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ETS Talk 41: tltsymposium2008

Podcasting SmallETS Talk 41 is now available for download over at Podcasts at Penn State or on Penn State on iTunes U. I won’t jump into the details in this post, just head over and grab it. I will say that we are joined by a first time guest on the show. Drop us a comment if you have anything to say.

Digital Commons at the College of Education’s EDUCATE Fair

The EDUCATE fair, hosted by the College of Education, was an opportunity for the incoming students to learn about a variety of Mac software. The College of Education has recently started requiring the purchase of a Notebook Computer, in this case, the Macbook, upon entry to the major.

For a lot of students this is the first time they have used a Mac, and the iLife package that comes with each computer. Digital Commons was happy to help teach some hands-on training with Garageband, as well as answer any questions about iMovie and iDVD. Hannah Sloan spent time providing hands-on training helping each student create an enhanced podcast with images, chapters and hyperlinks, and also the process for publishing these podcasts to iTunesU. While each session only took about an hour, Justin Miller and Hannah stayed all day to answer questions and talk to the students about the resources that are available at the Digital Commons. All in all, it sounds like it was a very successful day.

Faculty Success Story: Laura Guertin

Laura GuertinLaura Guertin at Penn State Brandywine uses podcasting and Google Earth in her earth and geoscience courses to help students grasp science principles. She has discovered that when students use these technologies, the quality of their science improves, they care more deeply about the subject matter, and they are eager to share their learning with a wider audience.

In 2005, Guertin began to record her classroom lectures in MP3 format. She makes them available to students via iTunes U , allowing them to engage in course content outside class.

Additionally, she recorded review sessions consisting of questions to help students prepare for exams. She asked them to listen to each question, pause, and try to answer it. Guertin explained, “These were fundamental questions to make sure they understood the basics, then during the test, I asked synthesis-type questions.” She said these recorded reviews are beneficial because Brandywine is a commuter campus and it is difficult to get the class together for face-to-face review. “This way,” Guertin said, “all the students had access to it.”

Now that Brandywine has a Digital Commons studio, Guertin assigns projects that ask the students to be the creators of podcasts and other digital media.

As one project in her Environment Earth course, students created an audio tour of tree species marked on a trail at Ridley Creek State Park. Each student recorded a podcast about a species, then added photos to it. Guertin said her students worked hard to create high-quality work. She observed, “They were not happy turning in something that wasn’t to their satisfaction. I think it’s because the projects they did are being viewed by an outside audience. I saw a sense of pride and professionalism in a way that I wouldn’t have gotten if I just had them write a paper. Their voice had this inflection to it because they were excited to talk about the tree. I don’t think I would have gotten as good a result in terms of the quality of the science, either.”

In October, her students visited the Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C., a competition for energy-efficient home design. Carrying cameras and iPods with microphones, the students viewed the model homes, recorded observations, and interviewed attendees. From this, they created a virtual tour of the event, which was tied into Google Earth, an application that allows users to view a satellite image of a location. “What we’ve created can be shared throughout the Penn State community,” she said.

Guertin’s students entered the SCA/Mazda Conservation in Action Multimedia Contest, which asks young people to pick an environmental issue, describe it, and come up with a solution. The entry could be in the form of a podcast, movie, or song. She said her students chose a range of topics and technologies and that she was thrilled with the creativity of their work.

She said she was struck when a student commented, “I didn’t realize I cared about this subject. Now I realize I can do something about it.” Guertin explained, “That ‘do something’ means the technology is there for them to help communicate what they’ve learned. They cared about the science and what got them into the science was learning not just that you need technology to take measurements in the field, but also that it can help communicate the science.”

Symposium Tag Images

All the TagsWhile we are offically using the tag tltsymposium2008 for all things social software (Flickr, posts, del.icio.us, etc), we have also created the Moo stickers with a whole bunch of tags. You can check them out over at the ETS Design Library where our webmaster, Audrey Romano, describes how she came up with them. It seems they’ve become a little more popular than we expected and people are asking for the digital versions to use for whatever reasons. Who are we to deny that? I’ve zipped up a folder holding a bunch of them, so please feel free to download them. Remember, those of you attending the TLT Symposium on March 29th will be able to stick the tags on your badge, laptop, forehead, or any other place you want.

Symposium Grid

ETS and Engineering’s eLearning Initiative

The College of Engineering’s eLearning Initiative is a shared project with ETS and the Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education. The initiative aims to expose undergraduate students within the College of Engineering to issues of globalization, ethics, and societal contexts in engineering practice. In addition the initiative will require that students demonstrate an ability to work with and lead collaborative projects, including virtual/distributed work teams.

Courses under development include topics such as technology ethics, globalization, leadership, and entrepreneurship. The initiative will also assess the long-term viability of cross-campus courses, affording students first-hand experience with working in a distributed team environment. Finally, the initiative’s goals include an exploration of student portfolio tools, specifically how best students can capture evidence of learning in the areas of ethics, global awareness, and leadership.

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