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Educational Technology Report: Podcasts are another way to enhance courses

Podcasting SmallJamie Oberdick, producer and host of the Podcasts at Penn State show What Works in Educational Technology, recently had the novel experience of producing a podcast about … podcasts. He sat down with Carla Zembal-Saul, associate professor of science education and Chris Millet, manager of advanced learning projects at Penn State, to discuss the Podcasts at Penn State pilot program. This podcast features how Carla used podcasts in her classroom, including a student-produced podcast on the Colony Collapse Disorder, a malady affecting honeybees. This podcast was used in Congressional testimony.

You can hear the podcast at the Podcasts at Penn State site or on Penn State at iTunes U.  And while there, after being inspired by the What Works podcast, be sure to sign up for the summer Podcasts at Penn State pilot program.

Educational Technology Report: Keep the Symposium momentum going

As many of you know, the 2007 Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology was a great success. While last year’s Symposium had more than 170 attendees, this year we had more than 240. In fact, the registration became full several weeks before the Symposium date and a waiting list grew as the date approached. A definite signal that such a Symposium was welcomed by the Penn State community.

As happened last year, the Symposium is not truly over. While the Symposium happened nearly a month ago, we encourage you to visit the blog from time to time to offer your thoughts to continue the conversation. Speaking of blogs, if you could not make it April 14, you can find out what went on by making a visit to http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu and seeing what your Penn State and TLT peers thought of the event. This includes comments on the featured and keynote speakers, the breakout sessions, demos, etc. You can also find photos of the event and podcasts of the presentations on the blog.

We are already looking forward to Symposium 2008, so if you have any ideas, by all means, offer them.

Additionally, there will also be a “Best of the Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium” presentation given by the head of the Symposium planning committee, Allan Gyorke, on May 18. You can register at the ITS Training Services Web site at http://its.psu.edu/training/.

Blogs at Penn State

Blogs Tag SmallAfter close to a year of planning, testing, and development the Blogs at Penn State project has entered into its open pilot. In the last two weeks we’ve added about 60 new people to the pilot test group. The idea is to add about 20 or so a week for the next few weeks until we have everyone in who has requested an account. So far, those of us who have used the environment seem to like it quite a bit. It is honestly very exciting to hear people’s reaction to it … especially those who have never used a dynamic publishing environment to manage their content.

Long term the vision is to leverage this platform as a way for Penn State faculty, staff, and students to rethink their use of the web. The toolset will allow us, over time, to add new features to enable all sorts of opportunities. As people become more familiar with how it all works we’ll be able to help people think about how they will take notes, share course materials, work on study groups, share research findings, and really anything they can imagine. The ETS Blog Team has also started a companion PSU Blogger Community Hub site to help people get started … take a look and let us know what you think. It feels like the start of something good.