The basic calculus course at the University of Helsinki has been offered online for many years. The course was completely revised this time. We are trying to activate students by asking them to contribute to weekly forum discussions, and by giving generous extra credit for that. Next time I may make that a compulsory part of the course.

I got wrong advice. Or perhaps I asked a wrong question.

New ideas come from the kids. Some time ago I promised to my daughter to get her a microphone if she improves her grades a lot. Now she got her report, and I had to take her to a professional music store to buy the microphone. She got an AUDIX OM 2 microphone. We also got an USB Audio Capture device (EDIROL, UA-25, USB powered).

On Monday I made an experiment with my new iPod Touch. I took a WebALT calculus quiz using my iPod. Results were extraordinary: I failed the quiz, but was amazed of the features of the web browser in an iPod Touch (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/). iPod has the same browsing functionalities as the iPhone, so the following comments apply also to iPhones.

The Apple delivery center in Shanghai sent to me an iPod Touch -- proudly designed in California, manufactured in China.

This is a great device. Podcasting of lectures works like a charm. You may easily scroll the materials in the vertical mode. Turn the device 90 degrees to a horizontal setting and you can view the slides with great clarity. The fonts that I am using are very clear. Zooming in is easy if needed: just place two fingers on the screen and pull them apart.

In my last blog I promised to report today about the results of me trying to create podcasts of my calculus lectures. Today I have used my new Mac for that purpose with some success. The ProfCast (http://www.profcast.com/public/index.php) software makes it very easy to create a podcast out of a PowerPoint presentation. It worked for me without problems. ProfCast does not, however, seem to offer any possibilities to edit the audio track. Convenient and easy editing of audio tracks is a strong point of Captivate. ProfCast lacks here.