December 2011 – Kent Matsueda

Using a patch cable to record system audio

This is the method I used to record system audio while creating Captivate and other screencasting movies using software that doesn’t provide drivers to capture that audio. By system audio, I’m referring to any sound that isn’t external to the computer. More specifically, it could be a YouTube video I’m trying to capture, or a project from Audacity, or even the playback of a segment from Adobe Connect 8.

purchase a patch cable (example from Radioshack)
plug the patch cable in to connect the headphone (out) and mic (in) jacks – I have a docking station that has jacks that I use for this technique; they are visible in the far right-hand side of the image below
temporarily set the playback or audio out settings to the headphone jack (“Speakers / Headphones” option visible below)
set/verify that your system will capture audio via the mic jack (“Dock Mic” option visible below)
record your desktop content
return the audio out settings to their original output (USB headset in my case) so that you can listen to your newly recorded content

I just leave the cable installed on the dock so that I only have to adjust the output source whenever I want to capture system audio.

Audacity is a great tool for testing out a quick recording. Keep in mind that some of the names for the input/outputs may appear differently.

I did test the audio capture and I didn’t seem to have any sync issues.

Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States 2011

http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/going_distance_2011 It appears your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files. No worries, just click here to download the PDF file. click here to download the PDF file My comments from executive summary of the annual report:It was…

http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/going_distance_2011

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My comments from executive summary of the annual report:

It was interesting and not surprising that the huge wave of online student growth has begun to crest (page 5). 10% vs. <1% growth is incredible though. I wonder what these numbers will continue to look like? I’m curious how many of these students were recruited under false pretenses and what the actual graduation rates will be.
I think that the perceptions of quality of online learning will take time to improve. It will definitely lag behind attendance numbers until some of the traditions and values at the workplace change. At first, online dating was considered a social oddity, and now I have many friends who have successfully used these services.
The faculty maybe some of the last to accept online learning. I think the day faculty will accept someone who has an online degree as a peer of equal standing to those who have a traditional degree is still a ways off.
If there are so many opportunities for faculty to develop their online teaching competencies (page 6), then why are the rates of acceptance of this delivery format so low?
It’s interesting that for-profits are declining or are steady with online enrollments. I wonder if they’ve burnt the population or if they are merely saturated at this point and are moving towards the next growth in scale to accommodate more students.

NMC Learning Analytics Online Workshop Reflections

Event Listing http://www.nmc.org/events/learning-analytics-webinarOn iTunesU http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/nmc-horizon-connect-learning/id489707147NERLA – NorthEast Regional Learning AnalyticsDavid Wedaman, from Brandeis, and others are working on creating a Learning Analytics Center that will open resources for schools. I wonder if IST and Shelby Thayer with Outreach would be…

Event Listing http://www.nmc.org/events/learning-analytics-webinar
On iTunesU http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/nmc-horizon-connect-learning/id489707147

NERLA – NorthEast Regional Learning Analytics
David Wedaman, from Brandeis, and others are working on creating a Learning Analytics Center that will open resources for schools. I wonder if IST and Shelby Thayer with Outreach would be interested in this.

Tom Haymes, Houston Community College – Lessons learned and take-aways

Garbage-in > Garbage Out led to “what is learning and how do we want to measure it?” discussion
You gotta start “right” in order to get something useful out of the project
Measure skills rather than knowledge
Gamification tie-in [Tom mentioned someone, but I missed the name, will ask for the contact]
Technology won’t be expensive, the planning and analysis will be
His project is going to be open source via Gates Grant!
The Three-E Strategy for Overcoming Resistance to Technological Change http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/TheThreeEStrategyforOvercoming/163448

Amber Stubbs – An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics

Computational linguistics, analyzing text
She has a book coming up in 2012
Corpus is a collection of natural language data – used for plagiarism detection, speech detection, machine translation
Toolkits – NLTK and MALLET and Weka
Unsupervised tasks – pour in the data and see what comes out (plagiarism detection)
Supervised tasks – annotate the data to get more accurate output; use training data (example: document classification)

Resources
http://www.educause.edu/blog/pkurkowski/ELIReleasesNewBriefonLearningA/229163
NMC Horizon Report > 2012 Higher Ed Edition http://www.nmc.org/publications/horizon-report-2012-higher-ed-edition
2012 NMC Horizon Project Short List http://www.nmc.org/publications/horizon-report-2012-higher-ed-edition

Reflection
PSU World Campus is currently considering the Pearson LMS. How does Pearson measure success? Because that drives the analytics behind student papers to high rates of graduation. I wonder how Pearson has communicated what their approach is. Would their decisions be the same that we would agree on? How could we know without a clear discussion internally and then with Pearson?

Weekly Activity Report (WAR) 4

Kent Matsueda’s WAR Report for 12/8-12/14   1
Accomplishments   2
Publishing PDF’s to the Web   2
12/8/11 New Century Presentations   2
Captivate Templates for IST 515   2
Closed Captioning in YouTube   3
SRA 111 MS Project Timeline   3
Ongoing Projects   3
Lynda.com   3
Ravi’s courses   3
IST 515   3
SRA 111   5
General Pipeline Discussion   5
Immediate Decisions / Issues   5
Capturing “loop-back” audio in Captivate   5
Back Burner   6
Games, Sims, and Virtual Worlds   6
Days off / Conferences   6

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Week 4 @ IST (WAR3)

Kent Matsueda’s WAR Report for 12/1-12/7   1
Accomplishments   2
MT4 Mobile Edits   2
Voicethread Mobile App   2
12/2 LD Community Meeting: 21st Century ID   2
Department Resources   2
Ravi’s courses   3
Flash training   3
Ongoing Projects   4
SRA 111 Kick-off   4
General Pipeline Discussion   4
Immediate Decisions / Issues   4
Flash in Drupal   4
Publishing PDF’s to the Web   4
Back Burner   5
Games, Sims, and Virtual Worlds   5
Days off / Conferences   5

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