BuzzLion for the week of October 21

Posted on October 26, 2007 
Filed Under BuzzLion

It’s a rainy week, but the innovation sun shines brightly in ETS. Here is the BuzzLion for the week of October 21:

Chris Stubbs discusses a whitepaper he worked on regarding potential educational uses for Facebook.

“I don’t think any of us really knew what sort of reception the Library Facebook app would receive when we started this process, but with more than 1,100 users currently, its fair to say that its usership has shattered my own expectations.”

Elizabeth Pyatt makes a case that sometimes, it’s a good idea to make one of your blogs a private one.

“I should say that I maintained a private blog elsewhere for some time. It’s really private too - not an anonymous blog hosted somewhere outside of Penn State. It’s password protected, and it’s dated, has categories and could generate an RSS feed. Although some entries in the private blog have made the public blog, most are still lying in the dark…and that’s OK with me.”

Fortunately for us, Dave Stong is always happy to share his thoughts on design and multimedia. This week he talks about video in Photoshop and it’s potential.

“I knew that Photoshop has long been able to render images for television while the workspace remains on a monitor. In the background, Photoshop does the math to convert a circle I’m creating on square pixels to the ellipse it needs to be to appear round on rectangular pixels. Quite a feat, I think. I thought that, even though Photoshop isn’t really a great video tool yet, it might have the algorithms to help.”

Brett Bixler found an article that makes a strong argument that gaming indeed can have an impact on learning. He posts a link to it here.


“It lists several reasons why game development is a great activity for education. I’ve condensed these into two main reasons:

1. A learning by doing activity.
2. A collaborative activity.

And I’ll add my own:

* Students are motivated to do this!”

In keeping with a multimedia theme, Jeff Swain offers tips on incorporating multimedia into a course via ITS Streaming Services.

“The use of multi-media files as a teaching tool is increasing. Some instructors are using movie clips to illustrate a point while others are recording portions of their material for students to reference and use as often as needed. The use of multi media files (movie and sound clips) enhances distance learning, blended learning and traditional courses.”

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