Archive for: March 2005
§ ¶NECC 2005: Philadelphia
A quick note about NECC 2005. It’s scheduled for June 27-30 in Philadelphia, and super early bird registration ends March 31. (That’s the National Educational Computing Conference, if you’re wondering.)
§ ¶Darwin's Posse
Colin Purrington at Swarthmore has a clever response to those Cobb County evolution-is-only-a-theory stickers: Charles Darwin Has a Posse stickers! (And bookmarks, and shirts, and coffee cups… Cafe Press is such a great idea.) Be subversive, spread some Darwinian agitprop today!
§ ¶Games and Learning Conference in June
Sherry Hsi notes an upcoming conference on games and learning.
The Games, Learning & Society Conference to be held June 23-24, 2005 in Madison, Wisconsin will explore such issues. Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education and the Academic ADL Co-Lab, the GLS Conference will foster substantive discussion and collaboration among academics, designers, and educators interested in how videogames - commercial games and others - can enhance learning, culture, and education. Speakers, discussion groups, interactive workshops, and exhibits will focus on game design, game culture, and games’ potential for learning and society more broadly.
Proposals are due March 31.
§ ¶Libraries and MP3 players
Wired notes a library on Long Island is loaning iPod Shuffles with audio books preloaded. This is a great idea. Most audio books that come on CD come on lots of CDs. For example, the unabridged Da Vanci Code runs 13 CDs (16 hours). 13 CDs, plus you need a CD player. Contrast that with being able to check out a tiny little MP3 player like the Shuffle. No more CDs to swap in and out. Much lighter. And as the article notes, doing this actually saves the library money in the long run, because MP3 versions of audiobooks are so much cheaper than CD versions.
In addition, the library has the potential to save a great deal of money. Latini said that most titles on CDs cost the library around $75, whereas in MP3 format, they range from $15 to $25.
“In the end, obviously, we’re literally saving money,” he said. “The units are paying for themselves.”
The only hitch I see is that patrons who don’t have computers with USB ports (for recharging) will need to finish their books before the battery runs out. Apple claims a 12 hour battery life, so Dan Brown might leave you hanging.
Down the road, MP3 players are only going to get cheaper. This could turn out to be a great way for libraries to expand access to audiobooks for their communities.
And if the players get cheap enough, it’s possible we’ll start seeing schools adopting these and providing students with a significant amount of audio content to go with all those textbooks. If nothing else, that ought to reduce the size of those backpacks students are lugging around these days.