called Larger Text.  Under Accessibility, you also have the ZOOM functionality, though it may take some getting used to this one.

If you want to delete something you have written, a vigorous shake will Undo.

If you want to be able to dictate notes, make sure you have Siri turned on.  Siri can also be customized under Settings, General -- you can change accent, Gender and a couple of other things about Siri.

If you have too many apps on your iOS device, remember that a swipe from the top brings up the Search bar - -and this is a search that also looks at content, not just at the name of the app.  Also, if you have too many apps, you can pull them into categories - -and you can have multiple screens within one category.

You may have heard that you need to close your apps in order for the ipad not to lose its battery life so quickly.  This is a myth. Apps do not use any power unless they are on the screen.  The only exceptions are the Music app and some mapping apps.  However, if one of your apps does not behave the way you want it, closing it out completely will force the app to restart.  To do this, double-click on the home button (the button that allows you to shift between apps), and when you see the apps that are open on your screen, drag the misbehaving one to the top to see it disappear out of the list.

Australia: Last and Longest Day...

and lessons learned from traveling

The final day was a very long day of traveling.  Forget June 21 as the longest day of the year; this year, it was for our group June 15.  We started out at 8am, June 15, left towards California, landed after 13 hours flight at 8am, June 15, and just kept going until we were home at 10pm, June 15, in Atlanta.  That turned our usual 24 hour day into pretty much a 39 hour day!

waiting for the last flight

waiting for the last flight

Here some lessons learned from traveling -- if you know that the location you are going to has a washer and dryer, pack less.  And I mean considerably less, so that you will not need to buy a third suitcase at the end of the trip because you already started with very full suitcases from the start.

If you really need a hair dryer and other electric devices, remember that not only the plugs but also the voltage are different -- I think our group killed at least 4 hair dryers. It is highly likely that your hotel will have one in the room, or that you can borrow one.

If you are on a budget, take the budgeting sheet from Study Abroad seriously -- most developed countries are considerably more expensive than the US, so you will spend more money, whether you like it or not.

Pack and wear comfortable shoes -- flip flops will not work after mile 3 of walking.

Be adventurous -- try new foods, talk to people around you, go to a museum or a sports event, even if this is not your usual thing.

Australia and its food

Yes, we had way too many meals at various restaurants and other places, but that also meant lots of opportunities to try out new food.

Here are some of the customs we learned about:

vegemite -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegemite -- not to everyone's taste!

fish -- the sea food is great, and if nothing else, you need to try the fish and chips

fish and chips

morning tea-- in case you need an excuse to take a mid morning break, this is the perfect way to do it.

flat white, long black -- that is what you order in Australia, when you want to drink coffee -- either with lots of milk or black

roo -- or kangaroo -- you can find it, primarily as burgers.

While you will find fast food places of certain US flavors, a lot of the corner stores, small stores, small bakeries and such offer much healthier alternatives -- even the truck stops on their Interstate:

truck stop food ad

Here some of the places that had some interesting meals.

Rustic Pearl  http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/70/1727016/restaurant/Sydney/Rustic-Pearl-Surry-Hills

Watsons Park http://www.doyles.com.au/    for the Fish and Chippery

White Horse  http://whitehorsesurryhills.com/

The Clock Hotel http://clockhotel.com.au/

The Dolphin Hotel  http://lanternhotels.com.au/dolphin-hotel 

Messina:  http://www.gelatomessina.com/  best frozen dessert in town - I need to get the book

Gelato selection

Vacanza in the Hills  http://www.vacanza.com.au/

Xage Vietnamese  http://www.xage.com.au/

dinner at Xage

Xage

Zaida Lebanese  http://zaidacafe.com.au/

Mures Upper Deck http://mures.com.au/upper-deck/  in Hobart, Tasmania

Ball and Chain http://ballandchain.com.au/

Jackman & McCross https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jackman-and-McRoss/139201119459938  

raisin bread loaf

Australia, Day 21

The last day of this great trip saw two educational experiences for some of us.

A small group went to Bondi Beach for a surf lesson.  The teacher was great with clear explanations, visuals (hand-drawn maps in the sand) and positive encouragement -- and for most of us that indeed did the trick.

first lesson

how to lie

totally safe

how to balance

survival

In the afternoon, we went to the Sydney Opera House for a concert with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.  We heard Paul Hindemith's Concert Muusic for brass and strings, Op. 50, and Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 2. in B flat, Op. 19 and No. 1 in C, Op. 15.  Conductor was David Robertson, and Emanual Ax was the pianist.

inside the opera house

angle on the outside

The SSO has a strong online presence, and they are now moving to having selected concerts (like the one yesterday) streamed live via Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/SydneySymphony)

Australia, Day 20

This was the day to learn about wine:  vinyards, wine growing, wine making, and wine testing.

We went to three different vinyards in Hunter valley, with two giving us tours, and three giving us lots of wines to taste.

McWilliams' vinyard (http://www.mcwilliamswines.com.au/), with Maurice O'Shea, gave us a great tour of their facilities that focused on quality control, lots of stainless steel, automation, and chemistry and testing.

the lab

the stainless steel vats

Brokenwood (http://www.brokenwood.com.au/) gave us also some fun wines to taste.

Brokenwood wine selection

Tyrell's vinyard (http://www.tyrrells.com.au/)was our favorite.  This is one of the older vinyards in this region, and they make their wines still in very traditional ways.

original housing at Tyrell's

Here some fact(oid)s we learned:

• vines are cut into a T-ish shape with 8 nodes on either branch for best quality yield.  

  

  Tyrell's pruned vines

• roses are planted amidst vinyards because they are more susceptible to mold and fungi, so they are essentially the canary in the mold mine -- when they show spots, preventative treatment is necessary.
• these vinyards hand-pick their grapes
• harvest time is a 24/7, 2 shift undertaking, starting in January, potentially going through March.
• For the reds, the skins are left in the wine to give the wine color
• the white wine Semillon cannot be found in the US
• People study winemaking (with a lot of chemistry courses) at a university and then join a vinyard (if they are lucky).  Some vinyards also provide 6 months of on the job training, especially for international wine makers
• the oak vats and barrels are, in some cases, only used for 4 years and then reused for other purposes.  In other cases, especially the large ones are used much longer.  Not everyone uses oak barrels (many of which come from France).

  

  McWilliams' barrels

• In 2004, a ship load of contaminated cork essentially ruined that year's Australian wine -- since then, the industry has shifted completely to seals and screw tops.
• Bottleshock is when the wine gets moved from the barrels into bottles -- and if you then open the bottle too soon, the wine will still be a bit acidic because it was shocked in this move.
• and the making of a murder mystery:  one of the folks told us the story about one family wanting cuttings from another family.  They were denied, so, under the cover of darkness, they snuck over the fence and took some cuttings.  I am imagining that this should have led to at least one corpse in a barrel.

Wildlife of the day:  kangaroos and gang-gang cockatoos

Australia, Day 19

A couple of thoughts on international students at Australian universities:

Australian universities have a longer history of undergraduate students from other countries, especially from Asian countries, than US universities have.  Only in the last couple of years have US universities expressed interest in increasing their international undergraduate populations significantly - and this is of course about the money because international undergraduate students have to pay not only out of state but out of the country tuition.

Seeing this in action at an Australian university makes me wonder how wise a decision such an increase is.  International students make up a substantial percentage of the population, and they get funneled, or choose to be funneled, into particular majors, in particular business, accounting and such.  Unfortunately, this starts a cycle of increased class size with limited interaction with students.  The students do not get the support they need to make it effectively through the courses, and if their grades suffer due to lack of support they will complain because they are paying such a high tuition.  So the university is obliged to put at least some support structure into place that allows students to get either language or other support - and this costs of course money that may use up the tuition profit.

This increase in international students and class sizes is of course also no fun for the folks teaching these courses -- language barriers, cultural barriers, increase in class size and pressure from administration. 

This all begs the question how US institutions moving in this direction are planning on dealing with an increase in these particular numbers.

On a lighter note:  I went to the Arts Gallery of New South Wales that has some great art work from Australian artists (http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/galleries/australian/)

Art Gallery of NSW

I particularly like the work of Sydney Nolan, but there were also some cool paintings from Fred Williams, some Monets and Reubens, and some very cool bark paintings:  http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?media=bark-painting

Emus feeding

Australia, Day 18

So, what does graduate school look like in Australia?

Talking with a couple of folks over the last few days, it has become clear to me that there are some rather major differences in the way graduate students get their PhDs. Here are some differences between the US and Australia.
 1.  In the US, when you get admitted to a graduate program, you take courses -- this allows you to figure out which faculty member you want to work with and also get a better sense whether your research focus is reasonable.  In Australia, you write a 5000 word proposal, present the proposal in a public setting to the potential committee and anyone else who is interested, and after the proposal is approved, you start writing -- no courses required except for some basic ones like lab safety.
2. In the US, you decide on your committee and chair.  Ideally, you will do this before you apply, but many folks also do this during course work.  Faculty can be chairs if they have an active research program, recent publications, and a certain rank.  In Australia, you choose a supervisor.  This supervisor not only needs to be current in research, but, at Macquarie, also needs to have gone through mandatory training to guide graduate students towards successful degree completion.
3.  In the US, many graduate students receive an assistantship that allows them to get a tuition waiver and even some money to live on.  In Australia, once a proposal has been approved, you submit a budget and timeline that gets approved, and based on this information, the university receives funding from the government in lieu of tuition.  This money comes in two chunks -- at the beginning and on timely graduation.
4.  In the US, you need to finish the degree in a certain number of years to ensure that you stay current in the research.  In Australia, you need to finish your degree (if a full time student) within 4 years (they are thinking of cutting this down to 3).  If you take longer, you will need to start paying the fees that the government would have paid for you.

sunset over Sydney

The Macquarie Center for Learning and Teaching just launched its blog that focuses on learning and teaching:  http://teche.ltc.mq.edu.au/

But it also helps other people across campus use the wordpress platform to get their messages out, too.

wildlife:  possum

Australia, Day 17

Takeaways from this day:

Macquarie University has a nice arboretum that incorporates native plants, with information on how the aboriginal people used them.

explanation of plants

vanilla lily

The university also has pretty much windows in all of its classrooms -- including windows out to the corridor to make it easier to see what is happening in the room.  This is primarily in those spaces where students do a lot of learning on their own, so, computer labs, active learning spaces.  These windows, just like the ones to the outside, have blinds.  While the furniture invites collaboration and active learning, the walls still focus the room to the front of the room because that is where the only white board is.

In those rooms where lecturecapture is an option, students are greeted on the door with the following text:

Attention Students
Please be advised that iLecture may be recording sound in the classroom during lectures and may potentially record student conversations.

I am wondering if we need to put such warnings on our doors as well and/or have that kind of statement in our syllabi if we decide to use lecturecapture.

Sydney is working very hard at preserving its buildings and, to some degree, its skyline, so any renovation in the center of town appears to be going down into the ground.  You will also see a lot of street art.

artwork in pedestrian tunnel

  One of the interesting old places is the Hyde Park Barracks museum  (http://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/hyde-park-barracks-museum).

This building, built in the early 19th century under Governor Macquarie's guidance, held convicts for quite a while and then other groups of immigrants, like the 4000 Irish orphan girls who came in the later 19th century during the Great Famine.  The museum does a great job of bringing this history back to life, engaging the visitors through little activities, and it even has a place where you can enter a name to see if there are any records about that particular name.

Mural outside the museum

room with convict profiles and sounds

convict hammocks

Australia, Day 16

After the ancient history of the previous day, this day brought one of Sydneians' favourite pastimes:  being out on the water.

A couple of folks in our group had the opportunity of going kayaking from the Balmain Secondary School campus at the entrance of Iron Cove, up parts of the Parramatta River just far enough so that we had a great view of the Sydney bridge and skyline -- and the weather that was coming in.

ready to go

Ben getting ready

Lee making sure we have everything

We then paddled to Cockatoo Island, which used to be the prison within the prison.  Any convicts with repeat offenses were sent to this island to work in the sandstone quarries.  As very few Europeans could swim during the 18th and 19th centuries, the water made the perfect barricade, especially with rumors of sharks.  Later, the island housed some docks, and some of the ware houses and cranes are still on it.  Now, the place allows for camping under the stars in Sydney, with Arts exhibitions and just a nice place to visit on the weekends  (http://www.cockatooisland.gov.au/).

And here an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on the current state of higher education in Australia:  http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/down-under-or-upside-down-higher-education-reforms-in-australia/33923?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Australia, Day 15

This day took me back a few thousand years to some Aboriginal rock carvings in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/NationalParks/parkHome.aspx?id=N0019).  After a rather long bus ride and a short ferry ride, we reached the Basin and took a trail up the cliff that is one of the steeper ones I have done.

At the top of the cliff we were guided to Aboriginal rock carvings.  My hunch is that they were inspired to engrave at this spot because the rock at this site appears like others have done their own engravings.

natural rock "engraving"

map to Gurungai land

hopping wallabies

man

Combined with the tree trunks of the Scribbly gum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_haemastoma), these were some very interesting images.

scribbly gum

We also saw quite a bit of wild life -- swamp wallabies appear to be the Australian squirrel or raccoon at the local camp grounds, lots of birds like bald eagles, cormorants, terns, parakeets, a possible jumper jack, and sulphur crested cockatoos that appear to be the local pigeon.  The views were also great, especially once we got off the beaten path.

view

more view

rock formation

swamp wallaby on the move

maybe a deadly jumper jack -- you have to look carefully!

Australia, Day 14

Focus of the day was exploration of Australian nature, so we went to the Featherdale Wildlife Park (http://www.featherdale.com.au/) and the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountain National Park (http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/NationalParks/parkHome.aspx?id=N0004), near Katoomba.

The wildlife park had almost all the animals one associates with Australia -- koalas, kangaroos, echidna, wombats, dingos, lots of interesting birds, including emus and cassowaries.

up close and personal with a koala

Yoda model?

Echidna on the move

more koala

and the Tasmanian Devil

We kept on going to the Blue Mountain National Park that contains the rock formation the Three Sisters -- the myth involves three sisters being turned to rock to protect them from the usual evil.  Beautiful landscape, and the accompanying World Heritage site set-up is using some cool technology to bring home the beauty of the landscape in very impressive ways, including a great use of one of the big Microsoft tablet tables.

large screens displaying pictures

Microsoft table with interactive maps

the Three Sisters

steepest train in the world before take off

fern trees

Next to the Three Sisters used to be a coal mine, and my hunch is that the tourist attraction of the steepest train in the world came out of the mine running dry-- but we did take this train and had the opportunity to walk through some rain forest at the bottom of the gorge, with very cool fern trees.  I could hear some strange sounding birds and bugs, so it felt very much like a different world.