Ed-Tech @ DU

Last month, I participated in a phone interview with the education team at Adobe to talk about how the University of Denver is using Flash Media Server to stream both live and on-demand content across campus and out into the world. The resulting article was recently published on the Adobe Developer Connection website.

Topics covered include our CourseMedia™ system, live events, and various video uses across departments. It’s a fairly quick read and a comprehensive look at what DU is doing with media streaming using the Flash Platform.

Check it out: Q & A with Joseph Labrecque

During the opening day of Adobe MAX 2009 in Los Angeles, two separate sessions featured DU video systems.

Firstly, Joseph Labrecque, Senior Multimedia Application Developer for the University of Denver and Adobe Higher Education Leader included mention of the ALORA Embed Generator video player and its ability to tap into Google Analytics during his session for the FITC Unconference:

Custom Event Reporting from Flash to Google Analytics
With the ability to define and report custom events from within your Flash application, you retain control over how specific events are reported and the information contained in these reports. This presentation will cover the implementation of the Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash ActionScript 3 API for generating custom events and the generation of unorthodox event logging from within Flash.

This presentation was streamed live by FITC and Influxis.

Another strong mention was made by John Schuman, Education Solutions Architect for Adobe Systems during his session on video delivery systems in education during which he focused on the CourseMedia™ application:

Customizing the University Experience with a Rich Media Delivery System
Explore the potential of developing a customized, security-focused, RSS-driven delivery solution. This session shows how you can use Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server, Flash Media Server 3, and Adobe Media Player

While there were some inaccuracies presented during the session, the spirit of our system was well-represented and we thank John for his coverage of CourseMedia™ and other DU video delivery mechanisms.

According to the New York Times, the July edition of the Elance Work Index top 10 includes technologies that the University of Denver Ed-Tech community is actively involved in.

1. PHP – Used in many smaller projects across campus as well as custom coding for various Content Management Systems employed by different units.
2. Graphic Design – Heavily used, fundamental skill here in the CTL and among other units. Your project won’t get very far if the design isn’t there.
3. Adobe Flash – Heavily used across campus in applications such as CourseMedia™ and the various ALORA and Flash Media Server interfaces across campus. Also used in various smaller projects and websites.
4. MySQL – Just about every application we write requires some sort of database backend. This is almost always MySQL.
5. HTML – If you’re delivery mechanism includes a web browser, it includes HTML.
6. Web Content – Content is king. Can you image using using something like CourseMedia™ if there was nothing to populate galleries with?
7. Article Writing – It used to be tolerable for anyone to just throw up content to a website. Users expect more now and professional article writing is becoming a skill worth having.
8. Joomla! – The CTL website runs upon the Joomla! Content Management System.
9. CSS – If you’re delivery mechanism includes a web browser, it includes CSS.
10. WordPress – Chancellor’s weblog, Sustainability Council website, and many other entities across campus rely on WordPress as a publishing platform.

This is both a form of validation that the DU Ed-Tech community is exploring the right avenues and that DU is well-positioned to be reflective of current trends outside of educational institutions. Students should also pay close attention to this and studies such as the SoDA 2009 Digital Marketing Outlook.

Blackboard will be unavailable from Friday, June 12, 2009 at 5:00 pm until Sunday, June 14 at 8:00 am. If all goes well, Bb should be back up sometime on Saturday.  During this outage, Blackboard will be upgraded from version 7.3 to 8.0.  The biggest noticeable interface change will be to the gradebook, which has been totally redesigned and is now called the Grade Center.

Click on the link below to learn more about Blackboard 8.

Blackboard 8

For the last few months, DU has been examining several types of lecture capture software tools.  After several reviews, DU will be buying a Camtasia Relay site license.  Check out the demo at http://www.techsmith.com/camtasiarelay.asp . We are very excited to find such a powerful, easy-to-use and affordable solution.  We will post more information about Camtasia Relay once we have it installed on a DU server.