Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Playing with audio files
Shunfa Li, one of our resident IT gurus here at MSU, kindly spent this morning working with me on uploading some mp3 files to MSU's streaming server, as part of Colin's and my first step along the path to (probably sporadic) podcasting!
Here are direct links to to the first of the mp3 files we've uploaded so far (your media player should open automatically once you click on the link below):
Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2005). “Freedom and Learning in the Network Society." Plenary address to the 12th International Learning Conference. 14 July, Granada, Spain. 40 minutes.
On account of a nervous trigger finger we missed the opening couple of sentences. The following can stand in for these:
"This paper is based on the belief that we are at an historical juncture -- an early point in the development of network societies that are increasingly interlinked on a global scale -- where it is timely to reflect upon learning in relation to freedom as an educational ideal. 'Freedom' provides a particularly useful standpoint from which to address a range of important issues associated with contemporary trends in technology, economics, politics, institutional life and everyday sociocultural practice that impinge on learning in ways that shape what we become (or don’t become) in the name of 'educated persons'. Within the 'digisphere' freedom has emerged as a key mobilizing focus for movements contesting intellectual property rights (e.g., the Free Software movement, the Electronic Frontier Foundation), and has already demonstrated its efficacy (e.g., the May 2005 'broadcast flag' decision in the US Appeals Court)"
The audio quality isn't that crash hot--we're still experimenting with using our iPods as recording devices--but if you use headphones you should at least get the gist of what we're going on about.
Meanwhile, I have another file to link to, but I just want to clear permission to use it first, so stay tuned! Shunfa also taught me all about RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and podcasting proper, so stay tuned for more on that, too!
