InsectaPod Blog

This blog isn’t super buggy, but its accompanying podcast sure is. As a result I’m always interested in finding other people who are discussing entomology online, especially through blogs. I’be been reading Bug Girl’s blog regularly for over a year now, and I was disappointed yesterday when she posted that she’ll taking a sabbatical in response to someone “outing” her (she’s been blogging anonymously). So I went searching for some more stuff to fill the void. What I found is listed below.

1. The Ant Room. Kari Wilkie writes about ants. Lots of stuff about ants.
2. NC State University Insect Museum. I think departmental blogs are a great idea, I’d like to see the folks in Anna’s laboratory maintain one.
3. Bugs for Thugs. I’m not sure what’s thuggish about this one, but the photos are great.
4. The Myrmecos Blog. More ants, and I learned a new latin word today.

And, finally, just a weird thing that came up in this search. I read a post on Kari Wilkie’s blog in which she quoted a physicist saying that other branches of science are “just stamp collecting.” After that, I was searching google for entomology blogs and came up with this one from Jean-Michel Maes, an entomologist in Nicaragua. The linked post gave me a laugh, because I don’t need to speak Spanish to know that “Sociedad Filatelica de Nicaragua” means stamp collecting.

We’ve been thinking a lot lately about ways to measure site usage. Last month we wrote an article about InsectaPod Cast for an entomology publication and found ourselves wanting to make very specific claims about who has been listening to the podcast. this same info will be valuable as we near the end of the fiscal year and argue for funds to continue the podcast, and good user stats play a role in accessibility and usability.

Thus far, we’ve been relying on the visitor statistics offered by our web host. For the most part, this has been acceptable. I’ve also read some posts that suggest using multiple trackers is valuable, and that page views, which I tend to focus on, are less valuable than user sessions, which my current host doesn’t give me much insight into. As we really dug into the process of using this metric to see if InsectaPod Cast was meeting its goals, though, I realized that the log provided by my web host just wasn’t cutting it.

I’d used statcounter in the past, which offers some tracking for free and then charges for data storage beyond the most recent 100 visitors. Anna suggested we use google analytics this time, though, after hearing it discussed in a presentation at National Extension Technology Conference. Google Analytics has also been used in some projects at the Writing in Digital Environments Center at MSU, where I am a researcher. So I activated that today, and we’ll see what happens.
Up to this point, we’ve seen visitors, unique visitors, and page views increase nearly every month since we posted episode one in July 2007 (the only month there was a decrease was December 2007, a month in which we didn’t post an update). Popular keywords include bedbugs, pinned insect collections, insect gentalia, and ludifisk. The most commonly viewed pages are the most recent episode, the rss feed, and this blog. It’ll be interesting to see what new information we can glean from google analytics, and compare it with what we’re getting from the web host.

A few weeks ago I was talking with a few friends and subject of You Tube video came up, along with the fact that I watch a LOT of them. In this discussion I referenced specifically that a thirty minute documentary of the Stanford Prison experiment, conducted and filmed in 1971, is available on YouTube in three installments. My friend Jeff snorted and said, “I don’t have time to waste in front of the computer.” Beyond that fact that, from a time management perspective this simply isn’t true (he does choose to spend a few hours a week sipping whiskey and listening vintage country music LPs) it also was another example of an attitude I see a lot in both my professional as well as personal life: that serious things don’t happen on the internet.

A recent study conducted by Licht and Martin at Iowa State University and published in the Journal of Applied Communications looked at how corn farmers use media. When asked about web-based sources, one focus-group subject said, “You don’t have time to play around with the computer to see what’s going on.” Similar sentiments were expressed in a survey of Michigan Dairy Farmers conducted by my office in 2006. One farmer wrote in the margins of his (no gender pro-noun bias here, I just checked the form and the respondent identified as male) survey, “I don’t have time to read on the computer. My reading is done in print- hobby reading.” Additionally, I’ve been trying to develop more web specific content for the dairy extension publication I work on, and on two occasions authors have been offended when I suggested their work would be more useful in an online environment than print- they see the web as junior varsity venue for writing.

And of course there holes in these attitudes. The process of reading online doesn’t take any longer than reading printed materials. Studies show that we read a little slower on a screen, but the text is usually shorter, and we scan information more. From the academic publishing angle, there are several respected online-only journals in my field, notably the Journal of Extension and the Journal of Agricultural Education Online.

Those facts don’t negate the perception that reading/writing online is an inferior activity to printed materials, though. They fact is that Jeff, the friend who scoffs at YouTube, has preference for watching things on television as opposed to the computer and he firmly believes that preference is based on a matter of time and availability. I know he’s also never listened to InsectaPod Cast, and it’s mostly because he doens’t identify as an Internet Person.

It’s inarguable that the number of people who use the internet to access information continues to grow as access areas and speeds increase, but it’s important for me to be reminded form time to time that there remain lots of people out there who aren’t inclined to access web-based information regardless of issues related to the digital divide: They just don’t trust it, or like it, or maybe something else. Figuring out ways to change those perceptions would be a huge accomplishment, but is it possible?

In preparation for a paper I’m thinking about writing I’ve been reading lately about media use and preferences among farmers and agricultural extension educators. The impetus for the paper was a recent survey of Michigan farmers my office administered and the widely accepted belief among many of the extension educators I work with that personal face-to-face communications are the keystone of their education practice. My plan was to argue that when we use online spaces in ways that do more than mimic printed documents, they hold the opportunity to perform in a many more similar to personal, face-to-face interactions than do brochures and mass media releases.

I hit a snag, though, when I found that face-to-face communications ranked very low in terms of media preference in several studies, including my own. Respondents in my survey demonstrated an overwhelming preference for receiving extension messages via printed matter rather than directly from educators or through the internet. Another survey of Michigan producers by Murari Suvedi here at MSU reflected this preference for printed material over personal contact or internet. So did a 2001 survey of ag landowners by Jennifer Howell and MSU Prof Geoffrey Habron.

What’s most interesting to me, though, are the results of a survey of Ohio Extension Educators and professionals in state agencies. Amanda Rodewald of The Ohio State University found that even this group rated face-to-face contact low in terms of preference for delivering extension methods. I had been surprised that producers weren’t jazzed about face-to-face communications, but I was startled to learn that in this study educators aren’t big proponents, either.

I don’t know how many conversations I’ve had with extension professionals in which they describe their practice as one of face-to-face cooperation with producers in the field. Anna brings the same enthusiasm she has for InsectaPod Cast to frequently workshops and field days, and I think we would agree those face-to-face instances are probably more effective than the podcast for the groups they target. I write a regular feature about the personal relationships between educators and producers and invariably the interviews focus on the importance of being “on-farm” to cooperatively work “one-on-one” with producers. In planning this paper, I’d assumed I’d be able to find support for these perceptions in the literature.

I’m wondering now why there’s this divergence in what people discuss as being the cornerstone of extension practice and what they actually want to see executed in the field. The limitations on time and finances that extension specialists face are prodigious, this could certainly play a role. It also gets to one of the great strengths of digital communications, though. By designing communications that meet the specific needs of our audiences, that work for the user rather than the other way around, we can reflect some of the potential qualities of face-to-face interactions. That was what I was going to write the paper about. Now I’ve got more reading to do.

As a general rule I try to keep this page focused on the process of making the insect cast, although, truth be told, my interests aren’t as strongly embraced by entomology as Anna’s. But today, based on the fact that I committed to being a more frequent blogger and just found something online that I’m excited about, I going to devote a post to my true passion: music. And when I spent two years overseas in the peace corps, pretty much the most valuable thing I learned is that music doesn’t habe to be in English to be great. So check out the podcasts at www.russmus.net, especially parts 12, 13, and 14, which are all about Viktor Tsoi, who is kind of like a Russian John Lennon but bi-racial and with an un-sympathetic governemnt. Tsoi died in a car wreck more than 15 years ago, but, as graffiti in Russia reminds us, “Tsoi Lives.”

When I first got back from Russia the true strength of the internet was still nacent and there realy wasn’t much about Viktor Tsoi available online. Today, we’ve got this podcast from an Australian (I think?) from the legend of Russian rock. In a way, I guess I think that’s pertinent to the work we’re doing with InsectPod Cast.

We ran into some trouble recording episode 7 and had to re-record Anna’s narration. The problem stemmed from my attempts to even out the sound levels by using compression. Uneven sound levels is a pretty big concern with this podcast because an audio track can’t be any louder than it’s one point that reaches 0 decibels (the point before distortion). So even if the majority of the track is very quiet, if one point peaks as 0 dB, we can’t really raise the volume on the rest of it without causing distortion. And even if we do accept distortion at that one peaking moment, when we raise the volume on the whole track we raise all the background noise, too. So, ideally, the input signal should be very even and very loud so as to keep the levels at the same volume without distortion and to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio.  A common tool to even out the levels is compression, so we tried using it on Anna’s narration in episode 7.

The thing about compression, though, is that while it squishes the loudest part of the signal closer to the average level, it also brings the lowest part up. When we set Anna up to read the narration the levels on the recorder weren’t as high as they should have been. When I sat down to edit the narration, I foudn that the noise-boost inherent in the compression compounded by the low signal-noise ratio resulting from us setting the input gain ineffectively made too much noise for the recording to be usable.  So we recorded it again more carefully and without compression and got a usable file.

Clearly, the input gain was a huge problem on that first recording, but I’m not sure that was the only thing. I’m suspicious that maybe the compression in the Flash recorder we use maybe isn’t tuned for spoken-word sure. There are no parameters to adjust, it’s either on or its off. I know that many podcasters use outboard compressors with great success. But I also know that making an expensive comp worhtwhile requires a room with some acoustic integrity, which we lack.

In any case, the more we do this, the more I’ve found that simplicity makes things easier. The first time we set up to record narration I hung blankets on the wall in a small room, rigged a condenser mic into a preamp and sonic maximizer before hitting the USB interface for recording on a laptop. The result was a mess, there were just too many things going on. Now Anna just reads into the same rig we do all the field interviews with. It’s easier, faster, and more reliable.

When I was young, snow days were terribly exciting. Now that I work,  they’re pretty much non-existent, but today the five inches or so that we’ve gotten today have caused some disappointment.

An upcoming episode of InsectaPod Cast will focus on invasive species. We interviewed MSU prof. Anthony Cognato a few weeks ago, but after the interview knew we wanted something more than just an “in the office” question and answer session. Anthony got us in touch with a colleague who does port inspections in Detroit, looking for exotic bugs in the dunnage coming off cargo vessels. It turned out we would be able to accompany him on a port inspection, but he hooked us up with the Dept. of Homeland Security at Detroit Metro Airport. Today was the day Anna and i were going to go down there and speak with some homeland security guys about insects they’ve intercepted and things like that. But then it snowed hard, and I’m in my windowless office instead.

There were two things about this interview that I was super excited about. The first was the likelihood that these guys will have an actual “line-of-fire” invasive species story we can record. I don’t know what exactly to expect, but our contact told Anna finding exotic insects on planes isn’t uncommon, and just hearing about some action like that will really make for some compelling podcast audio. The second thing was the general airport ambience. We all know there’s lots of airport noise, it’s loud, and it’s distinctive. That means it’ll be easy to record and really help set the scene of the podcast within the airport.

Fortunately, we were able to reschedule the whole thing a few weeks down the line, so I’ll still be able to get those sounds. I think that episode promises to be a good one.

I’m currently taking a publications management course and yesterday, instead of a lecture, the class of 12 met with a campus sustainability proponent about creating a document to get people thinking about sustainability (the document remains unspecified at this point, figuring out the particulars appears to be a part of the learning process).

This fellow was super excited about sustainability, and in the course of explaining his excitement, he spoke about wanting some communications effort that reaches “the global community” and “changes peoples’ lives.” When asked what he had in mind, specifically, he said that he liked the Sarah McLachlan video World on Fire and that he’d also been impressed by some people handing out pamphlets on campus.

It was interesting to hear both these techniques mentioned in one breath because I can’t really think of two very different ways to communicate a message. One is old, the other new; one stylish, the other utilitarian. A video like McLachlan’s spreads like a virus. Instead of trying to convince the target to take a pamphlet, the target forwards it to a friend. To hear someone say that both of these methods could be an acceptable answer to the same communications need was interesting. It belied his earnestness, and I suspect his belief that action may be as important as the mode of execution.

We need to take some more action with InsectaPod Cast, even if we haven’t much of a plan for execution. We’ve made six episodes now, we’re halfway through, and it’s time to find some other avenue to gain more listeners, to get the word out. A video might work, but a pamphlet might, too. The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m definitely not going to be standing outside handing stuff to passersby.

Anna and I got word recently that our proposal to present InsectaPod Cast at the National Extension Technology Conference. NETC will be held April 27-May in Raleigh North Carolina. This is a pretty big deal for insectapod cast and we are very excited about the opportunity to share our podcast with other extension-minded communicators.I’m on some ag-comm list-serves and there are always lots of questions about podcasting. The discussions can usually be categorized as half believers in technology and half skeptics, and I’m never sure where I fit in.I don’t think podcasting is right for everyone, there are specific goals Anna and I had in mind when we started that made it a right choice for us. But, on the other hand, sometimes it is right and doesn’t get acknowledged.I can’t imagine how many times people have printed up three-panel brochures when a podcast or blog or even just a frequently updated website would have been a better idea.I’m excited to get to spend a week a conference with folks whose communications ideas move beyond printed brochures and newsletters. Hopefully we’ll get some good (constructive?) feedback on InsectaPod Cast and maybe come up with some new ideas for making bugs (and MSU Entomology) interesting. 

Just learned that the delicious pun baked right into InsectaPodcast is a hand-me-down. Jason Robertshaw of Sarasota Florida runs Cephalopodcast.com, a great blog and podcast about like-minded (to me) marine issues. The blog is updated pretty regularly, and the podcast a little less so. But the audio quality of the podcast is great and the elements Robertshaw employs in the blog are social-network-friendly (flickr, twitter, etc.).

Interesting science presented with style. I like it.