BuzzLion for the week of October 28

Posted on November 2, 2007 
Filed Under BuzzLion

Halloween week brought ghosts, goblins, and absolutely scary-good innovation at ETS. Here is the BuzzLion for the week of October 28:ETS Director Cole Camplese has come up with a way that the Blogs at Penn State project can enhance a student’s ePortfolio.“I think the keys here revolve around making a few changes not to the technology, but to the ways we work with students as they move through their academic careers. Sitting down with them as they enter a program and helping them establish their personal goals so that they balance them with the goals of their program — that is critical.”

Members of the Penn State community who work with Unicode will find Elizabeth Pyatt’s discussion on using Unicode with lesser-known scripts and languages a good read.”I had a hard time deciding which sessions to attend at the last Unicode conference, but I did end up at “Unicode at the Front Lines”, which was a series of mini-presentations from scholars working with lesser-known languages and scripts. This is a place where the Unicode rubber really hits the road, and I learned some interesting “life-lessons”.”

ETS multimedia expert Pat Besong discusses two very cool projects he is working on, a medical simulation module and the kiosk at the Penn State Sports Museum.“I don’t remember if I mentioned before that I will be putting together a hands-on workshop for the 8th Annual International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare in San Diego this coming January. Sounds pretty hoity-toity. I’ll basically be showing people the technical end of how I put this simulation together and how they can use the same template to create other simulations in the healthcare field.”

One of ETS’s many ANGEL gurus, Jeff Swain, works with ETS’s wordsmith Mary Janzen to produce the monthly “ANGEL Shorts” series, which helps users get the most out of ANGEL. You can view the latest one here.“ANGEL Shorts, Vol. 1, Issue #5 Five Things Faculty Should Know about the Report tab is now available. From the article:’The ANGEL 7.1 Report tab houses the Reports Console, where instructors can track various performance aspects of individual students, teams, and the entire class. Additionally, instructors can review activity regarding specific content items or track progress through course milestones.’”

Brett Bixler talks about something quite interesting — a “virtual college fair”, and how Penn State was involved.“The college fair had over 20 colleges and universities from all over the world, and roughly 200 visitors throughout the weekend. Penn State was the only Big 10 school represented and I speak for both myself and Claudia when I say that we had a wonderful time and are looking forward to participating in more of these events in the future!”

And one last thing….Lawrence Lessig to present keynote at 2008 Symposium for Teaching and Learning with TechnologyLawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society, will be the keynote speaker at the 2008 Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology. The free event will be held March 29, 2008 from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, University Park.Lessig is the author of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, The Future of Ideas, and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. He chairs the Creative Commons project, and serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge. He is also a columnist for Wired. For more information on Lessig and his work, see http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/keynote/.

Faculty who are using technology to enrich teaching, learning, or research are encouraged to submit a proposal to share their story with other faculty at the Symposium using the online form at http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/proposal/. Potential topics could include the application of social computing tools, collaborative writing, new learning spaces, digital expression, the role of technology in assessment and accreditation, and student perspectives on their use of technology. Sessions can be in a variety of formats, including group presentations, panel discussions, poster presentations, demonstrations, small-group discussions, and other activities. Each session should include some discussion of practical aspects such as the tools used, sources of support, best practices, and how the application of technology can be transferred to other disciplines. The deadline to submit proposals is Nov. 16.For more details and to register, visit http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/. The Symposium is sponsored by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services.

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