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BuzzLion for the week of August 25

As a new semester begins at Old State, this is what has ETS staff abuzz for the week of August 25….

Dave Stong discusses what a “keyframer” is (he is one) and offers an example of a keyframer’s work, a Flash animation of a talking head. a Flash animation of a talking head. .

“I’m not the type of guy to take any sort of comfort from having a label. I usually take pains to avoid running in a pack. In my efforts to find better ways to animate dialog and characters in Flash, though, I discovered that I have one: and it was a big relief.

I’m a keyframer.”

Mary Janzen gives us a calendar date to save — the ANGEL Town Hall September 11

“In case a “town hall” is new to you, it allows faculty, support staff and others who work with ANGEL a chance to view the new ANGEL 7.1 interface. It’s an open discussion facilitated by ANGEL support staff within ITS, where in-depth exploration of all the new tools and features takes place, with time available at the end for questions and answers.”

Jeff Swain offers Five Things Faculty and Staff Need to Know about Learning Object Repositories.

“A Learning Object Repository (LOR) is a unique content area within ANGEL that a course editor can use to share Lessons tab content items with fellow course editors.”

Gaming has educational potential, but what about violent behavior caused by video games? Chris Stubbs offer his thoughts, and asks, what about personal responsibility?

“So I was wonderfully surprised to come across the findings of researchers at Villanova, who have come to the stunningly obvious conclusion that no one ever talks about. The long and short of it is simple. Violent video games do cause “aggression”. But aggression does not mean violence, and the effect on a normal person’s behavior is minuscule. And, are you ready for this one? Inherently angry people show more angry responses than non angry people to violent stimuli.”

Wendy Mahan offers her likes and dislikes regarding the iPhone.

“Would I give up the iPhone at this point? Absolutely not. It will be interesting to see how I feel six months or a year from now, but currently, I am still in awe.” (Sounds like good news for Mr. Jobs)

Cole Camplese asks the eternal question “If a tree falls on Adobe Connect, would anyone hear it?”. Or something along those lines.

“I got thinking about just moving the ETS Briefings forward, but on my own just to see what would happen.

Would anyone show up if I just started doing these once a month from my office over Adobe Connect Pro?”

Pat Besong discusses one of his projects, a new touch-screen kiosk for the Penn State All Sports Museum

“I got the kiosk done just in time for the first football game, which was the goal. It looks really good and the Sports Museum folks are happy. So, if you get time, check it out. The museum is on the Jordan Center side of Beaver Stadium at ground level.”

Education Technology Report: Initiative underway to promote educational gaming at Penn State

EGC Tag SmallGames are beginning to play a larger role in higher education, and Brett Bixler of ETS is leading Penn State’s effort to take advantage of gaming’s pedagogical potential. Brett, in conjunction with Bart Pursel of the Information Sciences and Technology Solutions Institute, is developing the Educational Gaming Commons initiative to provide a community and infrastructure for the development and adoption of games to support teaching, learning, and research.

Brett notes that there are several reasons why gaming should pique interest of educators. The current generation starting their college career, the “Millennials”, are avid game players. Today’s computers are powerful enough to play all kinds of games, including simulations. Also, more people have the ability to not just play games, but create them, thanks to new software products that make the process much easier.

“Games have huge value for motivation of students,” Brett said. “You have young people who will dedicate 50-60 hours playing a game, and the question is how do educators tap into that.”

These games help students build important skills, Brett said. Along with learning the subject on which the games are focused, they develop skills such as higher-level problem solving, analysis, collaborative teamwork, and planning.

The Educational Gaming Commons (EGC) is just now getting underway, Brett said. The goals of the EGC include:

- To stimulate research, application and education utilizing games, including the use of virtual environments, simulations, and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) games for educational gaming within the Penn State community.
- To develop educational games that can be utilized in Penn State educational settings.
- To create an affiliate program that will bring together the various pockets of faculty, staff, and students currently engaged in gaming or educational gaming projects at Penn State, providing a place to share resources, information, and ideas.
- To physically implement the Educational Gaming Commons Lab. This physical space will house a variety of hardware and software to be used for research, new game development projects, coordination of interdisciplinary research efforts, and initiation of public conversations about the broader and sometimes unexpected uses of this emerging art form in education.

In keeping with the recent Web 2.0 trend, the EGC will have a community hub similar to other TLT projects such as the ANGEL Community Hub, Blogs at Penn State, and Adobe Connect. “Along with discussion, the Community Hub will also have educational game examples for people to review,” Brett said. “In addition to the Community Hub, I expect to start promoting the EGC in January to raise awareness. I also will prepare and present some workshops and seminars.”

“With the current interest in educational gaming only expected to increase, I am very optimistic about the program’s success,” Brett added.

BuzzLion for the week of August 19

A look at what has ETS staff abuzz and gets people talking for the week of August 19…..

Vicki Williams points out that there is indeed a difference between assessment and evaluation.

“In short, we collect information and then ask what it means. Evaluation occurs in two modes, formative and summative.”

Is it time to think about the 2008 TLT Symposium already? You bet, says Derick Burns, and be sure to save a date in March 2008.

“The 2008 Symposium, which will build on the previous year’s theme of social computing, will take place March 29, 2008 at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, University Park.”

Chris Stubbs recently discovered that Joe Paterno credits quarterback Anthony Morelli’s late season improvement in play to playing a video football game. Who says JoePa is out of touch?

“Coverage schemes, blitz packages, audibles and check offs, defensive rotations, ball fakes and trick plays - with every iteration of the game these small details become more and more realistic. From an entertainment perspective, this adds an incredible depth to the gaming experience. But from a training perspecive, it makes games like this a useful learning tool.”

Referring to Chris’s previous blog post on Anthony Morelli, Brad Kozlek ponders what educational gaming would be like if the same amount of investment went into them like has with commercial games.

“Just like public broadcasting in the United States transformed television’s use with shows like Sesame Street and Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, imagine the uses of educational games that could be realized.”

Gary Chinn has been checking out the new version of Google Earth and discovers it’s potential impact beyond Earth, as in astronomy courses at Penn State.

“I’ve only been playing with the new Sky features for a few hours, and already I can see the potential for several of the topics Astro 001 covers. The sections on constellations & views from different parts of Earth can currently be handled using software like Starry Night, but Google Earth has that whole “free” thing in its corner.”

Cole Camplese ponders Digital Expression and it’s role in learning at Penn State.

“One of the things I have been working towards over the last few years is envisioning what a platform for digital expression in an educational environment might look like. I have also written quite a bit about the projects that we’ve been investing lots of time and energy into here at PSU to power this approach — namely Blogs at Penn State, the Podcasts at Penn State, the Digital Commons, Streaming Servers, and our Course Management System (ANGEL) to name a few.”

BuzzLion for the week of August 12

A look at what has ETS staff abuzz and gets people talking for the week of August 12…..

What are HDR images and what are their benefits? Dave Stong applies his design/image expertise and tells us why.


“I tried to project some sort of scenario where I might recommend HDR techniques to a faculty member. A botanist, for instance, may use digital photos to make field notes. Bracketing the images, or shooting a variety of images at different film speeds, could help guarantee usable results under varying light- and skill- conditions. Deep woods shadow, bright meadow sun. No photography skills. Like using old-school curves, layer masks and channel opps, the expertise would need to exist for post processing.”

Yvonne Clark offers some thoughts on how students can use Adobe Connect Meeting Rooms for their courses.

“Adobe Connect is a Web-based desktop video conferencing tool that is available for use by everyone in the Penn State community. Although students may not create or own meeting rooms, they may work with staff advisers and faculty members to obtain access to meeting rooms.”

ETS staff often talk to their peers at other universities and compare notes on similar projects at their respective institutions. Brad Kozlek shares his notes of a phone conversation with Shane Nackerud of The UThink: Blogs at the University of Minnesota where he learned about our counterpart to Blogs at Penn State.

“UThink has 10,583 authors, but not all of them are active. This Summer there are 520 active blogs. During Fall and Spring there are usually around 800-1000 active blogs.”

Keeping with the theme of networking with peers, Cole Camplese discusses the Institute for Interactive Technologies at Bloomsburg University and their work in educational gaming and Second Life.

“These days there is some very interesting stuff still going on at the IIT. One of the big things happening there is revolving around Dr. Karl Kopp. I didn’t know Dr. Kopp when I was an IITer, he wasn’t there yet, but his work in the serious games for education and training space is getting some major play across the industry.”

EDUCAUSE has produced a white paper on Second Life, and Brett Bixler has the link to it in the Penn State Virtual Worlds blog .

“Educause Connect just released a white paper titled:

‘Second Life: Reaching into the Virtual World for Real-world Learning’

You will need an Educause account (it’s free) to access the PDF. It’s written by AJ Kelton of Montclair State University. I know AJ well through our SL connections and events we participated in - he’s a good guy that knows his stuff.”

Elizabeth Pyatt shows us how to tell time the global way in her Unicode blog.

“The concept of time zones isn’t exactly a Unicode issue, but it does relate to issues of globalization.

This blog entry from 4 Guys from Rolla explains the advantages of storing times/dates in UTC format vs. local time. The first one mentioned is that if your servers switch time zones, your data will still be the same.”

Mary Janzen would like to hear how you use folders in ANGEL.

“Please share with the community the ways in which you have used folders. How do you arrange your content? Do you use a different approach for different courses? How many levels deep do you place subfolders within folders?”

Cole Camplese gives details on a talk that he did with ETS’s Allan Gyorke on digital expression. You can read more and see the slides from the presentation here.

“Day before yesterday my colleague, Allan Gyorke, and I gave a talk to the Instructional Design and Development group at the Penn State World Campus related to Digital Expression. It is a talk I’ve done before and it really focuses on the platforms PSU has been working to deliver for the last 18 months or so. The talk frames the need by looking relatively deeply at the changing characteristics of our undergraduate resident population — they are very mobile, very smart, and very plugged into social spaces (read, Facebook).”

There are some talented designers and developers at ETS, and />Mark DeLuca is one of them. You can read more and see the slides from the presentation few examples of his work.

“The Nutrition faculty members have decided to sprinkle flash self-assessment activities throughout the course to allow students to judge their level of understanding - which is a great idea and something that Flash is perfectly suited for.”

Academic Computing Centers Embrace Web 2.0 and the Digital Generation

On August 14th, Cole Camplese has been asked to present to an online audience about PSU’s use of iTunes U. He will discuss how iTunes U (and podcasting in general) has sparked the imagination of faculty and staff across Penn State. The webcast is sponsored by SABA Here’s the program:

“Pressures on Higher Education IT: How we Move Forward to Embrace Web 2.0 and Beyond” Matthew Jett Hall; Assistant Vice Chancellor, Information Technology Services and Associate Chief Information Architect; Vanderbilt University

With society’s mass adoption of the digital life style in North America, Europe, and Asia, higher education must address both the ways in which it provides commodity IT services and embraces new tools for mobile learning and social networking of the digital generation. Matt will discuss some of the pressures facing central IT organizations in this context.

“Penn State on iTunes U: Driving Adoption through Innovation” Cole W. Camplese,
Director, Education Technology Services, Penn State University

In this session, Cole Camplese will discuss Penn State University’s use of iTunes U as the centerpiece to providing scalable podcasting infrastructure at a large university. We’ll look at how faculty, staff, and students have quickly adopted podcasting as a way to share academic content anytime, anyplace.

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