PSU TLT

This could be altered to create a heck of an eLearning design workflow.

how to stop worrying and embrace the google docs......

Brad and Matt: can the two of you talk? When Matt and I discussed this, I suggested that we could give something like this a try with our Hot Team white papers as a test to see how the pieces would fit together.

"Under federal rules that take effect on July 1, Bismarck State will have to seek approval to operate in every state where it enrolls students, or forgo those students' federal aid. With some states charging thousands of dollars per application, the college is weighing whether it can afford to remain in states where the cost of doing business outweighs the benefits, in tuition terms."

Under the new rules, some of the smaller online institutions may go under or need to partner with a larger institution like Penn State to continue offering online courses.

very interesting development. we've been holding off on ipads in engineering because of a lack of streamlined screencasting workflow. I wonder if other example-heavy STEM disciplines at PSU (chem, math, stats, etc) might be interested in a pilot of some kind?

I'm having conversations along these lines on several fronts. I asked Hannah to look into a system that could replicate the Kahn Academy stuff. Carol McQuiggan has some faculty who are interested in the model. Chris Lucas and I may talk about it as well, related to creating open training resources. I've also brought Chris Millet into the mix because this could line up with some of the work he is doing with lecture capture (not capturing lectures per se, but a lot of the software options have the ability to let faculty create screen capture tutorials and have them automatically upload to a server along with their voice annotation.

interesting perspective, I like the notion that education isn't a monolith but instead a collection of intertwined areas.

A project out of College of Ed that ETS collaborated on.  This group created some augmented reality apps for the iPod and iPad to help young students (I believe 3rd or 4th grade) learn about their natural environment, in particular how to identify trees.  Pretty cool stuff.

"During the event, faculty and staff led children through a variety of hands-on learning stations. For example, Zimmerman, along with Associate Professor of Education Susan Land and a team of six education graduate students, led a station titled, "Tree Investigators," in which they used iPads and iPods (provided by Penn State's Educational Technology Services) to give the kids an in-depth lesson on how to identify trees. "We used iPads to figure out what type of tree we were planting," said Collin Wayne, a student from Park Forest Elementary School, who attended the event. "We were in groups and we used a tree-finder app. You take a picture of a symbol and it tells you about the tree.""

Penn State Live article about a College of Education project. Elementary school students used iPads and iPod Touches to interact with data about trees in the arboretum. We talked with Susan Land and Heather Zimmerman about the project and helped out by loaning them some equipment. Future partnerships with them are in the works.

Good editorial on large class size and disengagement across large institutions. A very student-centered piece that rings true on a lot of fronts.

haven't read the book, but it might have some good stuff...

Some interesting notes from Gabe Newell's keynote at Games for Change. This is interesting because it's the first time a president and figurehead for one of the biggest game developers out there has really put a stake in the ground for using games as educational tools.

this topic seems to come up every year, but at least this story is tied to a study. the comments are actually pretty interesting. might turn into a decent conversation.

Here's a libraries' created basic guide to using the reference manager Mendeley. Have you tried Mendeley yet?

thanks for this. we're using mendeley for a working group right now. it took a little while to get used to, but definitely has potential for sharing resources. will have to check out the highlighting and annotation tools.

This is crazy...one of the top developers (Valve) building an 'educational layer' on top of Portal 2's authoring environment specifically for education, likely physics education. Even crazier...Gabe wants the implementation ASSESSED! We already have a great relationship with Valve, being an early adopter of SourceU that runs our Steam installs. Anyone know science/physics profs we can approach for this? I plan on sifting through the Institute's database to see if we have any contacts that might want to play in this space.

Nothing earth shattering, but I do find the "zombie" section extremely accurate. Getting people to keep the social spaces alive with content seems to be a big issue (at least with SITE, likely with others as well).

Great series related to remix culture!

The Libraries' Citation Tools team has created a new page to help the community choose a citation tool. There's also a comparison between Zotero, endnote, endnote web, mendeley & refworks

Thank you, Emily ... this is a great resource!

Very nice! Emily, does Zotero now work with resources behind PSU authentication? I tried to use it a couple years ago with little luck. I typically use Google Scholar, then hit the "Get it from Penn State" link(s). Once I landed on a resource, Zotero had trouble saving it.

It makes me wonder how we might take advantage of crowd sourcing here on campus? I worn if we could open videos to transcription by students or other fiends of the university.

There may be a magic formula involving a distributed community of hobbyists here. There's a lot of interest in the Civil War. The article mentions going to historical societies for help with the transcription. Oddly enough, this is a perfect example of "Cognitive Surplus" in action.

One big message here was pretty clear: Expertise still matters, and crowdsourcing doesn't change that (despite a stunningly silly argument I saw recently online that crowdsourcing laypeople is better than a doctor at diagnosing an illness. I mean, c'mon, let's not be ridiculous.). However, there are a few things going on here - building a community of people creating something based on a shared interest, which has manifold benefits. Cole, your example of transcribing videos....working with say the National Association of the Deaf to gather volunteers would make for a fantastic project. Also, there is a lot of learning potential in something like this. If something is done wrong by the crowd, then that's a teachable moment as to why it's wrong. Then you get a better crowd.

An iPhone app that uses facial recognition techniques to identify trees based on photos of their leaves. Thought this was a really interesting mobile learning development concept.

"After carefully considering all of these, other online sources found by searching for terms such as 'tablet PC' and 'lecture recording' and presentations by others at the Teaching and Learning Symposium at Penn State I decided to purchase a powerful Lenovo Tablet PC with Windows 7, Microsoft One Note, and Camtasia Studio 7.0. I plan on taking my .docx lectures into One Note, opening the page in One Note during class, and recording the screen with Camtasia studio as I go through the lecture, writing on the tablet PC with the stylus pen as I speak to students about each topic. Then I can save my screen capture and edit it into nice 10-15 minute segments in Camtasia Studio and post them online for student review."

We're talking a lot about the "make it easy for faculty" part in the lecture capture working group. Something the research seems to indicate is that pre-recorded lectures (for example, a faculty member sitting in front of a camera and mic, recording without any students 'late night' style) are more effective than a faculty member simply recording a lecture in front of x number of students. It's much easier to hit the 'play' button and do your normal lecture in class vs. taking the time to pre-record. Hopefully we can find a happy medium. I recently spent a lot of time with Khan Academy, both looking for statistical help for myself and asking faculty about it. A group of about 40 STEM faculty took a look at it upon our request and came back not impressed. A couple said they might use it for supplemental instruction...I'm somewhat baffled why more faculty wouldn't want to use this to supplement their course.

I know what you mean Bart. I've found that to be the case with podcasting - a recording made for an external audience is more engaging because the person is talking to you. It has a very different feel than a recording of a meeting, presentation, or training session where the presenter is primarily addressing a local audience.

A huge change in how domain names can be created

I've honestly wondered how long it was going to take until we moved past the URI as the way to get to websites ... sort of reminds me of the evolution behind how we call someone -- from having to use the operator, to various forms of phone numbers, to Skype, and FaceTime names. Interesting stuff.