Pancultural-

Babel revisited with a corporate software lock-in twist. Learnscoping for August

This is the third time I've posted with no avail, and as yet I've 'only' lost my entire blog text twice. Wow, it DID NOT like 'quicktime' movies....Doh!
Anyway I now need to rant and vent, though not necessarily in that order. I'm grateful I can work with the intellectual property of Bill gates and Steve Jobs respectively, but I get sooo frustrated trying to get them to talk with each other. It's like trying to mix oil and water or get Itchy and Scratchy to lay down their arms [without using chainsaws].
Jhonno and Jason,[above] a couple of likely lads if ever there was two, and Raylene and I [centre and right below] set up a couple of "Audacity" Learnscope workshops to delve into the mystics of Audio manipulation. To my genuine surprise they took to it like frozen chooks in a cannon.
Some of our multimedia workshops have been difficult for the Learnscopers to grasp and have thus met with limited success. Even PowerPoint can get tricky. On the other hand it was very much easier for the students to conceptalise a mixed audio scenario and then just drill down and start producing. [Noise pollution can be beneficial after all] After 40 mins of Audacity tuition the 'brief' went something like: "read/record this paragraph using this mike and Audacity, then lay a background track on it using this selection of mp3 music files. So, with a $10 mike each and some freeware we managed a couple of great workshops.
One of the most rewarding things about teaching is when one hears students Oh and Ah-ing as they flex newly created muscle. [note; find out who's the patron saint of student engagement and proffer a prayer].

Overriding this rewarding engagement however is the Babel revisited scenario. First it was Linguistic nuances across Warlpiri, Chinese and English, and now, as were getting ever closer to product, its what will play on what.
One of our Learnscope Project 'deliverables' is audio/visual content playing on MP4 players, 3G phones and hand-held PDA's. I can feel a vent-rant coming on, got the taste for it, just can't waste for it...
PDA's runing Mobile 5 Windows OS wont play mpg4, Flash video .flv or Shockwave .swf files, On the other hand however, PSP's and MP4 players will do mp3 and mp4 but not WMV's.
iTunes spits out audio in an esoteric file suffixed .m4p that won't play on anything but Itunes, 3g phones are decidedly undecided and definately maybe about moving pictures, and my veritable Blogger interface keels over if I try to load quicktime movies.
Sometimes I think we should have a Learnscope competition to see who can design the Ultimate Learnscope Medicine toolkit, Bach rescue remedies shelved with Prozac and St Johns Wort etc.

There again some times I like to daydream....
A long time ago
In a river bed far far away......