The debut of The ETS BuzzLion

Posted on July 13, 2007 
Filed Under BuzzLion

Each week, The ETS BuzzLion will take a look at a sampling of what has the Penn State education technology community talking. It can include a trend we are noticing, a new project, a new product, how faculty are using technology in their courses and in research, opinion pieces, success stories at Penn State, and more.

So, without further ado, here is the The ETS BuzzLion for the week of July 9, 2007…..

Chris Millet has some exciting news for students and faculty who use digital media at Penn State, the Digital Commons Pilot Program.

“…..the Digital Commons initiative has been designed to provide every location of the University with a centrally managed digital media studio that can support both faculty and students in their use of digital media. We have committed to installing up to 15 Digital Commons Studios during the 2007-2008 fiscal year, with the remainder of campuses being completed during the 2008-2009 fiscal year.”

Elizabeth Pyatt takes a look at accessibility issues regarding blogs.

“How accessible were the blogs? Fairly accessibile, but with some quirks.”

Can you access podcasts online via the new Apple iPhone? Cole Camplese says of course you can, and Wendy Mahan, a fellow ETS staffer, agrees.
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“…..when I actually clicked over and read her (Wendy’s) post I was interested to see that she was actually not talking about following th path of download to iTunes and sync to the iPhone over the cable. She was instead talking about going to the Podcasts at Penn State site live via Safari and listening over the air.”

Okay….but is it possible to access ANGEL on an iPhone? Wendy says yes…….and no.

“Decided to see what iPhone is able to do with ANGEL. My main interest was quizzes, since this little device could be a good tool for ‘dishonest behavior.’”

Gary Chinn notes a trend toward the creation of simple-to-use tools that enables quick and easy multimedia content creation and gives his thoughts on what it means for education and beyond.

“The development of such tools moves content creation toward ownership by the content expert. This has several advantages, the most obvious being efficiency and accuracy.”

Holodecks soon may be used in education. No, this really has nothing to do with Star Trek, but an interesting idea in the virtual world Second Life. Brett Bixler takes a look at the possibilities for education and includes some samples.

“In SL (Second Life), due to server load, you are limited by the amount of prims (3D graphic shapes) you can place in a given location……More educators are running up against their prim limits. Holodecks seem to be a viable solution.”

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