BuzzLion for the week of October 14

Posted on October 19, 2007 
Filed Under BuzzLion

Leaves are falling, and innovation is rising at ETS. Here is the BuzzLion for the week of October 14:

ETS staff always has an open ear for ideas, suggestions, recommendations, and other feedback. ETS Director Cole Camplese is looking for feedback on ideas for developing effective eLearning.

“I would love to hear from those of you out there who design courses and what works for you … what are the right tools and approaches? Think of a design environment that a team (with specific roles) is asked to create scalable eLearning materials … what are some examples of people ditching the all in one design/development environments to create courses that are made up of small pieces? Can we legitimately ask our faculty to work with us to select and deliver killer learning environments using the platforms we constantly talk about?”

ETS IT expert Jason Heffner discovered an online overview of the content management system Drupal, which would be of interest for any Web designers out there.

“It was an excellent presentation given by some of the people at Lullabot, and I would recommend it if you never heard about Drupal and want a good overview.”

ETS Director Cole Camplese turns swami on us and pulls out his crystal ball to predict the future of student involvement in onlne publishing.

“Today I was asked to project if the Blogs at PSU, when used in a electronic publishing context, would increase the amount of students engaged in portfolio creation. Right now, from what I understand, less than 50% of students activate the free personal webspace we give them. Activate is different than using it. About half of that group reports using it for academic purposes. Will giving the students of our University a simple tool for publishing, reflecting, sharing, and collaborating online change those numbers? I said I think it will — and I also mentioned that if we built a FaceBook Application to facilitate blogging from their profiles we’d see an even bigger jump.”

ETS multimedia developer Mark DeLuca updates us on a few very cool multimedia projects for Penn State courses.

“It’s been a busy few months here at ETS. Not only has the BLI been keeping me active, but with the release of Adobe’s CS3 suites I’ve had to take some time to reacquaint myself with the apps I use most.”

Brett Bixler talks about the call for proposals for the upcoming New Media Consortium Symposium on the Evolution of Communication

“If anyone from PSU is interested in presenting, I will assist as I can!

Call for Proposals
The NMC Symposium on the Evolution of Communication
December 4-5, 2007

Proposals for presentations for the NMC Symposium on the Evolution of Communication, a special 2-day, live online event to be held December 4-5, 2007 in the virtual world of Second Life, are being solicited through November 2. “

The ANGEL Community Hub is a great place to find out tips on how to use ANGEL for your courses. Jeff Swain from the ANGEL Documentation Team offers three tips in this week alone:

- Configuring Course Mail Settings
- Changing the Content Items Icons on the Lessons Tab
- Using Google Reader Clips in a Course in Place of Hyperlinks

ETS instructional designer and Adobe Connect expert Yvonne Clark compiled some interesting blog postings about Connect and how different groups are using it.

And finally, we really recommend anyone reading this take the time to go to both the Digital Commons Open House and the Penn State Testing Center Open House October 25. Both of them are in the Pollock Building, so you get a two-for-one deal. Below are announcements on both events. We invite the Penn State Community to see a cutting-edge multimedia production project for both students and faculty in the Digital Commons, and the only computer-based testing center in the Big Ten. We look forward to seeing you there.


Digital Commons media production studios to host open house Oct. 25

The Penn State community is invited to an open house of the newly designed and renovated Digital Commons media production studios on the second floor of Pollock Building, University Park on Oct. 25 from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. At University Park, the Digital Commons offers two studios, the Faculty Multimedia Center for faculty and Studio 204 for students. These free facilities, which provide hands-on assistance from experienced multimedia experts, are part of the Digital Commons initiative of Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services. Through the initiative, similar studios will be installed at all Penn State campus locations by 2009, allowing students to enrich their educations through the creation of digital content.

Featured at the open house will be four new faculty workstations that are dedicated to the creation of digital media to incorporate into course-related activities. Visitors can tour the newly expanded digital video production studio and digital video editing suite and see the array of equipment available. They will also be able to view examples of past projects produced using Digital Commons facilities. For more information about the Digital Commons initiative, visit The Digital Commons Web site or e-mail digitalcommons@psu.edu.

New Testing Center open house events

Penn State’s new Testing Center, located in the Pollock Building on the University Park campus, will hold several Open House events during the fall semester. Upcoming events are scheduled for 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. October 25 and November 13. The Center combines an e-testing lab and the new home for the University’s Scanning Operations, previously located in the Rider Building II. Scanning Operations processes paper scan sheets used to capture responses on tests, surveys, or other course assessments. The e-testing lab will be in piloting phase this fall and open for computer-based test administration in spring 2008. The lab space is newly renovated with state-of-the-art technology designed to ensure the highest level of security possible. Open House events will include an overview of submitting course-related scan sheets at Scanning Operations and demonstrations of Testing Center entry procedures, new testing equipment, and security technology. The Testing Center is jointly operated by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services, and the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, a unit of Undergraduate Education. For more information on the Testing Center, please visit http://www.testing.psu.edu/.

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