The ETS BuzzLion

Each Friday, 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, news announcements, and more. It’s a great way to both keep up with educational technology innovation at Penn State and join in the conversation yourself.

BuzzLion for the Week of Jan. 4

The BuzzLion is back, and both a Happy New Year and Happy New Semester to you all. One quick note: BuzzLion is so well-loved, it is expanding its focus from Educational Technology Services (ETS) to encompass Teaching and Learning with Technologies (TLT). So, in the coming weeks we will include other units within TLT outside of ETS, including Classroom and Lab Computing, WebLion, and ITS Training. The BuzzLion will also be part of the new TLT Newsletter. Watch this space for more on that later this month.

We start things with Cole Camplese, ETS director, who looks back at a year in the cloud. Cole is not being metaphysical or talking about how many frequent flyer miles he has logged, but cloud computing. More specifically, netbooks and how they might influence education. Find out what a netbook is and how you use it by going to his blog.

Mike Halm, who leads the WebLion group, recently posted on the WebLion blog about the presentation himself and Glenn Johnson, project manager of Penn State’s e-Portfolio Initiative, gave at this year’s EDUCAUSE mid-Atlantic conference. They discussed how WebLion helps the Penn State community develop e-portfolios, and you can read about the presentation here. Please note, they are looking for additional departments to work with them on this project.

Brett Bixler, ETS lead instructional designer, has posted an actual educational game that you can check out on the Educational Gaming Commons. He not only posts the game, but offers a hand if you want to incorporate it into your class but are not sure how.

Elizabeth Pyatt is not only an ETS instructional designer but a Unicode guru. Her latest Unicode post on her blog is on how to encode right to left scripts such as Arabic or Hebrew.

Eric Steele, programmer with WebLion, has announced the worm has turned at WebLion! Well, at least the Gloworm. Read about a very cool tool for Web content management here.

Brad Kozlek, senior programmer with ETS, shares with us a great article and video on collaborative editing and social voting.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading!

BuzzLion for the Week of Dec. 14

The weather outside is frightful, and that is not just a song lyric today. However, it’s warm inside as BuzzLion writes this, and another semester comes to the end. So, let’s get on with it – the last BuzzLion of 2008.

Cole Camplese, ETS director, has been recording a video that asks a question, then invites you to record a video response. This week, it’s “How Do You Define Identity?”. Please feel free to participate.

Elizabeth Pyatt, ETS instructional designer, talks this week about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Elizabeth points out is a provision in the act that every three years, the community can petition for exemptions to the no-hacking clause.

Brett Bixler, ETS lead instructional designer, posted in the Educational Gaming Commons about several interesting events:

- One that recently happened including a game showcase and its winner, a medical simulation game that has huge educational possibilities.

- Less an event and more of a request, Brett would like you to read a report on Second Life.

- Finally, Brett tells us about an event that is drivable (and in June, so it won’t snow), a gaming conference at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Yvonne Clark, ETS instructional designer, points us to a very cool multi-cultural learning tool SCOLA. What is it? Go see her post at the Learning Design Community Hub to find out.

Pat Besong, ETS multimedia specialist, conducts a monthly educational multimedia development meeting. If you like to find out what great stuff Penn State people are developing, you can see Pat’s post to the Learning Design Community Hub and view an Adobe Connect recording of the meeting.

That’s it for this week’s BuzzLion – See you in 2009…..January 9, to be exact. Have a great Holiday and New Year.

BuzzLion for Week of December 7

Here we are, at the end of the last week of classes, and ready to enter Finals Week. BuzzLion has no finals, just the biggest test of them all this time of year – dealing with the Holiday craziness. To quote the great humorist Jean Shepard from his classic “A Christmas Story” – the Christmas noose is starting to tighten.

A community, like busy mall at the Holidays, often has lots of people, but it is really more than that. Cole Camplese, ETS director, talks about what he believes defines a community via video, and offers an opportunity for you to record a video response.

Cole also has a very interesting blog post about what we do at ETS and what it all means.

Elizabeth Pyatt, ETS instructional designer, last week discussed problems implementing MathML on Explorer 7. She has a followup to this, and it seems she got some help from MathML themselves. Also, she makes an interesting comment about the ongoing Browser Wars and links to her previous blog post on MathML.

Jeff Swain, ETS instructional designer, has the latest in the ANGEL Shorts series posted on the ANGEL Community Hub. Designed to help ANGEL users get the most out of the course management system, this edition focuses on Five Things an Instructor Should Know About Using Media in a Quiz.

Mary Janzen, ETS writer/editor, reminds faculty and staff on the ANGEL Community Hub that ANGEL message boards must be converted to discussion forums before January 21, 2009.

Yvonne Clark, ETS instructional designer, announced on the Penn State Learning Design Community Hub that new documentation for the Adobe Presenter meeting software is online.

A final note: for Teaching and Learning with Technology news, events, and discussion, go to the TLT site and see the right side tabs.

That’s it for this week – thanks for reading!

BuzzLion for the Week of November 30

We have finally digested the turkey and froze the leftovers here in ETS, so it’s time to get back to work with another BuzzLion.

If you stop by ETS on the second floor of the Rider Building, you see a screen in the hallway with a Twitter feed on it. The feed features Twitter posts by ETS staff, and it is a great way to see what people are doing at ETS. Cole Camplese, ETS director, has found an interesting new tool that takes this concept one step further, and aggregates all the blog feeds, Twitter feeds, etc. in a new and exciting way. If you want to keep up with all the information out there in blogs, etc. but feel overwhelmed, this might be the solution.

Brett Bixler, ETS lead instructional designer, says that games are active, engaging, and keep you focused on them. Except when they are not, and are passive. Come again? Check out Brett’s recent post to the Educational Gaming Commons to learn more about these “passive games.”

Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) is an application of XML for describing mathematical notations and capturing both its structure and content. Elizabeth Pyatt, ETS instructional designer, has decided to test this application – and found a rather weird benefit.

Some news bits for this week:

Deadline extended for 2009 Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology faculty proposals

The deadline for faculty to submit proposals to present at the Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology has been extended to December 19. This free event will be held Saturday, April 18, 2009 from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, University Park. A continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. This year’s theme is “Student Engagement and the Culture of Teaching and Learning.” To reflect this theme, presentations will highlight students’ involvement in the learning process.

Faculty who are using technology to enrich teaching, learning, or research are encouraged to submit a presentation proposal using the online form at http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/2009proposal/. Topics could involve faculty and students collaborating on a project or an assignment showcasing students using any number of collaborative tools and new learning spaces. Some examples include the use of shared learning resources, the incorporation of digital media, and any best practices that foster student ownership of learning. 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. For more details and to register, visit http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/. The Symposium is sponsored by Information Technology Services.

December Adobe Connect Demonstration Sessions
Below are the dates and times for our December Adobe Connect Demonstration sessions. We’ve extended two of the sessions to 1.5 hours to include a demonstration of the breakout rooms which is new to Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (version 7). We will also demonstrate the primary features of the meeting room and answer questions that you might have. No registration or RSVP necessary.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
Monday, December 15, 2008, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Here is the link to the meeting room: https://breeze.psu.edu/r54559680/. Please come when you like, learn about the new features, different ways to use Adobe Connect, ask questions, stay for a few minutes or for the time; feel free to pass this on to friends and colleagues. Members of the Penn State community can arrange for an on-site demonstration by contacting your ITS Consultant.

If you plan to join our demonstration session through Adobe Connect, please read through the Getting Started information at http://meeting.psu.edu/quickstart and test your connection in advance with our generic test meeting room at https://breeze.psu.edu/testmeetingroom/. If you have any questions or problems entering the test meeting room, help is available by emailing breeze@psu.edu.

PSU Multimedia Group meeting for December

The Penn State Multimedia Group meeting will be held in 202K Rider Building on Friday, December 19th from 10:00-11:00 a.m. Pat Besong of ETS, meeting coordinator, would like to invite anyone that has something you think might be of interest to the group to share. Please let him know by emailing pbz4@psu.edu prior to Dec. 15 so he can get an agenda together for the meeting.

As usual, the meeting will be available via Adobe Connect at http://breeze.psu.edu/multimedia.

So, that is all for BuzzLion for this week. Thanks for reading!

BuzzLion for the Week of Nov. 15

Winter apparently has come early to Penn State. The snow outside can look dramatic and the chill intimidating, but we here at ETS don’t let it bother us. Not in the least, we just stay inside and be innovative.

Tim Perry, systems analyst with ETS, recently attended a Webinar on Tegrity, a Web 2.0 product that captures class slides, lectures, etc. And, it doesn’t require classroom-based software and hardware, so it’s cost-effective. Tim reviews the pluses and the minuses of this product in his blog.

Allan Gyorke, manager, educational technologies with ETS, has found another use for Youtube beyond viewing piano-playing cats: learning more about global issues. It is used in one of his graduate classes this way; in fact, Youtube is second only to PowerPoint as the most used educational tool at Penn State.

Cole Camplese, director of ETS, has posted before about Twitter on his blog. He has found another Penn Stater who recently posted on Twitter and he finds it a great way to learn more about Twitter and why it is relevant.

Elizabeth Pyatt, ETS instructional designer, found a great site that helps kids learn how to count. There is more to learning how to count than any of us probably remember.

Brett Bixler, ETS lead instructional designer, posted in the Learning Design Community Hub about a new Web site that ETS is developing for non-course content for students. Check it out, and help Brett give it a name.

That’s all for this week – thanks for reading.

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