Direct Link to ETS Talk 54 | iTunes U

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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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.”

Pierce said he decided to create podcasts of his lectures out of a “a sense that students are always on the go and could use supplemental material to enhance their learning.” In summer 2006, he signed up for the Podcasts at Penn State and easily learned to use ProfCast software, allowing him to record narration and synch it with his class PowerPoint slides to create “enhanced” podcasts. He posted his podcasts at Penn State on iTunes U.

Pierce said, “These lecture podcasts are designed to enhance and embellish what’s in the book, and if students have to miss a class for an employment interview, for example, they have the lectures at their fingertips. It gives them great flexibility.”

This past summer, Pierce said, he had just returned from watching his son’s baseball game when he had a fresh inspiration for providing finance problem solutions to his active students. “I had the hat on, the jacket on, the whistle, and I just went up to the whiteboard in my office and started writing out the givens, the equations, and the solutions for assigned problems,” he said. As he did so, he videotaped himself. Thus the “Finance Coach” series was born. He created videos showing how to solve the problems from each textbook chapter.

As fall approached, Pierce said, he ran out of time to edit the videos into a useable format. He asked his Schreyer Honors College students whether any of them who knew iMovie software would like to earn honors credit by assisting with the editing. As a result, he obtained the help of sophomore Kylie Nellis, who spent about one hour editing each video in iMovie.

In each Finance Coach installment, Pierce works the same problem assigned to the students, who must then submit the solution in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. He said that way, “they can see how to do the math behind the problem and not worry about it so much. Someone might argue that we’re just giving them everything. My response is that I’m teaching them the mathematics on the board, then they have to take it up one level and figure out how to solve the problem by entering it into Excel.”

Nellis said, “If you’re not familiar with math or financial concepts, it’s not really daunting to sit down with your book and the Finance Coach. You know if there’s a problem, you have a resource right away.” She added, “I feel better if someone explains something to me as opposed to reading it in a textbook. I respond a lot better to that type of audiovisual interaction.”

“Coaching,” that’s really what it’s all about,” said Pierce. “Some students I encounter had a bad experience with mathematics in the past, so they just avoid math at all costs. The Finance Coach vodcasts makes it a little easier to at least approach the problem and say ‘This isn’t so bad after all. If you can do it on the board I can at least try to solve it in Excel.’”

You can hear the podcast at the Podcasts at Penn State site or on Penn State at iTunes U.  And while there, after being inspired by the What Works podcast, be sure to sign up for the summer Podcasts at Penn State pilot program.

The other was in the form of a news story on the local CBS Nightly News last night. I took the bullet for being on-air, but again they did a good job representing the project even if they did focus in on the Apple partnership a little strongly. I guess you go with the coolness factor. Either way it is nice to see a little bit of the work we are doing get some press … next time maybe someone else can be the on air personality … I have more of a face for podcasting. You can view the clip below.

One thing I did notice about both features is how they were very interested in how podcasting could enable students to skip class. We really aren’t seeing that result at the moment, but that is one of the reasons we are still in pilot.