The Design Team met up with more of this past year’s iTeach participants to talk about what they have been working on this semester and how they have been using the things they learned at iTeach.

Terri Babers
Terri hasn’t had a chance to try anything new yet with her classes, but will be teaching Internet Marketing class in the Spring. She is thinking about introducing blogging into the coursework and is very curious to hear how others are using blogs in their classrooms.

Julie Fronzuto
Used a blog with her summer class
http://natturalhistoryofpws-ak.wordpress.com

She had a bit apprehension about using blogs in the beginning, but was pleasantly surprised to see students really run with it and take ownership of their writing. She says she was very impressed.

(Question) Did you have one class blog, or did your students have individual blogs?
(Julie) There was one class blog. Each time they went out on a field trip the students would come back and write about the experiences on that blog. At the end of the class one of the students took it upon herself to consolidate information about all of the different locations we had visited. Students didn’t have their own blogs.

(Question) Did you instruct the students on how much or how often to post?
(Julie) Yes. The students really too off and really wrote a lot.

(Question) Did you require them to comment?
(Julie) I limited commenting from the outside and didn’t require students to comment. Because it was a small class there was some commenting, but only one of the students was really good about doing it.

(Question) What do you think you would do differently?
(Julie) This class went very well, so I really don’t know what I would do differently yet.

Julie is currently taking two online classes about teaching in Second Life. She thinks it would be a good way to get all of the students together in one spot. She’s currently talking with the dean about working with the students synchronously throughout the class.

Another faculty member will be writing a grant to pursue the work in Second Life further. There are a number of educational communities in Second Life, and she learned about the classes through the University of Indiana (or Illinois? – one of those)

(Comment) You may want to get in touch with Chip McMillan who is also working in SL out of Juneau

Marsha Gladhart
Marsha worked with wikis and podcasting during this semester. The wikis were implemented in two different situations… in the first there was a science methods instructor who had seen a wiki, but had never used on so there was a little learning curve. This wiki was used it for collaborative writing and was set up on Wikispaces.

The second wiki implementation was a UAS wiki for a faculty workgroup – still a little rough, but the users are doing alright.

Marsha continues podcasting for her graduate class. She was podcasting about course content in the beginning and is now podcasting about the assignments as well. (Link)

(Comment) Cheryl was using wikis for a collaborative writing assignment (APA style) which I thought was another interesting use for wikis.

(Question) Do you know how your students are listening to the podcasts?
(Marsha) There was only one student using iTunes. This semester the podcasts are embedded in the course assignments so they are right there with the the rest of coursework.

(Question) How did you deal with students who were technophobic?
(Marsha) I do have some older students so the first day of class I book the computer lab so everyone can walk through accessing things like Blackboard so they are comfortable in the future.

(Question) So your class isn’t entirely online?
(Marsha) Most of my students are Ed Tech students so they are usually pretty literate. In other classes I have provided Camtasia videos and other resources. I’ve also paired students together so they assist each other.

http://jingproject.com

(Comment) I would really suggest in the first week of class that you create exercises that uses all of the components students are getting familiar with everything so they aren’t stumbling along later in the semester.

Robin Gilcrest
Robin has been using Camtasia for an AutoCAD class this semester. Students often try to follow along in class, but can’t keep up. She uses Camtasia to create vodcasts for students to watch over and over.

“Camtasia captures everything I’m doing in AutoCAD. I can then add narration and text balloons. Students can view and review material.” – Robin

(Question) What would you say the learning curve is for Camtasia?
(Robin) I think it is very simple, but creating vodcasts out of them is a bit more difficult. As I create more my library of student resources grows and more is available for the students to use.

(responding to question about older students) I think the older students can be successful if they have some time to adapt

(Question) Is this a face to face class?
(Robin) No, this is a face to face class I’m creating supplemental material for.

(Suggestion) http://screentoaster.com – similar to Camtasia but it is web-based. Users can store the files they create online.

Catherine Powers
Catherine didn’t start working right away, but is working for Spring semester on a Library Skills class.

Wrap Up
Robin – I was excited to hear about the students working on a blog together.

Terry – I’d love to hear more about how others are using blogs in the classroom. (CDE has some materials we’ve already put together for you to use with your students).

Robin – I like the idea of introducing students to the technology.
(Question) Does CDE plan on doing a follow up to iTeach?
(A) We don’t know yet. It is driven by funding but we’ve talked about doing something like that. Nothing has been solidified yet.

Terry – Would like to make Elive connections with other iTeach participants if anyone is interested.

Last night six iTeach participants from this past year got together on Elive and shared with us what they had been working on since we had seen them last. I just have to say right up front that there was so much interesting work being done that I almost can’t wait to hear more.

We’ve tried to capture the majority of what was shared below so that others can explore these efforts as well. If I’ve left anything out please feel free to include them in the comments.

Participants

Chip McMillan

Chip is currently persuading administrators that Second Life can be a new platform for delivery of a Masters in Education (Science) program. He shared some background about the cooperation that is planned with NOAA on creating a Virtual Alaska in Second Life. The Virtual Alaska are in Second Life would include a Virtual Alaska Interior, Virtual Tongass National Forest, and Virtual Aleutian Island. He also showed how NOAA has taken their “Real Life” Science-on-a-sphere, concept and made it possible in Second Life.

He would like to see these locations in SL host information trails with kiosks containing science content, a great lesson, multimedia, a project, and/or misconceptions about science.

NOAA would like to build Virtual Alaska resources on the Teen Grid but the details are still being worked out.

Sine suggested that there might be EPSCoR funding for this project.

More about what Chip is doing here:
http://rhetorica.uaf.edu/iteach/2008/11/14/chip-mcmillan/

Cheryl Johnson

Cheryl made a wiki available in her class this fall as a place to work on an assignment where students, in the past, had used a discussion board. She didn’t like the results she was seeing with the discussion board assignment, so she tried to re-imagine the course using a wiki.

Students wrote about technology tools used in education, and because of the nature of a wiki, were also able to collaborate on each other’s work.

(Question) Did you feel the wiki worked better?
(Cheryl) It was definitely a different experience. Many of the students normally struggle with the APA format, which I require them to write in, but the students were able to assist each other in getting the format correct. (Peer editing)

Cheryl is also using multiple home site views (UAS feature)in her online class space and reconfigured the layout so it is new easier to navigate.

(Comment) I really like the new class layout and think it looks very organized. Are you willing to share how you did this? (Cheryl has posted the code for her sidebar in the UAS tech forum, and supplied the code which has been included below.)

<table width="100%" border="0">
          <tbody>
              <tr>
                  <td>{title}{views}{-profile}</td>
                  <td>{-announcements}</td>
              </tr>
          </tbody>
      </table>
      <table width="100%" border="0">
          <tbody>
              <tr>
                  <td valign="top">{+assignments}</td>
                  <td width="30%" valign="top">{+commtools} {+resources}</td>
</tr>
</table>

More about what Cheryl has been doing is here:
http://rhetorica.uaf.edu/iteach/2008/11/10/cheryl-jp-johnson/

John Mouracade

John normally has his philosophy students write response papers that ended up feeling a bit rigid and found that if he mandated a word limit, the students wouldn’t necessarily write beyond that limit. He decided this semester to have students blog instead and that their writing became more free-form and that they were writing much more. Students seemed to be doing more thought provoking and extensive work.

This is a face-to-face class. Before class John looks through Google Reader to get an overview of what students have been working on. The conversations are then continued from the blogs during class time. John found there was a broad amount of material that could be covered in this way.

A few examples of student blogs:
http://khristyparker.blogspot.com/2008/11/law-as-interpretation-r-dworkin.html
http://tigers-lily.blogspot.com/2008/10/posner-and-pragmatism.html
http://lawsphilosophy.blogspot.com/2008/09/hart.html

(Question) What do you do about students who don’t want their work made public?
(John) There really weren’t any students who had an issue with the public performance. They did have the option to post under a pseudonym.

More about what John is doing here:
http://rhetorica.uaf.edu/iteach/2008/11/13/john-mouracade/

Sine Anahita

Sine did a video wiki with students. Face-to-face students were hesitant to talk about race in class and she always felt a bit on edge talking about such a touchy subject in class. The semester the class ended up throwing out the syllabus and working on this wiki. It was an overwhelming success, and as a result attendance is the highest it has ever been.

(Question) How will you use this in the future?
(Sine) The plan is to put together a 50 minute film as a teaching guide. I’ve really been inspired to make the video available for free and open to the public to stimulate discussion about race.

(Question) Is this like digital storytelling?
(Sine) Students share their stories… but students they then analyze the work.

(Comment) It is a new and moving experience for the students

Sine says that she really gained confidence from iTeach which allowed her to move forward with his project. She also says she’s found great inspiration from other sociologists who are blogging.

“What a difference it has made to me because I was feeling very isolated here in Fairbanks.”

Sine’s class blog can be seen here:
http://rhetorica.uaf.edu/iteach/2008/10/27/dr-sine-anahita/
More info about what Sine has been working on is here:
http://rhetorica.uaf.edu/iteach/2008/10/27/dr-sine-anahita/

Judy Atkinson

Judy’s audio classes were cancelled this semester so she didn’t get a chance to try the things she had been planning. She did say she was getting great ideas from what others shared during the this meeting.

She just started working on ideas for a class (4 credit with lab) that incorporates new strategies for studying for students. The class is still in the beginning stages.

(Suggestion) Blogging to reduce math anxiety – Maybe adding a reflection activity at the end of each lesson to help the students share where they felt they were getting hung up during.

Heidi Brocicous

Lost connection… we hope to hear back from you Heidi! In the meantime, there is more about what she’s been doing here:
http://rhetorica.uaf.edu/iteach/2008/11/14/heidi-brocius/

Wrap Up

Cheryl – I’d love to do something in Second Life and blogging too (it seems blogging is easier to get into)

Chip – Intrigued by the use of video, and would like students to interview elders and post those interviews as video.

Sine – The libraries all have video cameras that you can borrow and the tech guys are very willing to assist. I wrote a grant to get the software and camera I used in this class.

Chip – The Flip video camera has been very impressive for capturing video. It can be finicky in “record” with instant playback out to TV.

Thanks to everyone for participating. We’ll also be posting notes from the session planned for this afternoon if you’d like to see what others are working on.

Since this summer’s iTeach, I have changed a number of things in my distance courses. I have used the discussion board for the very first time in my practicum class.  I am amazed at how interconnected students feel through the process of posting, reading the posts of their classmates, and having that level of weekly exchange. Discussion boards pull all members of the class into a conversation, not just the talkative ones, and they are more supportive and engaging of one another as a result.  I also have expanded my use of the grade book, and have learned to use the discussion board grader -what a time saver!

I also purchased a webcam, and have been doing Skype based advising for students, and meet with faculty via Skype-  this has also provided a connection to students and faculty at a distance.

Finally, I have pushed the use of Elive for all of our distance classes. I have decided to use Elive next semester in all my classes, and am encouraging the whole social work faculty to do the same – I arranged for an Elive refresher training during a faculty meeting, and have been hosting weekly Elive meetings so that faculty learn the features and get comfortable with this new technology.  I know there is more to learn and
implement, but iTeach has already made a significant positive impact on my teaching.

Hello all!  I was already using wikis, podcasts, and blogs but iTeach helped me refine and crystallize my thinking about how to use them.  I was able to work with a science methods instructor to create her first experience with a wiki this fall. We used wikispaces because it has a user friendly interface and it provided a tool for the students to use once they leave their UAS courses. The students used the wiki for a collaborative writing experience, to share resources, and to upload their lesson plans. It was a learning experience for most of the students and and the instructor was delighted.

I also decided to try the UASOnline wiki with a faculty workgroup.  I set up a wiki for one of our accreditation teams to share resources and write collaboratively.  This was really a challenge but everyone is now on the wiki and some are even sharing ideas about how we could use it. I’m not to the point that I’d call this one a tremendous success yet but now we have several faculty members use the wiki who hadn’t used one before. I’ve attached graphics of both wikis.

I’m continuing my podcasts for my graduate classes each week. My biggest challenge has been to find copyright free graphics for the enhanced podcasts. I asked my students to evaluate the use of podcasts and they overwhelming liked having them and wanted the enhanced podcasts with graphics/photos to help them focus their attention.  I have ended up purchasing some graphics and photos because I just don’t have the time to search for copyright free ones. This year, I’m embedding the enhanced podcasts in my UASOnline courses instead of posting them at my personal Website. But I posted two examples for this sharing event (one an orientation to the course and the other a podcast on the digital divide) at http://uashome.alaska.edu/~magladhart/ED635_Fall08/ED635_Podcasts/ED635_Podcasts.html

I’m also finding and using podcasts from other resources instead of doing my own each week. That gives the students a break from my voice and has been a great way for me to keep up with what others are saying about a topic.

I’ll stop there but I loved all the gadgets and goodies shared at iTeach and continue to explore and experiment when I can.

Terri’s class hasn’t started yet, but she has questions about classroom blogging:

• Who among us has established a blog as instructional strategy?
• Can you share examples of student blogging as part of the course work? or have you found such examples online anywhere?
• Do you and your students believe it was effective? cumbersome?
• Has it added to or distracted from your content?
• Did you deliver content via the blog?
• How did you introduce blogging as part of your class?
• How did you "grade" blogs?
• How time-intensive are they?
• Did your students expend much energy/effort to comment on each others’ blogging?
• Did you set up a mini website to initiate and track the blogging? if not, how did you do so?

I will be teaching both Internet Marketing and Public Speaking online in the spring.  While I’m not developing the Public Speaking course, I will have some input into course presentation …  would like to use blogging as a way to connect students and allow them to give each other feedback.

I am using a wiki in all four of my courses this fall. ALST 300 students post facts about Alaska they deem essential to know if one is to be a sourdough. These facts constitute 60% of the final exam to be given in December. The students in my two Curriculum Development courses are writing what is essentially our Alaska-focused textbook on curriculum development on the wiki. My Best Practices in Teaching Science ED 593 course uses our wiki as a science notebook, recording every observation, hypothesis, measurement, inference we make. We have graphs, images, simulations posted on the wiki.

I have set up a Wiki for our Sustainability Initiative here at UAS.

I post short videos, audio files, and lots of graphics on all my UAS Online course sites on the announcements page, in class resources and in the forum. I post surveys and quizzes, as well.

With help from the UAF CDE I have begun creating PRIMs in Second Life on Rhetorica. This is an essential first step in my partnership project between UAS, Juneau School District and NOAA. The goal is to create a Virtual Alaska for high school and university students to learn the human cultures and natural history of Alaska.

I store thousands of images of Alaskan places I have taken for ALST 300 on Flickr. I use Google Docs and Text 2 Mind Map.

I use Elluminate Live and even some advanced features like breakout rooms in one of my distance courses.

I want to do a Breeze presentation next to improve some of the tutorials I have posted on my course sites. I am looking forward to Google finishing its Gapminder data visualization tool.

All of these technology tools have improved my courses.

Here is the rundown on what I am doing differently this semester.

There are 4 different technological tools that I have implemented due to my experience at i-teach.  Students in my philosophy of law class are blogging their reading responses.  I am using Google reader to read and respond to the blogs.  I have abandoned the digital dropbox and have set up all my students’ assignments through the assignment function on Blackboard.  Additionally, I posted all of my assignments and exams at the beginning of the semester and used the adaptive release function to make the assignments available at the appropriate time.

The use of blogging and reader worked synergistically.  As students posted their responses and analyses of the readings across cyberspace, I could pull them all in to google reader, accessing them through a central feed.  This is easily the most convenient way for collecting and reviewing students’ assignments.  In addition to the ease of grading and perhaps more importantly, the blog/reader system led to students being more creative and expressive. The blog format seemed to encourage students to write more.  Without the MS Word pagination and word count going, students focused more on addressing the purpose of the assignment.

The switch to the assignment function and the adaptive release for assignments allowed me to streamline the processes for posting and grading assignments.  Early in the semester, when the grading load was light, I posted the assignments for the entire semester and used the adaptive release to make the assignments available as scheduled in the syllabus.  The assignment function also automatically created a grade book item for the assignments, thereby allowing me to skip a step I had been taking.  Also, I could access completed assignments through the grade book.  Viewing the assignment through the grade book has obvious advantages for the convenience of grading and entering grades through the same location.

Here are some links to student blogs:

http://kaylaoftheak.blogspot.com/2008/11/let-bartering-begin.html
http://khristyparker.blogspot.com/2008/11/law-as-interpretation-r-dworkin.html
http://tigers-lily.blogspot.com/2008/10/posner-and-pragmatism.html
http://lawsphilosophy.blogspot.com/2008/09/hart.html

[Jaece (aka Julie) in SL - click for larger]

New: Set up blog on Blogspace for my Summer Bio 104: Natural History of Alaska class. The blog can be viewed at:

Naturalhistoryofpws-ak.blogspot.com

Students were given free rein on the format and style but were told to include: date, location, and species lists for each trip we took. They were very enthusiastic about this tool and posted many pictures and descriptions. The last time I taught this class, the students simply kept a field note book with the requested data. They were much more engaged and shared the link with friends and family both locally and back home.

Additionally, I have been exploring Second Life. My original goal was to use it as a means to teach labs or connect with students in the villages we serve. I am currently taking 2 in world classes, through the University of Illinois at Urbana on teaching in SL. I have been sharing my ideas with faculty, the head of the museum and a city museum curator and my idea is taking on wings. I will be applying for a grant to develop this idea! I’m really excited by what I see happening in SL, educationally, and the possibilities it presents! This all started with the SL demo that was done during iTeach.

RL: Julie Fronzuto
SL: Jaece Zapatero

As a result of attending the iTeach session in Juneau this past summer, I have restructured my class to include two new features. Although they took a bit of work to set up, I am thrilled with the results of both.

The first change I made was to entire online structure of my class. Up until now, I had been adding new “assignments” each week. These are actually my lessons that I post in the “assignment” section. In doing so, I had to be sure to archive the old lessons, and set the show dates of the tasks, lessons, resources, and gradebook to be sure they aligned. I had to update dates on all of these items each semester. My fear was always that I would forget to update the date in one of these items and it would not be available for my students when they needed it. By using the “Views” feature I learned about, I am able to automate the entire system and set the dates in just one of the areas – a considerable time and fret saver. I also used this feature to create a class calendar page. I used to post an Excel document with that information but it took a long time to edit and update it each semester. By posting it in a calendar view, I am able to simply update the web-based table. Although I haven’t, I could even update it during the semester without worrying that I would need to recall all hardcopies. You can see these structures within my current class site at: https://uascentral.uas.alaska.edu/online/ED628-JD1/?term=Fall-2008&behavior=UAS&session=944537

The second big change I made was in adding a class wiki. I am absolutely thrilled with the result. I know several of my students struggled with this as they had never written in a wiki before, but it was a great chance to give them the opportunity so they could determine if it would be a tool they may find useful with their students. What I really liked about it was that it gave them the chance to work together on creating a document instead of just commenting on research their classmates had posted which is how I have addressed this assignment in the past. In addition to needing to read their partners’ posts in depth to determine what they should add and how to seamlessly do so, they also had to work with others’ who had varying skills when it comes to writing in APA format. By doing so, they helped each other to create a single document with a much stronger format and more information than they could have created individually. This section of my class is password protected, but I’ve attached a few screenshots from it on the next page.

Overall, I found iTeach to be extremely beneficial. I had not had the opportunity to stay up on some of the Web 2.0 tools I wanted to share with my students so they could see how to use them in the classroom, and this gave me that chance.

Introductory Page for the Wiki Assignment (click for larger)
 

Some Student Work on the Assignment (click for larger)

I learned lots from iTeach. I have completed several new projects and/or incorporated things I learned from iTeach. But frankly, I’m just beginning. I have plans for more stuff to incorporate, and hope to have more things to report in January. But for the upcoming iTeach reunion:

1) I was introduced to the academic side of blogs–I have suffered from sociological intellectual isolation since a colleague who I co-wrote with left in 2006. At iTeach, I was introduced to the world of academic blogs. Sociologists blog!!! No more isolation! I can’t tell you how excited I have been to connect with my virtual colleagues through sociological blogs.

2) iTeach put digital film editing within my grasp. I have used iMovie and Moviemaker to edit short podcasts. I have completed two podcasts, and currently have two others in the works on my blog. For an example, see this entry on Equal Pay. If I can finish the editing on part of my documentary film, “Race Stories” (see below), I’ll send it along before the Nov 10 deadline. I hope to put elements of “Race Stories” online for future SOC 308 Race and Ethnic Relations students to use. I also plan to put clips of excellent student presentations online for my future SOC 405 Social Movement students.

3) blogs–as a result of iTeach, I created and refined an online identity as an academic sociologist. I use blogspot.com, introduced to me by iTeach. I have also taught others how to create blogs. With help from a neighbor, I created a blog for my neighborhood that we successfully used as a tool to unify us against Borough incursion. I also am working with a MA student to create a blog for the proposed Safe Zones project. My sociology blog: http://www.socioked.blogspot.com/ My neighborhood blog: http://www.ORTNeighbors.blogspot.com/

4) through Chris Lott’s technological suggestions, I purchased a Wacom tablet that I use to create graphics. I have used my own graphic creations to jazz up my existing CDE course webpages, as well as my syllabi and other material for my F2F courses, and for my departments and committee work. For example, here is a new syllabus that uses graphics I created using the Wacom and my own photos.

5) the conversations at iTeach were helpful in my decision to purchase a digital camcorder, which I use to tape student presentations in my oral intensive course. As luck would have it, my oral intensive course was selected for evaluation this year. I am using my new digital camcorder, along with my Moviemaker experience, to create podcasts the evaluation committee can use as evaluation data. The chair of the committee was quite excited to hear that they would not have to view 23 hours of videotape, but instead would be treated to a short, edited, and enjoyable podcast.

6) iTeach expanded my appreciation of YouTube and similar video sites. I incorporated many short videos into my oral intensive course, e.g. 3 minute clips of famous social movement speakers, which the students then analyzed. In this class, I focus on teaching students the performance aspects of oral presentations using data from social movements. In the past, I have had to show films in class, winding and rewinding, cueing up multiple videos to show just a few minutes of film so students could complete the assignment. But this semester, using wifi and a laptop, I was able to show the students 2 or 3 minutes of the specific clips I desired. Here is an example of a speech we analyzed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znQe9nUKzvQ

Two students missed class that day because of illness, but they were able to view the clips on their own. In the past, students would have had to check out videos from the library, and struggle to find the exact clips I wanted them to analyze. What a time saver! And so convenient for me and my students. There is also much more variety on YouTube compared to the variety of social movement speeches our library can afford to own. And I could email the links to the students who could just click on them to listen to them.

7) as a result of iTeach, my department has been discussing how we can improve the quality of the SOC courses we offer through CDE. We have a dismal completion rate in at least three of our courses, and an excellent complete rate in one. In one of our courses, students fail miserably at the assignments. We are brainshowering how we can incorporate short videos of explanations, demonstrations, other online materials to improve student performance.

finally, and most excitingly… iTeach gave me the confidence I needed to actually start work on the documentary video I have been hoping to do for years. The film is called “Race Stories,” and features my students analyzing their own personal stories about race. The connection with iTeach is complex… The workshops gave me the confidence I needed to actually DO the filming and the editing (using Final Cut Pro). But iTeach gave me something else, and this is what is complicated. I was frustrated several times during the iTeach seminar, frustrated that we were spending our time evaluating student learning without talking about how students actually GET course content. For example, how do they learn how to analyze race sociologically? I shared a participant’s frustration when she said something like, “students don’t just discover the Pythogorean Theorem on their own.” Exactly. But what tools can we use to help students learn that parallel the good things about F2F teaching? My experiences at iTeach spurred many conversations about this. Some of these conversations occurred on sociology blogs, by the way. And ultimately, what happened for me is that I woke up at 4:00 AM one morning, unable to sleep. And I realized that iTeach had given me the confidence to believe that I had enough technological expertise to do the documentary film, and that I would learn what I needed to know as I went along. And that “experts” or at least online how-to guides and how-to books would appear when I needed them to. This is a huge paradigm shift for me.

That day, I went into my class, and I suggested that we do the film together, and the students were socioked. Student participation in the class is very high; student attendance is consistent; and over half of our film is on tape. Editing the film is still a few weeks away, and I will let ya’ll know in January how this part of my project goes. Before iTeach, I knew I had the sociological expertise to do the film. But iTeach gave me the confidence I need to just shoot it and work out the technological details as I go. In a sense, iTeach dared me to step outside the box. And I did.

Thank you for iTeach, both to the CDE and to the participants. I am eager to hear how others incorporated the workshop into their teaching.

Update 1: One more thing from iTeach… While cruising sites for royalty free sounds and music, I stumbled on simplynoise.com. I have been plagued with noise in my workplace. My office walls are thin, my colleagues boisterous. I can’t work with distracting noises. With the headset CDE gave me at iTeach, I play brown noise to mask the hubbub. Finally, I can actually work in my office even though the world outside my door is noisy and full of distractions! http://www.simplynoise.com/

Update 2: New video as part of the Race Stories project: There is Color and Race: Why?