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For a lot of students this is the first time they have used a Mac, and the iLife package that comes with each computer. Digital Commons was happy to help teach some hands-on training with Garageband, as well as answer any questions about iMovie and iDVD. Hannah Sloan spent time providing hands-on training helping each student create an enhanced podcast with images, chapters and hyperlinks, and also the process for publishing these podcasts to iTunesU. While each session only took about an hour, Justin Miller and Hannah stayed all day to answer questions and talk to the students about the resources that are available at the Digital Commons. All in all, it sounds like it was a very successful day.

In 2005, Guertin began to record her classroom lectures in MP3 format. She makes them available to students via iTunes U , allowing them to engage in course content outside class.

Additionally, she recorded review sessions consisting of questions to help students prepare for exams. She asked them to listen to each question, pause, and try to answer it. Guertin explained, “These were fundamental questions to make sure they understood the basics, then during the test, I asked synthesis-type questions.” She said these recorded reviews are beneficial because Brandywine is a commuter campus and it is difficult to get the class together for face-to-face review. “This way,” Guertin said, “all the students had access to it.”

Now that Brandywine has a Digital Commons studio, Guertin assigns projects that ask the students to be the creators of podcasts and other digital media.

As one project in her Environment Earth course, students created an audio tour of tree species marked on a trail at Ridley Creek State Park. Each student recorded a podcast about a species, then added photos to it. Guertin said her students worked hard to create high-quality work. She observed, “They were not happy turning in something that wasn’t to their satisfaction. I think it’s because the projects they did are being viewed by an outside audience. I saw a sense of pride and professionalism in a way that I wouldn’t have gotten if I just had them write a paper. Their voice had this inflection to it because they were excited to talk about the tree. I don’t think I would have gotten as good a result in terms of the quality of the science, either.”

In October, her students visited the Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C., a competition for energy-efficient home design. Carrying cameras and iPods with microphones, the students viewed the model homes, recorded observations, and interviewed attendees. From this, they created a virtual tour of the event, which was tied into Google Earth, an application that allows users to view a satellite image of a location. “What we’ve created can be shared throughout the Penn State community,” she said.

Guertin’s students entered the SCA/Mazda Conservation in Action Multimedia Contest, which asks young people to pick an environmental issue, describe it, and come up with a solution. The entry could be in the form of a podcast, movie, or song. She said her students chose a range of topics and technologies and that she was thrilled with the creativity of their work.

She said she was struck when a student commented, “I didn’t realize I cared about this subject. Now I realize I can do something about it.” Guertin explained, “That ‘do something’ means the technology is there for them to help communicate what they’ve learned. They cared about the science and what got them into the science was learning not just that you need technology to take measurements in the field, but also that it can help communicate the science.”

Today’s journalism, she says, is often “backpack journalism.” Communications professionals who were once supported by production crews now often carry their own cameras and microphones and record, edit, and produce their own pieces. “You may be both in front of the camera and behind it,” explained Brown. “It’s not just writing the copy anymore; it’s writing, producing, and putting that end product out there,” she said.

In her “Newspaper Writing and Reporting” course, Brown asked students to interview a person who works for Penn State, be it a professor or cafeteria server, then produce an audio podcast. Brown said, “It brought the whole campus together because everybody was listening to it. We got a whole buzz going.”

In Brown’s “Public Relations and Advertising” course, she designed assignments around the Rachel Carson Institute in Springdale and Carson’s influence on the environmental movement. Brown said, “What I’ve learned since I started teaching is that students have to be passionate about something and they have to be able to be activists. One of the things they’re very interested in is the environment.”

As one assignment, students attended the Rachel Carson Legacy Conference at Carnegie Mellon University. Using iPods equipped with microphones, they captured the talks as well as walked around and interviewed attendees.

Student teams each created a video promoting environmental awareness featuring series of three words, such as “green your routine,” “don’t be silent,” and “erase your footprint.” They first had to develop storyboards. Brown said, “It gave them a concept they never had before on how you put together a movie. You don’t just go out and shoot. They had to have a plan, they had to have a process, and then they had to promote it.” Students edited the videos using iMovie software in the Digital Commons studio.

Other assignments encouraged students to capture the power of oral stories. In one instance, they interviewed individuals from three different generations on “why we fight.” In another, they captured the stories of women of the Mon Valley and learned what the area was like in the ’40s and ’50s. In return for their help, these “senior research associates” will each receive a computer in their home. Brown’s students will visit their homes and teach them to use the computer, through the “Follow Me Home” initiative.

Brown explained that having students spend time creating podcasts and videos does not mean they miss out on theory. “My colleagues may think if you’re putting all this technology in, you must be losing the theory. We’re not. We’re just enhancing the theory,” said Brown, “and the student gets more excited and passionate about it as a result.”

While video production has been at the core of our efforts, an increasingly popular activity within the Digital Commons is the production of audio. Each Digital Commons facility is stocked with some of the best audio recording equipment available to support podcasting. Additionally, each studio has professional lighting, digital video equipment, green screens and more.

The first example is by Dr. Scott Miller, who teaches the online Introduction to Astronomy course. He has been working on a series of videos that demonstrate course concepts in an entertaining and rather humorous manner.

The second example is by Lindley Jones, a business management major at Penn State Brandywine, who created this very professional looking music video for the SCA/Mazda Conservation in Action Multimedia Contest.

The third example is one done by ETS and Digital Commons multimedia specialist Matt Frank, a short documentary on the Digital Commons installation at Penn State Wilkes-Barre.