BuzzLion for the week of February 3

Posted on February 8, 2008 
Filed Under BuzzLion

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/.

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