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TLT CoffeeRead: Twitter Tweets Tell Twister Tale

Twitter Tweets Tell Twister Tale

“Twitter in Action as Breaking News Warning System: Colorado Tornado”

During one of what has seemed to be an endless parade of severe weather breaking news situations this year, a tornado roared through the northern-most suburbs of Denver. This gentleman in Boulder, CO, attempted to find out if he was under a threat as well. What was his most reliable source of information?

Wasn’t the National Weather Service, CNN, local news sites - it was Twitter.

Should Penn State review the possibilities of social Internet sites such as Facebook, Twitter, whatever the next big thing will be, etc., for emergency alerts?

TLT CoffeeRead: Growing pains for marketers in Web 2.0 world

Growing Pains for Web 2.0

Interesting article for me personally because I have noticed that the PR and marketing world has been extremely slow to react to Web 2.0. I have noted in a lot of things I have read and also from talking to some marketing/PR types I know, it seemed as if too many believed Web 2.0 was a fad that would go away. And I will also be old here and say something that may ruffle a few feathers - the egos in the marketing/PR field didn’t want to face up to any potential loss of control of message.

So, how does this affect us as educators? I believe it affects both how faculty teach business/PR at the School of Communications, plus it affects how we market our services. It also makes the job harder for the image people at Penn State - for example, rumors that start on Facebook.

TLT CoffeeRead: College Alumni Magazines Struggle to Compete With Facebook

College Alumni Magazines Struggle to Compete With Facebook

“Most people read their college alumni magazines for the class notes, immediately flipping to the back to see who was married, had a baby or was promoted to an envy-inducing job. The columns tend to be meatiest at this time of year — class reunion season.

The advent of social networking on the Internet has created a quandary for these magazines, which want to maintain a conversation with alumni but have been slow to embrace the Web. Most schools have set up password-protected sites where graduates can change their contact information, drop a class note or donate money.

But younger alumni, accustomed to second-by-second updates from friends and classmates, are exchanging information in real time on Facebook and MySpace. Why wait for your alma mater to churn out a quarterly journal when you can Twitter all day?”

This is an interesting article that really raises questions not just for alumni magazines but other association or “house organ” publications.

BuzzLion for the Week of May 11

It snowed in Happy Valley Monday. Yes, snow after Finals Week. In the face of such hardships, the staff of ETS soldiered on and continued the work of bringing technology innovation to education.

Cole Camplese, ETS director, and Chris Millet, manager, advanced learning projects, are at Harvard Law School for the Berkman@10, The Future of the Internet event. Cole is posting updates on his blog. They are worth reading as a lot of what is being discussed has a lot of relevance for teaching and learning with technology.

Brett Bixler, lead instructional designer, recently blogged at the Educational Gaming Commons on comic books and education. He even has a few ideas on how to work Web 2.0 into them.

Elizabeth Pyatt, instructional designer, posted a “hot team paper” on social ratings and their educational impact. Hot teams, by the way, are a group within ETS that takes some time to examine an emerging technology to see if it has any potential for use in education.

Elizabeth also announced new ANGEL Town Hall meetings to discuss the upcoming ANGEL upgrade to 7.2.

Some news from around ETS:

Faculty, staff invited to participate in beta test of enhanced version of Turnitin

Turnitin is conducting a beta test of a new, enhanced version of their Web-based plagiarism prevention resource, and faculty and staff are invited to participate. Some of the enhancements being evaluated include a redesigned interface, expanded student paper databases, improved Originality Reports, and expanded content databases.

For more information about participating in the beta test and to see demonstrations of some of the enhancements, please attend one of two informative online sessions offered Thursday, May 15 at 1:00 p.m. or Friday, May 16 at 10:00 a.m. in the Adobe Connect meeting room at https://breeze.psu.edu/turnitin/.

Before joining a Connect meeting, please read through the Getting Started information at http://meeting.psu.edu/quickstart and test your connection with our generic test meeting room at https://breeze.psu.edu/testmeetingroom/. Questions can be directed to turnitin@psu.edu.

ANGEL to be upgraded to version 7.2 weekend of July 19

During the weekend of July 19, Information Technology Services (ITS) plans to upgrade Penn State’s Course Management System, ANGEL, from version 7.1 to 7.2. The new version will feature enhancements to several existing tools, and several new tools will help course editors perform administrative tasks. For the most part, however, the interface and functionality will remain familiar to users.

Enhanced tools include course/group mail, chat, reports, and the HTML editor used in text entry fields.

Using the ANGEL 7.2 mail tool, users will be able to access mail from all their courses and groups at once, either from a component on the My Profile page or from within a course or group.

The chat tool, which has a new look, will open in a new window. As messages are posted, the screen will refresh instantly, with no lag time. A related chat tool, called Live Office Hours, provides a way for instructors to meet with students individually online. As students select the link for the Live Office Hours chat, they are placed in a queue, then allowed into the chat one at a time. Each student can only see his/her own messages and those of the instructor. When the instructor sets up the times/dates for Live Office Hours, these times and dates are automatically added to the course calendar.

On the course Report tab, the same types of reports can be generated as before; however, users will see changes to the names of some fields and the arrangement of the screen. Once a report is generated, a user can click the new Print Preview button to generate a PDF to print or save.

The new inline HTML editor will be integrated with each text area, rather than opening in a new window as before. The tool will feature improved functionality, including a more robust equation editor and the ability to create form fields. The equation editor, which includes the functionality of the WebEQ application, allows a user to build an equation right within an ANGEL text area, eliminating the need to build an equation using an application outside ANGEL, then importing it. The HTML editor, including the improved equation editor, will be available to students in a quiz essay question.

New tools in ANGEL 7.2 include a new Permissions tab within the roster editor and a Date Manager for lesson content items.

Within the roster editor, when an instructor is editing the entry for a course member, the settings will be arranged on two tabs. The first contains the familiar user settings. The second is the new Permissions tab. Here, an instructor can assign read/write or read-only permission for chat, mail, and discussion forums. When assigning permissions to a fellow course editor, the instructor can grant or deny permission to edit various portions of the course.

In ANGEL 7.1, instructors assign start and end dates for lesson content items within the settings for each individual item. In ANGEL 7.2, a new Date Manager located on the Manage tab streamlines this task. It allows an instructor to set dates for all content items in a single location. If the course is then copied into another section, for example, in a subsequent term, the dates can be adjusted more easily.

While the new version of ANGEL is being implemented the weekend of July 19 this year, ITS anticipates returning to its schedule of performing the upgrade between the spring and summer I terms in the future.

For any questions, contact ANGEL support at angelsupport@psu.edu.

That’s all for this week’s BuzzLion. If you have anything of interest you would like us to mention here, please email jco11@psu.edu. Thanks for reading!

BuzzLion for the Week of April 13

It is très printemps and vive l’amour here in what is currently not just Happy Valley but Very Happy Valley, as spring has you-betcha-sprung. While the sun shines, we here in ETS continue to work hard and demonstrate that flowers are not the only things blooming around here. Ideas are busting out all over.

Audrey Romano ETS web designer, recently posted some very nice screensaver ads for collaborative learning spaces. These ads will go on student lab computers. What exactly are collaborative learning spaces? Take a listen to this podcast and find out.

Elizabeth Pyatt, ETS instructional designer, is an example of the many multi-faceted experts we have working at ETS. She has posted in her blog about instructional design, linguistics, and now about Web design. She has discovered an effective way to partner a more “Web 1.0″ content management system, Dreamweaver, with the Web 2.0 open source content management system, Drupal, to create accessible Web sites.

Brett Bixler, ETS lead instructional designer, discovered something recently that is pretty astounding. You probably have heard of virtual worlds. Maybe even heard of Second Life. But, did you know there are now more than 100 virtual worlds that are designed for young people? Brett offers a link to a report on this and makes a bit of a challenge.

Chris Stubbs, ETS programmer, never fails to find interesting technology items to post about in his blog. His latest interesting discovery has to do with blogs and Facebook. In fact, how you can blog via Facebook. Take a look and learn how.

And now, here is some news of interest……

New issue of ANGEL Shorts focuses on Action Editor

ANGEL Shorts are one-page documents covering a specific point of interest in Penn State’s Course Management System, ANGEL. They cover the five most essential things a person needs to know about the topic in order to get the most from its use. The aim is to help faculty, staff, and students maximize the value of using ANGEL as a teaching tool. The latest issue of ANGEL Shorts focuses on “Five Things Faculty Should Know about the Action Editor.” This issue, as well as all previous issues of ANGEL Shorts, is available as a downloadable PDF file on the ANGEL Community Hub at http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/angel/.

Registration for Summer-Fest technology training opens April 21

Beginning Monday, April 21 at 9:00 a.m., faculty and teaching assistants are invited to sign up for free technology workshops during Summer-Fest 2008, a weeklong training session conveniently offered during the break in the academic schedule, May 12-16. Popular topics include Using Clickers in the Classroom, EndNote, e-Portfolio, Videoconferencing for Instruction, Excel, SPSS, Office 2007, Penn State Thesis Template, Photoshop, Using Adobe Connect in the Classroom, and many more. Please visit the online catalog for a complete list of training sessions, and log in to register for training at http://its.psu.edu/training/.

That’s it for this week’s edition of the BuzzLion. We would like to hear from YOU. So, you can either email BuzzLion at jco11@psu.edu or just comment on this blog posting.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy this Very Happy Valley spring on this Blue-White Weekend.

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