Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

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 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.

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!

Next Page →