Interested in learning how to create your own blog?

Blogging is a useful way to encourage communication and foster writing skills throughout the curriculum. The Stephens Group will be leading a workshop entitled Blogging Through The Curriculum at the Iowa Technology & Education Connection Conference in Des Moines Iowa on October 8th from 12:30-3:30pm.

In this session we will help you create your own blog, learn how blogs can be used for instructional purposes and give you tips on how to manage this powerful communication tool.

Two New Blogs

As part of my Leadership as Part of the Human Endeavor in the Institutional Setting Course I have created a new Blog called Explorations in Leadership.

A part of Human Computer Interaction Course I have created a new blog called Social Interaction Design.

Does Digital Media Improve Student Learning?

Two Opportunities to Find out:

The Stephens Group will be presenting the outcomes of the 2005-2006 EETT grant in which four school districts used digital media to improve academic achievement of At-Risk Students in Language Arts. The presentation will be held at the Fall Wisconsin DPI Regional Meeting for Technology Coordinators at the Olympia resort in Oconomowoc on October 5th.

The Stephens Group will also be presenting this session at the Iowa Technology & Education Connnection Conference on Tuesday, October 10th 8:30-9:15am.

Podcasting Question

As we've been working on developing the criteria for our podcasts at the Milwaukee Public Museum and interesting question has arisen. Do you think the process of creating a script for the podcast is similiar to developing a newspaper article? If so, how are they alike? If not, how are they different? Post a comment of what you think.

Digital Media Conference Update

On July 31st-August 3rd 2007 The Stephens Group will be hosting a Digital Media Conference at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Teachers will be working with a curator from the Museum and an instructor from The Stephens Group to create digital content for selected exhibits. Teachers will be able to receive two graduate credits from Cardinal Stritch University for participating in the conference. This summer we sent a team to the Milwaukee Public Museum to go through the process and create prototypes of what teachers will be creating during the conference. Here is a synopsis of how the process went:

Day 1
On the first day we met with Vanessa Torti, Museum Educator and Distance Learning Coordinator to discuss the deliverables that we would be creating for the museum. They included:
· A podcast not to exceed four minutes on an exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum. The purpose of the podcast is for people visiting the Museum to download podcasts of exhibits they are interested in seeing at the museum on their iPod/MP3 player prior to coming to the museum, then listen to the podcast while viewing the exhibit. Along with the podcast we had to write an introductory paragraph to go on the web site for the podcast and identify state standards that the podcast met.
· An audio tour accessed by cell phone. The podcast also had to be saved in a wav file with different specifications so that it could be uploaded to a server to be part of the museum’s audio tour program. If someone doesn’t have an iPod, they can use their cell phone to call and hear the podcast .
· 3-5 digital stills that could be uploaded to the website
· A short digital movie documenting the process.

We were asked to create our digital content for The Rainforest Exhibit. In March 1986, a field expedition team of 15 Milwaukee Public Museum biologists and artists traveled to the rainforest of Costa Rica for two weeks of collecting and research. With the help of biologists from the National Museum of Costa Rica, the expedition gathered materials to help bring a tropical rain forest to Milwaukee. More than four hundred impression molds of leaves, flowers, fruits and tree bark were made. Several thousand insects were collected along with several hundred birds and mammals, following the strict international guidelines on collecting wildlife. Scientists and artists spent hours recording the sounds and sketching the beauty of the rain forest.

After meeting with Vanessa, we met with Robert Henderson, a curator for the Milwaukee Public Museum who is also a world expert on boa snakes. It was fascinating to go behind the scenes in the museum and see how and where curators work. After discussing the project with him, we walked around the Rainforest Exhibit in the museum to decide what would make a good podcast..
We decided on The Rainforest Doesn’t Sleep at Night exhibit. The curator gave us more in-depth information about the exhibit. We took notes in a variety of ways. We tried video taping, traditional pen and paper and recording on a cell phone. The cell phone worked the best and we relied on our phones a lot that week for text messaging, recording experts and keeping track of one another when we were working in the museum. We agreed to work on a script for the podcast and email it to the curator for review by 8:00am the next morning.
Next we met with Linda Gruber the Director of Information and Electronic Systems for the Museum, to discuss the technical specifications for the digital products we were producing.

Day 2

The next morning we emailed our script off to the curator. Much of our collaboration on the script was done via email. We met at the Museum at 9:00am and practiced a couple of test recordings. At 10:00am we met with the curator who gave us some feedback on our script. As part of our podcast, we decided to do an interview with the curator. In order to be respectful of the curator’s time we only recorded his answers to our questions. After the interview, we recorded a team member asking the questions as well as other parts of the podcast.

The rest of the day was spent editing. Piecing together the interview questions with the answers was like working on a big jigsaw puzzle. The interview alone was eight minutes. It took us five hours to edit the interview down to one minute, thirty seconds.

Day 3

Different team members started working on different things. Some were working on editing the beginning of the podcast and editing that down to four minutes. We also worked on recording rainforest sounds from the exhibit and creating an audio signature (a kind of audio logo) for the podcast. Others were working on taking digital stills for the web site. This took awhile because the exhibit was really dark. We had to experiment a lot with different light settings on the camera. We also had to do some editing in Photoshop to lighten things up and get rid of some of the text in the exhibit.

Day 4

In the morning we worked on saving all of our work in the requested formats and burning our digital products to CDs for the Museum staff. We also put together a slideshow to music documenting the week. In the afternoon we presented our work to the museum staff and debriefed about all that we had learned in the week.

You can download or hear the mp3 of our podcast at http://www.mpm.edu/podcasts/index.php or you can listen to the audio tour by dialing (408) 794-2866 and when prompted, enter 90# (Note this is a trial so it will only be up temporarily).

Another consultant is currently working on doing the same process with the Danish House in the European Village exhibit. This should be completed later this fall.

We hope to have online registration available in early October. If you would like more information on the conference or would like to be involved in the behind-the-scenes planning email Tammy Stephens at tstephens@thestephensgroup.com .