If Music Could Talk

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 6:19pm

Found out informally that tomorrow's the last day of in-person classes, so my podcast strategy's going to be tested. But the Boss thinks that you can record audio thru Powerpoint and tell it when to change slides. So if you play the Powerpoint file afterwards, you can just let it run and all the slides will be automated. I'll be digging into that possibility this weekend.

Even before the virus 50.5W never attended lectures (due to sports / travel commitments) and only does them online. Seems to work for her.

101Walterton wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 7:14pm

Even before the virus 50.5W never attended lectures (due to sports / travel commitments) and only does them online. Seems to work for her.

Students are way less engaged in lectures than when I was their age. Questions are rare and many of them are more drawn to their laptops or phones the entire time. I've read pieces where lecturers have banned electronic devices altogether—just pen and paper—and reported better engagement, but I can't bring myself to be that controlling. So, yeah, I can see how doing courses online would be seamless. But it feels like only a slight step up from just assigning a textbook and away with ye, wee bairns.

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 7:33pm

101Walterton wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 7:14pm

Even before the virus 50.5W never attended lectures (due to sports / travel commitments) and only does them online. Seems to work for her.

Students are way less engaged in lectures than when I was their age. Questions are rare and many of them are more drawn to their laptops or phones the entire time. I've read pieces where lecturers have banned electronic devices altogether—just pen and paper—and reported better engagement, but I can't bring myself to be that controlling. So, yeah, I can see how doing courses online would be seamless. But it feels like only a slight step up from just assigning a textbook and away with ye, wee bairns.

Yep plus she is not into the whole student / University experience she is just ‘getting it done’.
Living at home so no community living and she is an athlete doesn’t do the party thing.

101Walterton wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 8:11pm

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 7:33pm

101Walterton wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 7:14pm

Even before the virus 50.5W never attended lectures (due to sports / travel commitments) and only does them online. Seems to work for her.

Students are way less engaged in lectures than when I was their age. Questions are rare and many of them are more drawn to their laptops or phones the entire time. I've read pieces where lecturers have banned electronic devices altogether—just pen and paper—and reported better engagement, but I can't bring myself to be that controlling. So, yeah, I can see how doing courses online would be seamless. But it feels like only a slight step up from just assigning a textbook and away with ye, wee bairns.

Yep plus she is not into the whole student / University experience she is just ‘getting it done’.
Living at home so no community living and she is an athlete doesn’t do the party thing.

Speaking as someone on the scholastic side of things, it's a shame that she isn't more fully integrated into the classroom, but I understand that the nature of university life is a lot more varied.

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 8:22pm

101Walterton wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 8:11pm

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 7:33pm

101Walterton wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 7:14pm

Even before the virus 50.5W never attended lectures (due to sports / travel commitments) and only does them online. Seems to work for her.

Students are way less engaged in lectures than when I was their age. Questions are rare and many of them are more drawn to their laptops or phones the entire time. I've read pieces where lecturers have banned electronic devices altogether—just pen and paper—and reported better engagement, but I can't bring myself to be that controlling. So, yeah, I can see how doing courses online would be seamless. But it feels like only a slight step up from just assigning a textbook and away with ye, wee bairns.

Yep plus she is not into the whole student / University experience she is just ‘getting it done’.
Living at home so no community living and she is an athlete doesn’t do the party thing.

Speaking as someone on the scholastic side of things, it's a shame that she isn't more fully integrated into the classroom, but I understand that the nature of university life is a lot more varied.

She is away for most of semester 1 so not many options. She will do her lectures on line whilst overseas. Last year she even did her exams whilst in Italy!!

A moment of inspiration while rowing this morning. So, I've already recorded a couple lectures using Powerpoint. When you run the slideshow, you get to hear my awkward squawk and the slides turn when I turned them while talking. It's all automated and good. However, Powerpoint saves the audio as uncompressed wav files, resulting in a 400MB file for each lecture. Plus you have to configure Powerpoint at each user's end to get to hear the audio and to have the slides go automatically, plus you can't easily pause and rewind the audio.

But it dawned on me that I could extract all those wav files, convert them to mp3's, and then give them each slide as their cover art. It'll still be automated—start on "song" 1 and play the album, and the slides will change with each song—but the file size will be much smaller and it'll play on any music app that also shows cover art. It's an extra couple steps for me, but much better for students.

One podcast I dip into every now and again is "The Album Club."

It's about a once monthly deep-dive into an album that covers the lead up to it, the recording, what happened after and a track-by-track

The latest episode is London Calling so I hope they know their stuff (TBH, they usually do)

https://www.facebook.com/The-Album-Club ... 061262454/

Haven't listened to this one—I usually wait for the entire season to complete and then compile into one file—but the new Slow Burn is on David Duke's political run in Louisiana in the 90s.
https://slate.com/podcasts/slow-burn/s4/david-duke

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

13 Jun 2020, 7:55pm

Haven't listened to this one—I usually wait for the entire season to complete and then compile into one file—but the new Slow Burn is on David Duke's political run in Louisiana in the 90s.
https://slate.com/podcasts/slow-burn/s4/david-duke

Thanks, I'll be giving this one a listen

Now that that David Duke podcast has wrapped up, I've been listening to it. Here's one weirdo tidbit that I learned. So, in the 80s, Duke tried to rebrand himself as having left behind white supremacy and Nazi adherence, but a reporter outed him in a series of stories. In response, Duke became obsessed with her, trying to conquer her somehow. She related a multi-hour phone call with him in which he had playing on repeat Mike and the Mechanics' "Silent Running." Playing the same song for, like, three hours is disturbing enough, but something shitty like that further confirms what a psycho Duke is.

Here's me talking the classic Universal horror.

Silent Majority wrote: ↑

25 Sep 2020, 10:06am

Here's me talking the classic Universal horror.

Listened to the first half hour or so yesterday and hope to listen to the rest in a bit. Kind of like the last time you shared one of these (both Mississippi Burning and Oliver Stone), I enjoyed listening to you—man, you've got a solid radio voice—but the others you participate try too hard at being edgy(?).

Also: https://thehardtimes.net/culture/podcas ... -ears-out/

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 7:33pm

101Walterton wrote: ↑

12 Mar 2020, 7:14pm

Even before the virus 50.5W never attended lectures (due to sports / travel commitments) and only does them online. Seems to work for her.

Students are way less engaged in lectures than when I was their age. Questions are rare and many of them are more drawn to their laptops or phones the entire time. I've read pieces where lecturers have banned electronic devices altogether—just pen and paper—and reported better engagement, but I can't bring myself to be that controlling. So, yeah, I can see how doing courses online would be seamless. But it feels like only a slight step up from just assigning a textbook and away with ye, wee bairns.

Hello,

Sorry to respond so late but I haven't visited this thread before. There have been studies finding students do perform better academically when handwriting notes rather than collecting them on a laptop. The thinking is students will paraphrase ideas into their own words (and thus promoting understanding) rather than just type ideas word for word. This assumes an undergrad student is actually using a laptop in class to type notes rather than watch ESPN, Netflix, whatever. Online undergrad students will have a lecture on the laptop in front of them but they're open to any possible distraction ("Hey, how you doing? Yeah, I'm in class now watching a lecture. What's going on?"). Grad students are definitely more focused when participating online anecdotally speaking.

gkbill wrote: ↑

26 Sep 2020, 4:31pm

Hello,

Sorry to respond so late but I haven't visited this thread before. There have been studies finding students do perform better academically when handwriting notes rather than collecting them on a laptop. The thinking is students will paraphrase ideas into their own words (and thus promoting understanding) rather than just type ideas word for word. This assumes an undergrad student is actually using a laptop in class to type notes rather than watch ESPN, Netflix, whatever. Online undergrad students will have a lecture on the laptop in front of them but they're open to any possible distraction ("Hey, how you doing? Yeah, I'm in class now watching a lecture. What's going on?"). Grad students are definitely more focused when participating online anecdotally speaking.

My oldest sister's technique was to rewrite her notes the evening after classes. I don't doubt the benefit of doing that, but yeesh what a lot of work.

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

26 Sep 2020, 10:50pm

gkbill wrote: ↑

26 Sep 2020, 4:31pm

Hello,

Sorry to respond so late but I haven't visited this thread before. There have been studies finding students do perform better academically when handwriting notes rather than collecting them on a laptop. The thinking is students will paraphrase ideas into their own words (and thus promoting understanding) rather than just type ideas word for word. This assumes an undergrad student is actually using a laptop in class to type notes rather than watch ESPN, Netflix, whatever. Online undergrad students will have a lecture on the laptop in front of them but they're open to any possible distraction ("Hey, how you doing? Yeah, I'm in class now watching a lecture. What's going on?"). Grad students are definitely more focused when participating online anecdotally speaking.

My oldest sister's technique was to rewrite her notes the evening after classes. I don't doubt the benefit of doing that, but yeesh what a lot of work.

Hello,

I would rewrite my notes to learn the minutia. I have 3 copies of my graduate physiology notebook for Dr. Ray Moss. It was worth the effort.