Archive for the ‘’ Category

TLT CoffeeRead: Making business courses better through video games

Making business courses better through video games

“How can colleges attract information-technology students? By using video-game-like technology to trick them into thinking the assignments are cool.

That’s the approach San Francisco State University is taking, according to Sam Gill, a professor of information systems there. Gill’s class is intended to introduce students to “business-process management” – a field of IT that studies how workers perform certain tasks and uses technology to improve them. “Normally students go to McDonalds and see how they sell a burger,” Gill tells us. But now his students study a fictional business that IBM set up inside a computerized virtual world.”

TLT CoffeeRead: The Admissions Office Finds Facebook

The Admissions Office Finds Facebook

“Back in the summer, Steven Price logged on to his Facebook page one evening to do his usual check-in with family and friends before going to bed. He was surprised when he found a “friend” request from Scott Minto, the director of the admissions office at San Diego State University’s Sports Management Program sitting in his in-box.

“I was blown away,” said Price, 22, a recent college graduate who is applying to business schools this fall and is currently interning with the Minnesota Vikings. “I’d been in touch with other schools through e-mails and phone calls, but I’d never had any schools contact me through Facebook.”"

BuzzLion for the week of September 21

The first full week of fall is upon us (the season, certainly not the semester as we are well into it). On a gloomy autumn Friday, BuzzLion has a fair amount to cover, so let’s get to it.

Dave Stong, ETS graphics guru, wrote two recent posts about pdf’s and what frustrates him about them. He also offers potential solutions. Here is his first, then his follow-up.

Elizabeth Pyatt, ETS instructional designer, talks about her teaching experiences. Namely, getting students to understand all those assignments are not done to torture them.

Cole Camplese, ETS director, has talked before about what is going on with the Schreyer Honors College’s portfolio project. He offers an update to the project, including a very cool mashup that allows you to see their progress.

Brett Bixler, ETS lead instructional designer, found a great book on serious gaming and education put out by our Pittsburgh peers at the Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. He provides a link to more information about the book here.

Brett also posted this week on the potential found in iPhones and education gaming.

Now time for some news:

Adobe Connect Demonstration Sessions for October, 2008

Below are the dates and times for our October Adobe Connect Demonstration sessions. We’ve extended the sessions to include what’s new with Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (version 7), demonstrate the primary features of the meeting room and answer questions that you might have. No registration or RSVP necessary.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008, 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008, 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
Friday, October 17, 2008, 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008, 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008, 9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Here is the link to the meeting room: https://breeze.psu.edu/r54559680/. Please come when you like, learn about the new features, different ways to use Adobe Connect, ask questions, stay for a few minutes or for the 90 minutes; feel free to pass this on to friends and colleagues. Members of the Penn State community can arrange for an on-site demonstration by contacting your ITS Consultant.

If you plan to join our demonstration session through Adobe Connect, please read through the Getting Started information at http://meeting.psu.edu/quickstart and test your connection in advance with our generic test meeting room at https://breeze.psu.edu/testmeetingroom/.

If you have any questions or problems entering the test meeting room, help is available by emailing breeze@psu.edu.

New stats demonstrate popularity of Blogs at Penn State

System wide stats of the Blogs at Penn State Project (as of 11:39 AM on 9/26/2008):

* 3,837 blogs
* 18,225 entries
* 2,509 pages
* 3,502 users
* 7,297 comments
* 10,169 assets
* 5,880 unique tags

That’s all for this week of the BuzzLion. Thanks for reading!