Scheduling RSS Channels

Hi Everyone!

Happy New Year!!

The recent firmware update on PSP - Version 3.02, has some great new features in it. One particularly exciting development is the timer for RSS Channels.

So what does this mean...?

It is now possible to set a timer on the PSP so that it will automatically download material from a specified RSS Channel. In essence, the PSP will 'wake' itself up, connect to specified wireless network, connect to RSS Channel, download specified content and then switch itself off again.

Sounds great, but so what...?

We had a real challenge last term with getting video files quickly onto the device. Whilst RSS Channels went a long way in solving some of the challenges, it did not help with speed, as some video files took too long to download. This new feature will enable you to do that download during the night, so that the content needed for the next day is already on the PSP before the lesson.

This will save time and also burden on the network for downloading.

If you go to your RSS Channel, and press triangle, a menu will come up and at the top is timer - follow the instructions from here.

Please post a comment to this post if you have used this function to any effect.

Ok... not so hot

The TVersity website says this:

The TVersity Media Server allows any device with a web browse to access the media library and download or stream the multimedia content of the library. Whether media is downloaded or streamed is device dependent, for example the web browser running on your desktop may do either of these things depending on its configuration. The web browser on the Sony PSP is configured to download content to the memory card.

So it doesn't really stream, then. No better position that using RSS.

Really, Sony need to allow the PSP to stream video. I can't see the reason why this isn't already configured in the current firmware. If a special educational firmware is on the cards, it must must must have the ability to stream video.

TVersity

This looks very tempting as a (hopefully short-term) solution to the vital need we have for streaming video to the PSP. TVersity allows media content to be watched on any web-based device like the PSP. I would imagine that it's aimed at people who want to access their videos on their home pcs when they're out. The question will be if it allows multiple connections and, if it does, whether we could put videos on our school servers and then use this service to stream it to students using their psps. I'll have a play with this and see how useful it is.

Inappropriate Usage

With 8b2 I've had the first misuse of the PSP. Two students - Jake and Jordan - were using the PSP memory sticks to transfer games (flash games, I think) between their laptops. I had already warned the class about misuse and, consequently, have taken away their PSP use for the rest of the week. What the rest of the class are doing on PSPs and laptops, they have to do lo-tech: in their English books.

Typical teacher question: What do we think should happen if students use the PSPs inappropriately?

Year Eight Assignment progress

The Year Eight assignment continues very well. Students are busily making their advertisements and, one group, filmed advertisement. I've started using the cascade approach to showing students how to do things: I'll show one student how to do something and expect her to show the rest of her table. It's been much better in terms of classroom management. Currently, students are in the process of exporting slides from PowerPoint as JPEGs, uploading them to PXN8, resizing them to 480x272, saving them to their laptops, connecting their laptops to their PSPs and transferring the pictures to them. Students are getting the hang of this pretty well (though it's early days). They're very pleased when their slides work - and look good - on the PSPs.

iMovie to PSP

Made a short revision clip on iMovie on AppleMac using photos found on google search for English GCSE poetry which had both music and spoken soundtracks. Used something called 'Virtual Hub' which converted iMovie clip to psp readable video but lost music and resulting sound very faint when clip played on psp. Any way to improve sound?
Daniel, our Media technician, has set up a site and successfully managed to download clip to one psp wirelessly but haven't tried it with a whole class set yet -may be very slow?
Also, if we are going to use sound a lot, need to provide different earphones to in-ear ones we already have? There is a hygiene issue with those if lots of kids use them.
But in spite of these issues, can see lots of potential, especially for Media both in students using prepared material and creating short films, podcasts themselves to use on psp.

Firmware Upgrade to 3.01

Sony have upgraded the PSP firmware to 3.01 and added some neat features such as the ability to use a (compatible) camera, some PS3 linkage and visualisations to the music player. I upgraded the one I'm using at school with no problem (though my own will stay in its preferable 1.5 state). Everything seems to work - though I've not tried out the new movie formats.

Should we just upgrade? Any reasons why not?

Next Step.... Differentiation (by RSS)

With the Year Eight groups, I got to the stage that we are ready to create content for the PSP. As this is going to be a differentiated activity, the lower-achievers will be given more specific scaffolded support while the higher-achievers will be given a greater amount of freedom (plus their assignment is to create a video advertisement to show on the PSP). The differentiated tasks are going to be delivered by RSS, which is up and running to test. I'd appreciate it if anyone can check it works ok.

English PSP Assignment RSS feed

Mylo

Youtube of the mylo in action (from comments on the last post):

Some Thoughts About This... and What We're Doing

Thinking about PSPs as a genuine learning tool, if Sony could create a tiny - but useable - keyboard (like the Stowaway ones) plus a suite of simplified applications like Office, the PSP would be the "killer" device in schools.

Having children use some sort of PIM instead of the dreaded planners all schools use would be a fantastic personal organisational tool. Imagine students checking their schedules using the PSPs, teachers able to "send" homework to students so that there's no issue of homework not being recorded, links to resources, etc. It'd be great.

I wonder how far Sony actually would go in opening up the PSP in this direction for education? It'd be excellent to be involved in this sort of area, which I think would have much more impact than simply using it as we are at the moment. I know that Nintendo already has PIM cartridges for the DS (albeit in Japan) but a tailored organiser for students... that'd be the real selling point to parents and schools.

It's interesting to look at the One Laptop Per Child initiative. There are some videos of the OS in action - that would be a good starting point for the UI of any educational software on a PSP. [Apparently images of the OLPC OS can be downloaded and run through an emulator, which I'll have a go at, just for interest value.]

Would it be worth us thinking more about this and doing a mock-up of the PSP running this sort of software? Or is this project just looking at how we can use the PSPs now in the form they are?

Year 9 PSP 1st Lesson

Took my first lesson using PSP today with some degree of success.

The aim was for pupils to subscribe to my RSS feed -

http://web.mac.com/rkipling/iWeb/PSP/PSP%20Blog/PSP%20Blog.html

and download a video podcast. The file is very large so had other activities to do whilst they were waiting.

The feed is now on the PSPs so could I ask that nobody delete it please?

Lesson outline

The pupils were instructed to help each other to gain access to the website and add a bookmark. They all (with the exception of two pupils with tech probs) managed to subscride to the RSS channel and download and watch the video.

The level of engagement was very high and all were enthusiastic teachers to their peeers.
They all got to grips with the interface very quickly.
Some pupils experienced network problems but after several attemps managed to overcome difficulties.

Issues for discussion

I used my own blog for the downloads as I wasted an awful lot of time attempting to attatch file links to the school blog. Access for teachers to facilities such as FTP needs to be implemented.

Many teachers are having the same difficulties as I experienced. For the project to be successful it needs to be easy to implement for non-specialists.

I found class managment a little tricky as they are so focused that getting their attention for further tasks took a little time. I asked them to place PSPs face down on the case while I spoke. Any other ideas for this?

Overal a great experience for the learners and I now have a subscribed feed so future content should be easy for me.

I have some video footage that I will add later.

Year Ten PSP Lesson

Very successful lesson this morning with 10b1 (much, much better than I've had with younger students). The purpose of the media lesson was to analyse the symbolic and written codes in a trailer from the American tv series Veronica Mars. The PSP is ideal for this as it enables students to individually analyse the media text at their own pace and examine features they are interested in.



Unlike the lessons with Year Eight, I gave less guidance about using the PSPs and focused more directly on the task students needed to complete. I told students to play with the PSP until they worked out how to use the controls. To be honest, this discovery-mode approach was more effective than my laborious explanation of the controls to the Eights. All students - including girls - used the PSPs confidently. The only problem was a single PSP that repeatedly turned the video into "corrupt data". Switching the PSP off then on again temporarily sorted out the problem. Why it did this needs investigating.



I was particularly pleased that the students used the PSP as a tool to complete the task I had set rather than as the focus of their activities. The video above shows one student, Michael, expertly using the controls of the video player while making notes at the same time. With the other class I am using PSPs with, students seemed too excited about the devices and this got in the way of the learning activity. With these older students this wasn't the case. Perhaps its age and a greater experience of using mobile devices. More of these students seemed to have prior experience of PSPs.



You can see in the videos that the PSP was used as another piece of equipment alongside pen and paper. Unlike a laptop, they don't get in the way. Watching a video clip on a laptop and making notes at the same time is, in my opinion, pretty difficult (and not helped by the clumsy video controls in most video playback software). The PSP is ideal for this sort of activity.

My gripes about this lesson come in the form of the work I had to do to beforehand. For some reason the school website isn't allowing us to post from Blogger or put files on it. After too much time trying to find a workaround (originally I wanted students to download the video) I ended up manually transferring the files onto 30 PSPs (luckily I had a small Year 11 class who I could help and do this at the same time!). Really, we need to have ftp access to part of the school website so we can upload files directly.