Archive for the ‘Announcements’ Category

PSU Teaching and Learning on YouTube

One of the things we learned from the 2008 FACAC survey results is that Penn State faculty teach using YouTube. As a matter of fact over 30% of our faculty say YouTube plays a role in their teaching. We also know that quite a few of our students spend time at the social video site watching and contributing.

With that in mind we’ve decided to launch our own TLT YouTube video channel. At the site you can find videos from our events that we’ve captured the last few years as well as other interesting items. We’re still exploring all the ways we can use the YouTube channel and would be thrilled to hear your thoughts. For now, head over to the new TLT YouTube channel and take a look!

New ETS Look and Feel

I just updated the look and feel of the ETS Site! I spent a couple hours yesterday working on extending a stock theme to have some very ETS-like elements. Taking some inspiration from some work that Alan Levine did for the NMC’s Pachyderm project, I used nothing more than a stock WP install, a couple of plugins, some theme work, and some new thinking as it relates to content organization to get something going very quickly. A big thanks goes out to Jason Heffner for helping me get the theme installed and the permalink structure working the right way. Over the next few days I’ll start to round out some of the other pages here.

The two sections I’d like to do a little custom template work for are the ETS Staff page and the ETS R&D page. I’d like to drive some of the page elements from content being published blog style with categories. Keep watching as we’ll be updating it on a regular basis.

Lawrence Lessig to Present Keynote at 2008 Symposium

Faculty and staff are invited to attend the free 2008 Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology, to be held Saturday, March 29 from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, University Park.

Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of the schoolâ€™s Center for Internet and Society, will be the keynote speaker, and will be introduced by President Graham Spanier. 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/.

The Symposium will feature concurrent sessions presented by Penn State faculty and staff describing how they have used technology to enrich teaching, learning, and research. Topics will include social computing tools, new ways for teams to collaborate, virtual worlds, and digital expression. Hands-on learning sessions will allow attendees to try out blogging, podcasting, and student response systems. In addition, they can meet members of the teams who support various Penn State technology initiatives.

A continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. 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.

The Googlization of Libraries

Today there will be an interesting talk given at the Penn State Library that both Mike Halm and I will be attending … The Googlization of libraries: What do public services look like after all of our books have been digitized? See if you can join us! I’d love to say that it would be podcasted, but I doubt it.

Laurie and Mike will lead a discussion of how the Penn State Libraries should prepare for the service changes that will be needed, and maybe are already needed in an environment where more and more of our collections have been digitized. Will our services be the “value-added” element that defines our role in the open information environment? How will we adjust our models for access and delivery of content? What will the library “brand” be?

January 10, 2007
Mann Assembly Room
Pattee/Paterno Library
NOON to 1:00 p.m.
Michael Furlough, Asst. Dean for Scholarly Communications
Laura Probst, Head of Public Services