I know that many of you could have borrowed equipment from Media Commons if you really needed to, but there is a difference between jumping over a hurdle to borrow something and having it on hand for a critical in-the-moment use. Plus you wouldn’t have to feel like you’re taking equipment away from students.

On a personal note, I’m working with Nursing faculty on a book about nursing and education technologies. I’m covering the ID parts of the book.

Now we’re looking at ways to bring students into this arena, starting with a student intern from IST who will help us shape out involvement of the students at PSU with educational gaming and virtual worlds.

We then developed self-paced, e-learning lessons for students to take online. These online lessons contain a custom-mix of videos, interactive exercises and other multimedia elements that carefully guide the students toward successful mastery of the course objectives.

Students can also choose to maintain their own blog (with a minimum of one reflective entry per week) for extra credit. By the Fall 2009 semester, Dr. Jackson hopes to do away with the course textbook and rely solely on resources generated by the class and posted to the blogs.

See http://blogs.tlt.psu.edu/projects/english202/ for more information on the project.

To keep up with the pilot group and their blog postings, you can look at or subscribe to the PSUHonors tag at http://www.blogs.psu.edu/search. Other categories (tags) that are being used in this project are: academic excellence, civic engagement, global perspective, honor, integrity, and leadership.

- Interviewing innovator and early-adopter faculty, then writing and recording success stories. Examples include pre-Symposium videos, podcasts on iTunes U, and articles on the Daily Buzz section of the Teaching and Learning with Technology Website.

- Producing print, online, and multimedia pieces to promote educational uses of new technologies and services. For example, ETS produces white papers that examine educational value of emerging technologies and service sheets that inform potential users about various services and products and their value to education.

- Creating documentation for new and existing technologies to help users learn the general uses of technology, then the best uses of technology. This eliminates one of the biggest obstacles to adoption, lack of understanding how to use it. Examples include being a key driver of the ANGEL documentation team.

- Working with other staff to advise, collaborate, and produce promotional items in all media forms for events such as the TLT Symposium.

- Presenting at events like the Penn State Web Conference to educate others on marketing/informational uses of social Internet tools and to promote what we do at ETS.

For symbolic logic, we developed a Mac keyboard utility to allow the easier input of logic symbols and multiple Word templates for students to use on homework assignments.

The Symposium is a place for faculty to come together and share ideas, network, find out how to become involved with us, and hear talks from some of the leading voices in Education.

We also assist faculty with incorporating Web 2.0 and social networking applications in with their traditional course management system, ANGEL, through seminars, short video tutorials, and other media.

As part of the adoption process, we upload these videos to social media sites so they can be embedded and discussed on YouTube, shared through Twitter, and embedded in blog posts.

We worked with the Biology department to redesign its Biology 12 wet-lab course for the Spring 09 semester. The resulting solution included learning objects delivered via the Blogs at Penn State platform. Additionally, ETS integrated this solution into ANGEL, so that additional course material and functions (such as assessments) would be available for faculty to further manage this course.

Sometimes, faculty just need to know there is support available and someone to talk it over with.

Our success is evident in the enthusiasm and energy shared by those who attend, the lines of communication that have been opened and relationships that have developed.
Building these relationships is crucial in all aspects of where Digital Commons is, and where it is going.

eLSS provide numerous training and support activities. All eLSS provide hundreds of individual consultations each year. Workshops on a variety of topics from ANGEL to Web 2 tools are regularly offered. eLSS also work to coordinate teaching and learning opportunities from other Penn State units, such as the Schreyer Institute Luncheon Series and the Penn State Digital Commons.

At the curricula level, eLSS are involved in various support and development activities, including Blended Learning initiatives, Emergency Management scenarios in Second Life, and Problem-Oriented Animated Learning Modules for Introductory Computer Science.

Beyond training, eLSS support to their local campus includes Digital Commons support, a variety of classroom support, Adobe Connect support, web page development, and Student Response Systems support. eLSS provide outreach and services to the larger University community as eLearning Advocates, providing Faculty Senate updates, serving on numerous committees, and active participation in various meetings and events. Beyond Penn State, eLSS are involved in several initiatives, including ESL grant development, adding resources to Merlot, and presentations to local K-12 school systems.

Starting this summer, we will implement a faculty engagement initiative where we will build a game for a class, and create instructional materials for an existing game or related technologies for another class.

The Teaching with Technology certificate encourages a new generation of instructors to experiment with new technologies in the classroom. The capstone portfolio allows instructors to review tools used and reflect on their effectiveness. Portfolios completed this academic year are listed at http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/twt/portfolios.

Technical documentation is another aspect of our services which assists instructors in implementing technology.

We especially want to let you and your readers know about our super-NEW, super-cool “Schoolhouse Rock” style music videos that make it fun and easy for everyone (youngsters especially) to learn about and appreciate their social responsibilities and rights under copyright law. So, here is a direct link: http://www.mediaeducationlab.com/news/music-videos-help-educators-and-students-conquer-copyright-confusion.

Thanks, and rock on!

Also makes me wonder how many of us enjoy TED? I can never watch just one… and I wonder what it would take to do something similar here? Maybe just one track at the symposium, filled with 20 minute talks from some of our amazing people?

I admit I hid my head under a rock though.

And I know I didn’t answer the question.

What separates Edmodo from Twitter and Plurk is that it is built more around managed group collaboration and is specifically designed for education.

This also means that we rely heavily on the input and feedback of online educators for how to most effectively integrate web 2.0 technologies into the classroom.

Thanks again, and let us know what you think of edmodo.

You can get into some very interesting negotiations if a publisher is involved in a project.

Great experience for me and the students. Got a lot of good press and one of the winning Penn State team in The Google Online Marketing Challenge – http://live.psu.edu/story/33562.

So, I am fine with the whole concept. Apple has been doing it for years at the K12 level.

I wonder where they found a Mac that could power that many displays?

thanks

Clancy

Many medical centers are beginning to use the Nintendo Wii to assist in the rehabilitation of stroke victims and others who have lost the use of their hand or arm due to stroke damage to the brain. To regain the use of an arm, most doctors believe that the brain has to “communicate” or “tell” the hand or the arm to do something. For example, one of the exercises my dad does is to take a spoon with his damaged hand (using both hands in the beginning) and move the sugar in a bowl from one bowl to the other. After many hours and days of this therapy, he was gradually able to move his fingers, his hand, and his arm to some degree. Another exercise his therapist had/has him do is to use his fingers to pick up small pebbles and move them from one place to another on a lapdesk. As he does this, his brain is rewiring the synapses and nerves that were damaged by the stroke.

If you do a simple Google search using the phrase “stroke victim” and the word Wii, you will see many articles on this subject. Researchers at Rutgers and others elsewhere are exploring the use of a modified gaming glove with the Xbox to assist in the rehabilitation of stroke victims. There are also very expensive commercial technology solutions available for stroke victims, but the Xbox glove solution is seen to be more affordable by the average person.

Personally, I think the potential is great for the use of games for rehabilitation by the medical community.

The Google apps don’t have all the tools of Office yet, but they cover the essential ones nicely.

Sites is intriguing, in that it could be a way for easy online publishing. There are 500+ people registered for the PSU Team Edition, but this is as close as I could find to a “class” use of Sites: http://sites.google.com/a/psu.edu/angel-how-to-fly/

Still, interesting to consider. Though it brings up even more questions that Dave mentioned re: where info sits and who has access.

Also, not really a part of the BL this week, but the EGC briefing is a great watch. Thanks, Jamie!

If small time illustrators have to start tracking this stuff- scanning and submitting every sketch, every rough, updating copyrights and tracking period lapses so copyright doesn’t fall potentially to the corporations running the repositories (companies like Corbis) it’s definitely an undue burden. Read the TEACH Act Read about and understand Fair Use. They give educators everything they need. The Orphan Works legislation is being supported financially, by corporations like Corbis, that would potentially become an official repository.

Is handwriting a disappearing skill? Is that OK? Do you remember how to make a capital Q in cursive writing?

What I would like to see is a University level initiative to investigate the use of wikis as a mechanism for capturing curricular information. I was lucky enough to listen to Jimmy Wales (founder of wikipedia) discuss the approach and governance model at work within that project. I’d be happy to share more face to face, but the short of it is that the wikipedia approach should be studied more closely as a way to organize, manage, grow, and collect curricular content.

I am sold on the idea that a community of authors will provide a more appropriate curricular alternative to the “one author per course” approach most of us currently use in the creation of eLearning course materials. If a discipline specific governing body could be created (at the department level) authors could be free to create articles that could serve the needs of resident and distance students. Having solid curricular content at the College level available would help redefine the role of the learning design team — we’d be able to focus on the creation of solid design instead of fighting for content.

This is a topic I would love to hold a brown bag on … anyone interested in kicking it off with a BS Breakfast topic this week?

Students don’t like to carry laptops around. Too heavy, too likely to be stolen or broken. Students MUST use a computer for many activities and can’t afford downtime. I know this is changing, but has it changed enough?

Students also LIKE hard-copy books. For one thing, they can resell them. Sounds crazy, but I’ve had several tell me that’s why they don’t want electronic textbooks. For another, lost or stolen or damaged books are cheaper to replace.

So, electronic books are only one part of a “solution.” We also need to address the concerns I’ve listed above; probably others as well.

Earlier attempts at the electronic textbook have failed – poor resolution, too costly, etc. Yet time marches on, and newer technologies now exist. Maybe it’s time to revisit this – we should consider a project similar to the TablePC initiative. Seed a few innovators with the technology and some texts, and gather some data to help us see the way to the future here.

I think some of us stop short on the argument of laptop use in class … if you look at the most recent FACAC data a majority of our faculty don’t mind if students use their laptops to take notes … what are we doing as instructional designers/technologists to push this notion forward? To help identify new ways of attacking this opportunity? The easy answer is to simply say, “laptops closed.”

It’s interesting that this is a press release put out by a group from Stanford University. Interesting mistake.

Thanks to everyone for making this such a tremendous success and worthwhile event!

Can’t wait to see what you do next year! (Oh, the pressure…!)

The effort put into the event by everyone involved was evident, and deeply appreciated; I’ll take bits of this event and build on them for some time to come.

thanks for everything!

Unless the CMS has a very open API, a strong developer community, good feedback mechanisms for users (faculty, staff, students) to express their needs, and the willingness of the local institution to develop and maintain resources (staff, test beds, etc) for change, the days of one CMS to rule us all are numbered.

We need a CMS that has a core set of “stuff” we can all agree on – dropboxes, a core quiz system, grading system, etc., but that we also can seamlessly drop new tools into. For example, imagine being able to drop Twitter into ANGEL – so it doesn’t just work, but integrates with the core toolset in a way that doesn’t require any training to use.

That’s the goal we need to strive for. It means we have to advocate a complete rewrite for ANGEL, or drop ANGEL and go with a system that does what I listed above.

Now I’ve spent years (literally) of my life learning, using, and training others on ANGEL. For me to write this here should speak to the severity of the crisis I see looming on the horizon. We have a scant handful of years before the learning community at Penn State becomes so scattered in its use of online tools that we’ll be worse off than we were 15 years ago.