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BuzzLion for the week of February 17

A wintry week indeed here in Happy Valley, and the BuzzLion’s thoughts are turning toward spring….and the TLT Symposium. The Symposium is really occupying our time here in ETS, as it is quite a bit of work to organize such a major event. Unfortunately, all 350 attendee slots are full, although you can go to the Symposium site and sign up for the waiting list. You can also attend the Symposium by proxy, so to speak, by reading blog postings about the event and viewing videos of the presentations.

Oh, and by the way, the Symposium is on Facebook. Hey, what isn’t on Facebook.

Now that we are on the subject of Web 2.0 technologies, ETS Instructional Designer Elizabeth Pyatt recently posted to her blog on a Web site for German teachers that looks Web 1.0, but actually makes great use of the Web 2.0 tool del.icio.us. It also kind of offers people who are not yet Web 2.0 denizens a way to ease themselves into it all.


ETS Senior Programmer Chris Stubbs offers some really interesting thoughts on the concept of educational gaming. And it involves famous TV private eye MacGyver. No, really. He makes an interesting point playing off the ingenious fictional character who fought bad guys without the use of violence in his latest blog post.

Resident ETS design master Dave Stong discusses how to incorporate innovative design, humor, and education all into one package to teach students complex concepts. He shows us how and offers some examples.

Over at the Digital Commons Community Hub, there is a fantastic example of creative use of multimedia to teach course concepts. Scott Miller uses a video series to teach his Introduction to Astronomy students what makes up a comet. It’s funny, and informative. By the way, if you are wondering why his assistant has an eye patch and is on crutches, it’s a running gag that he always gets hurt during the demonstrations.

ETS Lead Instructional Designer Brett Bixler has been very prolific this week posting to his Educational Gaming Commons blog. Among the subjects are The THON in the virtual world Second Life (no kidding), IBM launching an Environmental Educational World, ELI Webinar – Virtual Worlds as a Tool for Situational Learning, a game whose aim is social reform, and a chance to put in a proposal for a gaming conference.

And finally, the Educational Gaming Commons is holding an introductory event Thursday, February 28 from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. in Room 209, IST Building. The Penn State community is invited to stop by during that time and see what is already underway at Penn State involving games; meet faculty, staff, and students involved in the Penn State Gaming Community; and learn how to get involved in the Educational Gaming Commons. The event will also feature access to games such as Rock Band and others.

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BuzzLion for the week of February 10

First off, if you haven’t registered for the 2008 TLT Symposium on Teaching and Learning with Technology, you might want to move fast! As I am writing this, we have 12 seats left! That’s 338 attendees and counting. You can sign up by going to the Symposium site. If registration is full, make sure you get on the waiting list.

Screencasting – the digital recording of a computer screen and the activity on it – is fast becoming a great tool for teaching. Cole Camplese, ETS director, talks more about it on a recent blog post. He talks about how this form of training is evolving and summarizes a cool new tool to take it to another level.

Cole also recently discussed a recent article that talks about how hard it is to get out all of your information of Facebook once you leave it. It reminds BuzzLion of a paraphrase of a famous line from The Godfather, the more I try to get out, the more they keep pulling me in. Cole notes that “identity is really a meta identity made up from the social places we share our pictures, favorite books, music, and thoughts.” So be careful who you flame in a message board and maybe it’s not a good idea for a student to post that wild tailgating photo from last October.

Using his trademark style of expressing himself, ETS Programmer Chris Stubbs admits to being a full-scale technology junkie (hey, he can’t help it, he’s just a programmer). However, he wonders how much is too much technology in education. Can it actually become a barrier to learning? Give it a read, and let Chris know what you think by posting a comment or two.

If you are a unicode user, then ETS Instructional Designer Elizabeth Pyatt’s Unicode blog always has some helpful tips and information. For example, this week she informs us that the standard Mac font Lucida Grande is going to be available in Windows. Read more about that, and while you are there, be sure to bookmark that blog, unicode users!

Lots of things going on over at the Educational Gaming Community Hub this week. Allan Gyorke, manager, education technology with ETS, points out that the best games are often the ones with the more simple graphics and interfaces, something that a student could design for a class.

Brett Bixler, the man at ETS in charge of the gaming initiative, encourages members of the Penn State community contribute to Innovate magazine’s request for papers.

Brett also announces the release date of the very anticipated sym game “SPORE”, and wonders if there is an educational element to the game.

BuzzLion for the week of February 3

This week’s BuzzLion starts off with a request, a Call for Contributions, if you will. While in the past BuzzLion has talked about what ETS is up to, the BuzzLion staff recently had a discussion about having faculty, staff, and students contribute to this blog post (since “BuzzLion staff” is one person, that was a, well, interesting conversation). So, BuzzLion opens the floor to you. If you have an interesting experience, are working on a cool project, have a great idea, or anything else that has to do with educational technology, BuzzLion wants to hear about it. Send an email with your story to jco11@psu.edu, and BuzzLion will be sure to include it in that week’s edition.

So, with that out of the way, let’s move on with the BuzzLion for the week of Feburary 3. First off, we look at a relatively new project here at ETS, the Educational Gaming Commons. Most know that computer gaming has become an integral part of our students’ non-studying life (and, myself included, an integral part of many Penn State staff and faculty’s non-work lives). From simple games such as Bejeweled to complex online gaming worlds such as World of Warcraft, games are serious business.

Of course, computer games are largely for entertainment, but what about education? Brett Bixler, lead instructional designer with ETS, is leading the Educational Gaming Commons initiative. Take a moment to go to the Commons and take a look around – there is some exciting stuff going on with educational gaming that Penn State is tapping into with this project. At the Educational Gaming Commons you can learn more about the project, get updates on educational gaming at Penn State and elsewhere (here’s an example), and join in on the conversation. The BuzzLion recommends it for any faculty member interested in adding educational gaming to their courses.

Also at the Educational Gaming Commons, you can learn more about Second Life. Because the BuzzLion can almost hear Brett yell “Second Life is NOT a game”, I must state that it isn’t – Second Life is a virtual world.

You can learn more about what the heck a virtual world is and why it has a ton of possibilities for education by going here. Yes, you got it, that link goes to part of the Educational Gaming Commons. As you can see on the Educational Gaming Commons, there is a lot of activity in this space. ETS Director and BuzzLion’s Boss Cole Camplese recently posted on the Gaming Commons about an EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Web Seminar on Virtual Worlds that is on the horizon. Brett posted about Second Life gadgets for educators.

The Digital Commons is a university-wide initiative to help enrich students’ educations by creating digital content for their coursework. Sounds great, and it is. If you are a faculty member and would like to learn more about how to take advantage of this incredible resource, Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) is scheduling hour-long faculty focus groups February 20-28. It’s a two-way street of benefits – faculty can learn more about The Commons and TLT can learn more about how faculty anticipate using digital media in their courses. Definitely worth attending.

Along with this, TLT is offering a series of small-group, hands-on training sessions. These are an hour-long and a great way to get started adding digital media to a course. Learn more about them here.

One of ETS’s resident ANGEL gurus, Jeff Swain, just posted to the ANGEL Community Hub a video version of the popular ANGEL support series ANGELshorts titled “Five Things Faculty Should Know About the Manage Tab”.

By the way, if you have never been to the ANGEL Community Hub, it’s a fantastic resource. And the BuzzLion is not just saying that because he likes to brag about his colleagues. The Hub has past editions of ANGELshorts, helpful tips, an opportunity to interact with other ANGEL users, and more.

You may have heard of the outstanding collaborative tools offered by Google Docs, providing multi-user, Web-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. ETS Director Cole Camplese mentioned in his blog about a new benefit: collaborative data gathering.

From his blog post:

“Yesterday during class we demonstrated the Google Docs suite to the students … most of them had seen them and we didn’t see too many jaws drop until I showed a new feature of the spreadsheet app — the ability to create web forms that actually dumps data back into the originating spreadsheet.”

You can read more about this new feature in the link above, Cole gives a very nice summary on it and the benefits.

This week’s BuzzLion wraps up with a brief look at student response systems, or “clickers”, as they are more popularly known. Basically, clickers are response pads used to answer questions asked during lectures, with the results instantly available. This enables instructors to immediately assess comprehension of course material.

ETS recently produced a podcast on student response systems, interviewing two faculty members already using clickers in their courses. Dr. Elina Arnold, assistant professor of communications sciences and disorders, and Dr. Christine Masters, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics, talked about their experiences using them and how they enhanced their teaching. You can hear the podcast through iTunes by clicking on the following link: http://tinyurl.com/2g24m5. If you do not have iTunes installed on your computer, you can download a free copy of iTunes at http://www.apple.com/itunes/.

For more information on clickers and how to get started using them in your courses, go to http://clc.its.psu.edu/Classrooms/prs/.