Aperture is photo editing and organization and workflow software for professional photographers. What’s really impressive is that this “pro application” is designed with photography pros in mind, not technology pros. After just over an hour of hands-on use, I edited the image in this post right in Aperture - cropped, adjusted, and exported in the size & format I needed. Aperture even includes options to export an image at 50% of its original size, export for email, prepare a slideshow with Keynote-like transitions, and prepare for printing through Kodak professional photo printing.

Common problem in Music schools - students do very well on the traditional assessments (multiple choice, essay) but don’t work well with the listening portion. They tend to take notes, have musical score in front of them, and listen to music, but all three aren’t connected, and music can drift into the background. Unlike visual art which is more directly perceived, listeners have to make a very conscious effort to concentrate on the music.

After using iPods for a year, the initial outcomes: students liked the constant accessibility, and said music was much better integrated into what they were doing.

Music Quiz for iPod: Using the iPod’s notes function, clips are played, then students are asked to identify the compuser/artist from multiple choice list. Students said this encouraged them to refer to their notes more often.

• How does it work? text between ‘title’ tag tags will appear as filename on iPod; ‘a href’ tag around “listen” link to an audio file on the iPod, and the ‘false’ attribute enables user to listen to playback without leaving the question page; while browsing q/a and underscore indicates the currently selected answer; audio files give feedback on whether answer is incorrect or correct.

Much of the buzz around educational podcasting centers on recording lectures, but this is a much more distinctly engaging application, and more pedagogically sound because it doesn’t just piggyback on what’s alreayd happening; instead, it adds an entirely new dimenstion.

Student Reaction: Assessment/Evaluation

• 92% quiz helped reinforce musical concepts
• 88% quiz was easy to navigate
• 80% podcasts were heplful
• 92% iPod a valuable tool
• Most Important: students recognized that the iPods were useful because the application was well-thought-out and made an immediate contribution to their study

As with the ELI Web Symposium two weeks ago, I’ll be posting my notes from several sessions at the NMC Summer Conference in Cleveland

• Millenials Rising: The Next Great Generation: very high cultural production, change agents, for them the driving force is not the technology, but the ability to stay connected, produce & extrude content that is enabled by technology
• massively multiplayer online games are becoming the next social and learning spaces
• Process Model - help students envision what they are going to do in the future in their discipline: challenge -> research + analysis -> values + creative loop -> narrative -> strategy (this is the piece which defines how you bring the idea to fruition)
• how do we engage the world? quality of life, learning, human augmentation, social justice, urbanism, play, entertainment
• Urbanism - 1. LCD wayfinding device - user looks through screen and gets metadata on whatever she/he is looking at; 2. Sonifia Dubai “the spectacle of trade and the spectacle of prayer” - balance, pattern and proportion, worldly news and the call to prayer. Student posits that when both are in balance the greatest harmony is present - creating beauty and exteriorizing spiritual values - digital information screens arrange themselves into concentric circles for call to prayer, then can be rearranged to display news, email, info - one example is in a Starbucks in a mosque. Student was hired by Landor to do this in Dubai.
• SuperStudio (Freshmen): for main project, students are given a demographic: 6yr old boys, and 3 criteria: media messages, social intelligence, manliness. Blux: an energy sensing object which encourages users to go on a quest to find energy, and interact with each other.
• “Somebody is going to make culture; it might as well be us”

9rules Network just released the list of blogs accepted from Submission Round 4 held on May 17th. Using Wiki in Education is one of 111 blogs accepted out of 700 submissions. I’m very proud of this, and honored that the blog will have wider exposure as part of the network. Look for more posts next week, including new interviews, information on new products, and I’ll be blogging from the NMC Summer Conference in Cleveland, OH.