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Using Mobile Media Devices
By Geoffrey Scott-Baker MBCS, CITP, FIDM, MIIE
My first attempt at time shifting a programme was back in the days of reel to reel tape recorders. If there was a programme being aired while I was at school or out with my friends I used to load up a large reel of tape, turn on the radio or TV, then put a microphone up against the speaker in a small polystyrene box to provide rudimentary sound proofing. The result was a barely satisfactory recording interrupted by family conversations that leaked through my polystyrene interface during the quiet moments. Three decades later technology has moved on and we now have a multiplicity of recording vehicles to choose from based upon a confusing array of formats.
Why can't we just continue to use the good old VCR and keep stacking up our partially used videocassettes covered in scribble laden sticky labels? Well the answer is that we could, except that the volume of material available to us has increased way beyond the few schools programmes that used to broadcast in term time via one or two channels. There is also a much broader range of material to deal with, broadcast by free to air, satellite and cable providers seven days a week while we are at work, at play or even asleep. Our ageing videocassette recorders cannot cope with this tidal wave of data and so we need some means of recording or retrieving programmes from a number of different sources that we can review later at a time or place convenient to us. Is there an easy solution to this problem that does not require a first class degree in ICT? Yes there is.
A first look at this topic yields a confusing array of terminologies which can easily swamp the novice. But if we stick to the basics, and cut away all the peripheral acronyms, we find a few key technologies and devices that will allow us to process all the information we could ever need without blowing a fuse. For the purposes of illustration I am going to use the digital broadcaster Teachers TV as my model, but the same basic techniques will apply to any other information providers that publish their programmes in standard media formats.
As an ICT Advisor with a wife who is a Pre-Prep Head we have a combined need to keep up to date with the latest developments in our respective fields. We work long hours and do not have any time during the day to watch web or TV based broadcasts. Our best time is in the evenings, but our limited spare time means that we want to quickly identify and capture topics of interest without spending hours poring over broadcast schedules. Teachers TV is very useful in that respect because it not only broadcasts to a regular schedule but also makes its programmes available to registered users in Windows Media Player format. Such users can search its video library to retrieve and store programmes of interest to play at some later date on a Windows PC or Apple MAC. Their menu driven interface makes it easy to find, play and download material even if you are not expert in the ways of the internet.
Because their programmes are in a 'standard' format we can take this one step further and make good use of portable devices such as Windows based personal digital assistants, otherwise known as PDAs. For example I download programmes to my PC for my wife and myself. I then extract the material of interest to my wife and put it onto her laptop or one of her library CDs for ongoing use at school. It is a simple download, drag and drop process which takes minutes to process using file manager. I can add programmes to the CDs one at a time so it is very easy to catalogue the material, and standard file search functions make it easy to locate specific programmes on each CD.
However, because my working life is more mobil e I prefer to have the programmes readily available to watch while I am eating a sandwich or between meetings. I use two devices to achieve this, the first being my Windows based PDA which has a memory card slot in addition to its built in capacity. I select the programmes I want from the files I have downloaded from Teachers TV web site and copy them into my PDA's add-on storage card. From there I can watch the productions whenever I have a spare minute, delete the ones that have served their purpose, and keep others for later reference. I use one gigabyte memory cards, and considering that a programme typically uses about 40 megabytes, that means I can easily store 25 programmes before needing to do some spring cleaning or upload to my laptop.
That system has worked very well for some time, even allowing for the extra drain on my PDA's battery, but now I have another toy which has given me a whole new perspective into the world of mobile media. I bought an iPod Video! This little gadget, which boasts 60 gigabytes of storage capacity, has the ability to play music and books like the previous iPod Photo, and a video capability which allows me to watch full length feature films on its small but crisp colour screen. So, if it can show me the latest from Hollywood why can't it bring me the best that Teacher's TV has to offer? The simple answer is that it can't because Windows Media Player format is not compatible with mp4 which is what the iPod uses.
However, as an IT professional I was not going to let a small detail like that stand in my way. I had already found a way to convert DVDs to my PDA and iPod, so why not do the same with downloaded material? I had 60 gigabytes at my disposal, and a means of saving my PDA's battery life, so there was a massive incentive to find a way of converting Teachers TV programmes to the world of Apple. Girding my internet loins I fired up a few search engines and found a number of self proclaimed world leaders in this field. I tried a few and discovered that they were in fact very slow world leaders, settling after a few trials and tribulations on a software company called Cucusoft. They produce an easy, menu driven means to convert a number of formats to iPod which allows me to move Teachers TV material into the world of Apple in a matter of minutes. The image quality is excellent and the iTunes interface allows me to categorise the downloaded material under a number of headings which are repeated in the iPod's click wheel user interface.
A spin off from using the iPod is that Teachers TV has recently introduced a weekly news podcast, so I took the opportunity to add it to my iTunes directory and now receive their bulletins automatically. The sound and presentation quality is excellent, the topics pertinent and interesting; highly recommended.
So if you are wondering how you will cope with information overload, give some thought to what mobile devices such as the PDA and iPod can do to alleviate that problem. I have found them to be invaluable tools for time shifting and viewing programmes that I might otherwise have missed. And while your thoughts are in that vein why not consider how they might be used to create online course material, because your students will also have these portable devices in some form or another. How about using them as vehicles to present project work, field trip preparation, or even homework assignments? These mobile devices are both highly functional and affordable, and as media providers begin to make better use of the possibilities we in turn will have the opportunity to keep our heads above the rising waters of the information age.
References:
Teachers TV: www.teachers.tv
Conversion software: www.cucusoft.com, www.carrydvd.com
Geoffrey Scott-Baker is an experienced ICT professional, and a Mirandanet Fellow further details at www.bardtoverse.com.
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