See and Hear Ken
Foote's HT&T96 Presentation
One of the highlights of the NetTech Forum on Hypermedia,
Teaching and Technology was Kenneth
Foote's talk, and the discussions it inspired. In addition to
presenting his
Geographer's Craft and Virtual
Geography Department projects, he talked extensively about the
way the Web can motivate and facilitate a new distributed
model for curriculum development, one that can transform the way we
teach, the way we conceptualize disciplines, and the way we think
about the future of educational institutions. Professor Foote
graciously allowed STG to record his presentation,
and we present the talk here, as a streaming audio file
synchronized with a series of slides and urls. We believe this
on-line presentation nicely captures Professor Foote's wonderful
talk, and will be of great value to educators interested in
networked models of curriculum design and development. A complete list of Web pages referenced
during the presentation is also available.
Listening to, and viewing, Foote's presentation (which we make
available here as a Real
Audio file), may require some preparation on your part. If you
already have version 3.0 of the Real Audio Player, and have some
experience with Real Audio files, you may wish to skip to the bottom of this page and begin. But if you are
unfamiliar with Real Audio, or would like a few directions and
listening/viewing tips, please continue reading.
About the Real Audio file, and
What You'll Need to Hear It
- The advantage of "streaming" audio is that you can listen to a
large sound file without first having to download the entire file
onto your computer. In other words, you can listen to the file
while the audio "stream" is coming over the network, and this makes
listening to a talk-length sound file more practical, and more
easily available to people with modest amounts of memory (in their
computers).
- To hear Foote's presentation, you will need a particular
version of the Real Audio Player, available free of charge from
Progressive Networks, Inc. (The free Player is the one offered on
the right side of the Real Audio download
page.) If you do not already have version 3.0 of the Player, download version 3.0 of
the Real Audio Player now. You will be asked for information
about the sort of computer you are using, and the speed of your
internet connection (e.g. 28.8 modem, ISDN line, T1 connection,
etc.). If you do not have permission to download software onto your
computer, you may need to talk to your computer lab consultant or
system administrator.
- After the downloading of the
Real Audio Player, Mac and PC users will notice that a Real Audio
"installer" program appears on the computer. Run the installer
program by double-clicking the mouse on the program icon; the Real
Audio Player will be automatically installed. Unix users will
notice a tar.Z file being downloaded, and they will have to install
the Player manually; installation on a Unix system may well require
permission from a system administrator.
- Once the Real
Audio Player, version 3.0 has been installed, you will need to
restart your computer in order for the software to work properly.
Before exiting your browser you may wish to save this page as a
Bookmark (or just note the address of this document: http://
www.stg.brown.edu/conferences/HTT96/HTTkfreal.html),
so that you can restart your computer, open your Web browser, and
return to this page quickly.
- When you click "Begin", below, the Real Audio file will begin
streaming over the network to your computer, and a Real Audio
Player will appear on your screen along with your Web browser.
You'll notice that the Player has controls that allow you to adjust
the volume, and to pause and reset the presentation.
- The presentation will begin automatically, and you will shortly
notice that the first "slide" from Foote's talk appears in your Web
browser. The audio is synchronized with a series of (roughly 40)
slides and urls, which will change automatically during the
presentation.
- The entire presentation lasts about 58 minutes, but you can
stop and resume the presentation whenever you like, using the Real
Audio Player. Similarly, you can skip or return to any section of
the presentation (using the "slider" on the Player) and the correct
urls will automatically be loaded. You can also follow any of the
hypertext links on any of the pages that appear in the browser
during the presentation, though this may disrupt temporarily the
sequence of urls that Foote presented.
- If you have a 14.4 connection to the Internet, the quality of
the sound will likely be very poor or inaudible. If you have a
connection that is slower than 14.4, you will not be able to
receive the file.
- While the quality of the recording is good, Foote's voice is
not particularly loud, so you may have trouble easily understanding
him if you do not adjust the volume settings on your computer.
- Since we are currently running a version of the Real Audio
Server which only allows us to transmit five streams
simultaneously, you may not be able to receive the file if more
than five other people are listening to it over the network when
you click "Begin".
- You will be receiving the audio file from a server in Rhode
Island, and most of the slides come from servers in Rhode Island
and Texas. If you are listening to the presentation during "peak"
internet times in these areas, or if there are telephone line
difficulties affecting your lines or ours, the synchronization of
the urls with the talk may be disrupted occasionally. Then again,
it may not!
- Finally, if you are showing this presentation to a group (e.g.
as part of a faculty "field trip", or technology committee
discussion), you may wish to view it once, prior to the group
presentation, in order to load the files into your browser's cache.
This will assure that, during the group presentation, there will be
perfect synchronization between the html files and the audio.
-
BEGIN Ken Foote's HT&T96
Presentation.
See the list of Web pages
referenced during Ken Foote's presentation.
Selected Readings || HT&T96 Program || HT&T96 Speakers || HT&T96 Participants || Discussions ||
Contact Info
