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 November 9

Gray skies? Check. Chilly temperatures? Check. Drizzle? Check. Must be November in Happy Valley. It’s okay, someone from Florida would find this stuff horrible, but not us here at Penn State. Not in the least, we just take the time to stay inside, be innovative, and think some interesting thoughts (maybe even blog about them). Some examples of this innovation, as always, can be found in the BuzzLion.

Dave Stong of ETS is known for his graphic skills, but he is also a lifelong learner. He recently had an interesting academic experience that occurred on a personal level, and it made him reflect on learning style and what it means to him.

Newspapers, even old institutions like the New York Times, face many challenges in a time when there are so many other sources for news. Cole Camplese, ETS director, recently discovered Times People, a social network of sorts within the Times Web site. Cole offers his thoughts on this, including a great way to improve it.

Elizabeth Pyatt, ETS instructional designer, has found that believe it or not, politics gets in the way of linguistics. She posted recently on her blog on a very encouraging trend she sees regarding Unicode and linguistic identity of Eastern European countries.

Elizabeth also posted in the Learning Design Community Hub about Ray Kurzweil’s recent presentation here. He is the developer of Kurzweil screen reading software for students with many reading disabilities.

There has been some questions about gaming and virtual world courses at Penn State. Brett Bixler, ETS lead instructional designer, recently posted in the Educational Gaming Commons about a course in this coming this spring.

That’s it for this week’s BuzzLion. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

BuzzLion for Week of November 2

Here we are in November already, and the BuzzLion went over the river and through the woods to Penn State Schuylkill for the Digital Commons Tailgate. If you don’t what a Digital Commons Tailgate is, give that hyperlink a try.

So, live from the Digital Commons Tailgate, lets get started with this week’s BuzzLion.

Brad Kozlek, ETS programming manager, attended the IMS Global Learning Consortium this week, held right here at Penn State University Park. A session he attended raised an interesting question for educational technology – Are learning repositories actually learning spaces?

Cole Camplese, ETS director, also attended the IMS event, and his recent blog post on it gave a more general overview. Cole covers the sessions he attended, and commented on ideas, thoughts, and questions raised during the event.

Jeff Swain, ETS instructional designer, climbs into the time machine and peers into the future, asking “What Will the 21st Century University Look Like?” Jeff looks at the recent report in The Economist on the future of higher education, and offers his thoughts. Plus, welcomes YOUR thoughts.

Brett Bixler channels Edwin Starr and asks “What is it good for”. No, not war, but Second Life. Brett stresses that Second Life is definitely good for education.

Dave Stong, ETS graphics designer, produces a lot of digital content, such as photos, artwork, graphics, etc. In a recent blog post, he discusses HDR, the challenges raised by having to add additional metadata, and a cool way this challenge is met.

That’s all for this week’s BuzzLion. Be sure to come back next week, as BuzzLion is sure to have some stuff on the Digital Commons Tailgate.

Thanks for reading!

BuzzLion for the Week of October 26

This edition of BuzzLion will thankfully be clear of any tired Halloween-focused cliches that appear in so many articles, blogs, etc. this time of year. We promise.

For starters, Allan Gyorke, ETS manager, education technologies, is one of several ETS souls haunting this year’s EDUCAUSE 2008 Conference in Orlando. He discusses some of the scary top teaching and learning challenges that spook educational technology experts. That is just the first of his posts from EDUCAUSE; don’t be afraid to read his other posts, which are full of great information.

WHATEVER you do, don’t pick up your iPhone! Because Cole Camplese, ETS director, has found yet another KILLER APP for it – a very cool recording and synching device. Cole finds it quite useful in his day-to-day haunts.

Chris Stubbs, ETS senior programmer, is a serious gamer with scary skills who often looks beyond games into other aspects such as sociology, education (of course), and advertising. Take a look at his recent blog post for some truly hair-raising game advertising that includes a monster on the side of a real building. No, they didn’t hire the Cloverfield monster. See for yourself – if you dare.

Brett Bixler, ETS lead instructional designer, has a frightful time trying to get work done in Second Life’s Penn State space because of all the virtual human entities asking him questions. He notes that there is a sense of presence you bring into SL that just doesn’t exist in other mediums, and this builds some great relationships.

Yvonne Clark, ETS instructional designer, conjured up a whitepaper on e-learning by Adobe, and shares it on the Learning Design Castle of Terror. Er, Learning Design Community Hub. Anyway, it’s a great read, and you can find it here.

Time for some news:

If you want to learn how to use the meeting software Adobe Connect, here is a real treat with no tricks. As posted on the Adobe Connect Community Hub:

Below are the dates and times for our November Adobe Connect Demonstration sessions. We’ve extended one 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, November 5, 2008, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008, from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.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 (https://myit.vmhost.psu.edu/node/72).

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.

Okay, that is all for this week’s BuzzLion. Thank God there were no lame Halloween cliches. That would have been scary bad.

BuzzLion for Week of October 5

With all the bad news this week on the economy, think of the BuzzLion as your one-stop shop for good news, at least about educational technology at Penn State.

Definitely some good news for the Blogs at Penn State pilot, as Cole Camplese, ETS director, points out in his blog. There has been a big jump in the amount of not just blogs, but posts on these blogs as well.

Still on the blog subject, Brad Koslek, senior programmer, recently posted about using tags in blogs as a way to add new features. Read more about it on his superbly-named blog, Edushizzle.

Allan Gyorke, ETS manager of educational technology, wants to talk about globalization. Wait, don’t leave! This isn’t more depressing economy stuff. Allan talks about globalization of learning, and it is quite interesting.

Dave Stong, ETS graphic designer, has his head in the clouds. Tag clouds, that is. He blogs this week about an interesting tag cloud tool and its possible uses for marketing.

Video games – better than life? Brett Bixler, ETS lead instructional designer, posted on the Educational Gaming Community Hub about a talk given by a gaming expert that looks at the future of games. You can watch the video here. He makes his points in some surprising ways – give it a watch.

Now for some news:

The International Symposium on Emerging Technology Applications for Online Learning

Call for Proposals open until December 8, 2008.

We are pleased to announce the dates and location for the 2009 International Symposium on Emerging Technology Applications for Online Learning. The symposium will be held June 17-19, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco.

In addition, the Call for Proposals is now open at the Symposium website, http://www.emergingonlinelearningtechnology.org/.

Program Tracks include:
- Emerging Technologies for Administration, Infrastructure, and Support Services
- Immersive Learning and Virtual Environments
- Inventive Uses of Media and Tools
- Pedagogy and New Learning Environments
- The New Learning Communities

For more information about this symposium, please visit http://www.emergingonlinelearningtechnology.org/.

And speaking of Symposiums:

Registration is now open for the 2009 Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology, along with call for proposals for presentations.

You can register here.

You can submit a proposal to present on the great stuff you are doing in educational technology at Penn State by going here.

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

BuzzLion for the week of September 28

BuzzLion this week starts off by throwing in a little plug for the boss.

Cole Camplese, director of ETS, recently had a column printed in the prestigious Christian Science Monitor on the rise of participatory social media and it’s affects on society overall. He wrote about his column in his blog, a good move because it started an interesting conversation in the comments section from people beyond Penn State.

Allan Gyorke, manager of educational technologies at ETS, talks about his lifelong learning class he is taking here at Penn State. And then reflects on the myriad of learning opportunities that are currently part of his life.

Elizabeth Pyatt, ETS instructional designer, has found that too many online archival repositories are, well, not so usable. She takes a look at some, and mitigates her post with a look at some that work.

Jeff Swain, ETS instructional designer, and Mary Janzen, ETS writer/editor, have produced another ANGEL Shorts. This edition is titled “What an Instructor Should Know about Using a Text Editor to Create a Quiz Question Bank” and can be found on the ANGEL Community Hub.

Yvonne Clark, ETS instructional designer, posted to the Adobe Connect Community Hub about an online Adobe Connect Presenter training session that was held last week. If you missed it, no worries, you can view the training here.

A Digital Commons Tailgate on November 7-8 when the football team isn’t even at home? And at the Schuylkill Campus, not here in University Park? Come again? No, you are thinking of the wrong kind of tailgate. This Tailgate is an event that is similar to the Learning Design Summer Camp and is a conference focusing on digital media in education. To learn more, please click here.

Brett Bixler, lead instructional designer with ETS, has posted in the Educational Gaming Community Hub the following announcement:

Dr. Karl Kapp will be joining us from Bloomsburg University to talk about 3D Virtual Worlds and how they do or do not fit into the landscape of online courses. He will be focusing on the pedagogical aspects of these tools and not necessarily the tools themselves, as we are all familiar with and have explored many of these 3D Worlds.

Dr. Kapp’s presentation will be from 10:30 to noon on October 21st at the Hub in Heritage Hall, and I have attached a copy of Dr. Kapp’s bio. Below is an abstract of his presentation.

If you are able to attend please RSVP so we have an idea of how many folks we may have in attendance. Also, if you know of other Instructional Designers that I may have forgot to include on this email please pass along the information. I tried to account for everyone, but I’m sure I missed some folks, especially some at the campuses.

We will try to arrange to have the session recorded and made available for those that cannot attend in person.

Regards.
Rick Shearer, Penn State World Campus

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That is all for this week’s BuzzLion. Thanks for reading and see you next week!

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