They’re coming thick and fast now. Yesterday’s student presentation in our Donne seminar focused on the tradition of erotic theology as it is manifested in Donne’s work, especially his sacred poetry. Holy Sonnet 14 (“Batter my heart, three-personed God”) occupied a great deal of our attention, but Holy Sonnet 18 (“Show me thy spouse, dear Christ”) also had its provocations, some of them even deeper than those occasioned by Holy Sonnet 14.

Mulling over the presentation, discussion, and poem on the way to work today, I found some ideas emerging. I was inspired to do my first first-thing-in-the-morning podcast. (For the curious, I was aided by the fact I had brought my new Snowball USB microphone into the office for use later in the day on another project. I used that mike for yesterday’s podcast as well. Cardioid pattern, -10db pad.) And as is often the case, I had what I think is my best idea just as I was getting ready to commit to a reading. The thought of hanging on the morrow concentrates the mind wonderfully, Sam Johnson observed; I’d say that the thought of podcasting in a few moments also focuses the mind. At least it did mine.

Have patience. My commentary eventually arrives at the topic for consideration: how to scale transformative intimacy. A question all religions must confront. And a question all educators must confront as well.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.1MB)

A dark epiphany at lunch today. I hope it’s an example of lifelong learning.

The audio isn’t as polished as usual. Perhaps that’s apt. I wanted the iron-fresh odor before it dissipated, so I rushed the recording. But not the reading.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.9MB)

Spring 2006 will see the rollout of another campus-wide podcasting project: Chargercasts, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Timothy McDaniel, podcasting director at UAH, calls podcasting “easy, flexible, and infinite.” (What more could one want out of an educational resource?) It’s also a way to get a campus radio station when the FCC says they can’t grant you a license. The student-run, student-funded angle is especially intriguing.

More details on the Chargercast project in the Huntsville Times article. I confess I am tickled to see Adam Curry’s “Daily Source Code” called the “Daily Secret Code.” Serves me right for leaving my decoder ring at home on the nightstand.

Via Podcasting News.

One of my favorite Donne poems, and unfortunately one of his toughest. This lyric is thus a rather severe test case for my assertion that reading aloud can help elucidate poetry. Don’t judge my thesis just by my reading, though. Do me one Donne better!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (7.0MB)

Matt May at Corante reports that “podcasting paraphernalia” (a word spell-checkers were born to flag) are starting to aggregate in interesting ways. I mean dangerous ways, of course, in my own case, seeing as how Guitar Center/Musician’s Friend, already a source of major podcasting goodness for me, now has kits for sale to ease the way into wholesale addiction, I mean devotion.

Market economies: sometimes they pull through. I hope my own spending has in some small way contributed to this encouraging development (tongue firmly planted in cheek, or maybe not).

This may be a perfect poem.

If it’s not perfect, it’s close.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.4MB)

Brian caught me in full polemical vigor in Orlando, so here’s my poor recompense. Despite his serious and well-founded reservations about this faux-New-Orleans (and corporate-rights-managed) bash at EDUCAUSE, Brian could not say no to his fans and friends (they are legion) and agreed to come with us to the party. Amor vincit omnia! Thanks, Brian. You bring good things to life, and that truth belongs to our community, not to any corporation.

Welcome back to the A Donne A Day podcasts. Actually, that’s for me: you didn’t go anywhere, but I got buried under the Term Avalanche. With some inspiration from EDUCAUSE, though, and with particular inspiration from a very interesting moment toward the end of my Donne seminar yesterday, I went home last night and recorded this podcast. It’s my reading of “Meditation 17” from Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, a prose work Donne wrote during a near-fatal illness late in his life. “Meditation 17” is the most famous selection from this work. You’ll recognize one part of it immediately.

In my class, though, I emphasized another part, one that I find even stranger and more powerful than the well-known “no man is an island.” My commentary after the reading specifies that part, explains a little of what I believe it means, and talks about my teacherly tactics as I sought to enable a light-bulb moment in the waning moments of the class period.

I hope you enjoy the podcast. The time is drawing near for my students to do their own Donne podcasts, so I guess I better get my act together and get some more of my own out there.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (12.3MB)

Last night I spent some time reading back entries in Pete Townshend’s online diary. It was time very well spent. Pete has been doing a lot of writing these days, and while his online writing has always been wonderful, it seems to me there’s a new level of inspiration, fluency, and uncanny power to what he’s doing. And for Pete Townshend, that’s saying something.

So much of Web 2.0 is anticipated by Pete’s Lifehouse vision, and we’re all very blessed that Pete’s still here to reflect on that vision and its manifestations in 2005, including a deep understanding of the power of blogging. An even greater blessing, though, is Pete’s ongoing curiosity about all facets of life and creativity, and his apparently bottomless capacity for inspiration–both giving and receiving. Case in point: two online diary entries from late summer 2005 in which Pete first reflects on just now reading Kerouac’s On The Road for the first time, and then includes an excerpt to entice us to read more of Kerouac ourselves. These entries moved me to my soul. I hope they resonate with you as well.

Thank you, Pete. Again.

Middlebury College’s Alex Chapin provides an interesting analysis, quite technically detailed, of how podcasting via iPods and iTunes could be part of a robust student-centered knowledgebase. Alex shared this information in a recent presentation at NERCOMP.

Some of the information is a little out-of-date, not surprising given the rapid pace of change and development in this area: after all, we’ve gone from version 4.9 to version 6.x of iTunes in about four months, during which time two major iPod product introductions have also occurred. I also want to explore more thoroughly the issues surrounding display of metadata on the portable device. There are HCI issues with density / quantity of information on the small screen as well as sheer usability concerns when the layers of operability grow beyond a certain point. That said, the real value here is the depth of Alex’s thinking on mobile audio as a campus-wide learning platform. The audio capture ideas are particularly inviting, especially now that the new video iPod can record at redbook CD quality (16 bit / 44.1 khz), a fact I learned from Adam Curry, not Apple.

Thanks, Alex. Recommended.

via Infocult.