NMC 2007 - Thursday Afternoon

Attended Victor Edmonds afternoon presentation on coursecasting and the state of the art. Victor runs the Educational Technology Services (ETS) at Berkeley, a dynamic organization and a real leader, for many years now, in the realm of on-line media production and delivery.

Almost all of the academic podcast content coming from Berkeley is open - it's available to anyone anytime. They're a big player in iTunes U, even appearing on the iTunes U home page. Their real jewel, though is Webcast Berkeley. Courses and speaking events are recorded and posted online. This isn't particularly novel anymore, but Berkeley was an early adopter of the concept and the technology, and the scale of their operation is impressive.

Victor's particularly excited about the upcoming Podcast Producer from Apple. It'll be built-in to the next OS update, due out later this summer. "This is going to change everything." according to Victor. Need to check that one out.

Victor's conclusions on the state of campus coursecasting:
- Students expect lectures to be on the Web
- Lectures become commodities
- Students expect services for personal technologies
- Universities need video production units

Lot's of great (and unusual) poster sessions, too!