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Fully Online Courses Now Include Built-In Assessment, Analytics Tools WASHINGTON – February 22, 2012 – Blackboard Inc. today announced the official launch of Blackboard Developmental Education™ (Blackboard DevEd), an innovative approach aimed at improving student outcomes and increasing completion rates in an area where many institutions have struggled. The solution, which was first piloted by several institutions in the fall, now includes built-in assessment and analytics tools that enable course instructors to further personalize their instruction. At the pilot institutions, 91 percent of participating students said they were satisfied with the overall course and 75 percent rated th...

Start Date:
Mar 16 2012 1:00PM  

Prerequisite(s): A general understanding of how distance collaboration tools work is helpful.

Videoconferencing is a tool that allows instructors to expand the walls of the classroom to provide a teaching/learning environment at a distance or in a non-traditional time frame or setting. This presentation will focus on how the features of videoconferencing can be used in instruction. It will not deal with the hands-on functionality of the tool.

Objectives:

• Identify how videoconferencing can be used in an instructional setting
• Describe how videoconferencing can contribute to capturing the collective knowledge of both the instructor and students
• Explain how videoconferencing can allow for asynchronous delivery of content

Fee 0

Start Date:
Apr 17 2012 8:15AM  

Prerequisite(s): A general understanding of how distance collaboration tools work is helpful.

Videoconferencing is a tool that allows instructors to expand the walls of the classroom to provide a teaching/learning environment at a distance or in a non-traditional time frame or setting. This presentation will focus on how the features of videoconferencing can be used in instruction. It will not deal with the hands-on functionality of the tool.

Objectives:

• Identify how videoconferencing can be used in an instructional setting
• Describe how videoconferencing can contribute to capturing the collective knowledge of both the instructor and students
• Explain how videoconferencing can allow for asynchronous delivery of content

Visit the following link at the starting time indicated above to participate in this live overview: https://meeting.psu.edu/vcclassroom

If you need technical assistance prior to attending this workshop presented via Meeting@PennState (powered by Adobe Connect), please contact the ITS Help Desk. Official support of Adobe Connect for Penn State faculty, staff, and students is provided by the ITS Help Desks at http://helpdesk.psu.edu, 814-863-2494, or 814-863-1035.

Fee 0

Start Date:
Mar 24 2012 8:00AM  

The Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology will be held Saturday, March 24, 2012 from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, University Park. This free event is an opportunity for faculty to share innovative uses of technology to enhance teaching, learning, and research with their colleagues. This year's theme is "Embracing Change and the Culture of Teaching and Learning."

The keynote speaker will be Jane McGonigal, director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit futures research group based in Palo Alto, California, and creative director at http://SocialChocolate.com/, a game development startup. McGonigal, who holds a Ph.D. in performance studies, is the author of the New York Times best seller "Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World"(http:// www.amazon.com/Reality-Broken-Games-Better-Change/dp/1594202850/). Her best-known game development work includes "Find the Future"(http://findthefuture.nypl.org/), and "World without Oil" (http://worldwithoutoil.org/). These games have been featured in the New York Times, Wired, and The Economist, and on MTV, CNN, and NPR.

There is no registration fee and a continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. For more information and updates, please visit http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/

Fee 0

Start Date:
Feb 20 2012 8:30AM  

Prerequisite(s): None

This overview will focus on the applications in Google Apps, a suite of Web-based communication and collaboration tools. An emphasis will be placed on the advantages of using Web-based applications that enable people to create, store, share, and collaborate online in real time. Some of the most commonly used applications in the suite, including Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Sites, will be highlighted during this demonstration.

Objectives:

• Identify the applications in the Google Apps suite
• Explore how Google Apps can be incorporated into daily work flow
• Consider how the communication and collaboration features can be used to enhance teaching and learning

For those who are unable to attend in person, this session will also be presented online through Adobe Connect. Registration is required and available for the live Adobe Connect session at https://register4its.psu.edu/Public/ShowDetail.asp?scheduleid=109746

Fee 0

Start Date:
Feb 20 2012 8:15AM  

Prerequisite(s): None

This overview will focus on the applications in Google Apps, a suite of Web-based communication and collaboration tools. An emphasis will be placed on the advantages of using Web-based applications that enable people to create, store, share, and collaborate online in real time. Some of the most commonly used applications in the suite, including Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Sites, will be highlighted during this demonstration.

Objectives:

• Identify the applications in the Google Apps suite
• Explore how Google Apps can be incorporated into daily work flow
• Consider how the communication and collaboration features can be used to enhance teaching and learning

Visit the following link at the starting time indicated above to participate in this live overview: https://breeze.psu.edu/googleappsoverview

If you need technical assistance prior to attending this session presented via Meeting@PennState (powered by Adobe Connect), please contact the ITS Help Desk. Official support of Meeting@PennState (powered by Adobe Connect) for Penn State faculty, staff, and students is provided by the ITS Help Desks at http://helpdesk.psu.edu, 814-863-2494, or 814-863-1035.

Fee 0

Platform Recognized as Premier Solution for Sales Training WASHINGTON – February 15, 2012 – Blackboard Learn™ for Sales has taken home the gold in the sales training software platform category in the 2011 Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Awards, Blackboard Inc. announced today. The cloud-based learning management solution, developed specifically for corporations focused on sales training and professional development, was recognized as an innovative product in the sales and marketing industry. Blackboard Learn for Sales embeds the concept of social learning directly into the Salesforce CRM platform. Sales managers and corporate trainers can tailor training programs across their enterpris...

Start Date:
Feb 15 2012 12:00PM  

Prerequisite(s): None

Assistant Professor of Biology Lauraine Hawkins shares her experience with using a variety of word games to help students master technical vocabulary. Activities she will discuss include Hangman (available from the Educational Gaming Commons website), ANGEL crosswords, and word search.

Objectives:

• Discuss activities that can be quickly set to help students master course terminology
• Introduce attendees to EGC gaming systems such as Hangman

For those who are unable to attend in person, portions of this session will also be presented online through Adobe Connect. Registration is required and available for the live Adobe Connect session at http://meeting.psu.edu/egcbrownbag

A light lunch will be available in Rider 202K. No additional sign up is needed.

Fee 0

Start Date:
Feb 15 2012 12:00PM  

Prerequisite(s): None

Assistant Professor of Biology Lauraine Hawkins shares her experience with using a variety of word games to help students master technical vocabulary. Activities she will discuss include Hangman (available from the Educational Gaming Commons website), ANGEL crosswords, and word search.

Objectives:

• Discuss activities that can be quickly set to help students master course terminology
• Introduce attendees to EGC gaming systems such as Hangman

Visit the following link at the starting time indicated above to participate in the live overview: https://meeting.psu.edu/egcbrownbag/

NOTE: For technical and logistical reasons audio for Adobe Connect will be broadcast over the phone line instead of via the Internet. We therefore recommend that attendees of the Adobe Connect session have access to either a speaker phone or a phone with headphones in order to access audio. Instructions on how to access the phone will be available in the meeting room.

If you need technical assistance prior to attending this workshop presented via Meeting@PennState (powered by Adobe Connect), please contact the ITS Help Desk. Official support of Meeting@PennState (powered by Adobe Connect) for Penn State faculty, staff, and students is provided by the ITS Help Desk at http://helpdesk.psu.edu, or 814-863-2494, or 814-863-1035.

Fee 0

These people still clapped at the end of the session...

How low is your conference bar set these days?  What does it take to make your experience "worth it" anymore?  Is it 1 good keynote and 1 good session?  Is that enough?  Maybe it's a solid pre-conference workshop and two good sessions.  Or is it even less?

I go to 30-40 conferences (led by educators) each year.  Typically I present a keynote address, a few workshops, or possibly a pre-conference session, but I certainly have plenty of time to see and hear a lot of other presenters.  This also means that I end up eating lunch or an occasional dinner with dozens, if not hundreds of strangers.  So, I've been doing some research around the gambling that takes place at conferences. No, not dice in the back of the kitchen or inviting strangers back to a hotel room...(Those are the tech conferences.)  I'm talking about the conference session roulette that everyone takes part in.  Come on lucky session #4...daddy needs a new educational game!

Some conference attendees "double down" on their bets.  Good move.  I watch as more and more often, session participants sit in the back of the room.  They give the presenter(s) about 3 minutes to "hook" them.  If there is no "hook" then out the door and off to another session they go!  Two for one sessions - nice!  And, most conference presenters are making it hard too.  It seems that the "catchy title" is the order of the day, regardless of whether or not the session will actually provide value.  Sprinkle in Web 2.0, or YouTube, or Serious Game and you've got a session title that will make people do a double take!  Come on Serious Games for YouTube and Facebook via Web 2.0 in the Classroom...Daddy needs a new assessment idea!

In my extremely unscientific research, here is what I looked for.  Great sessions (regardless of the identified mode), meaning keynote addresses, workshops, pre-conference, poster, and panel sessions were all game.  I looked for a few simple indicators to determine a successful presentation.

1. Great content - this is usually determined by the "buzz" after the session and often corresponds with the number of questioners who stick around to talk.  (My personal research seems to indicate that 3 people will stick around regardless of how good or bad a session is.)  This also includes "buzzing" conversations that follow the session to lunch.
2. Great presenters - these are definitely harder to find, but my indicator here was pretty simple.  Who, or better, how many (in the audience) was paying attention to the presentation?
3. Great interaction - this one is tough for me.  A lot of conferences are demanding audience "participation" these days.  My problem?  Often the audience members are not subject matter experts, they are simply professors who enjoy sharing their opinions (which is why we're professors, right?) or worse, they simply want to play devil's advocate throughout the session.  So, in both of those situations, other audience members come away feeling like the session was useless.  However, when interaction with multiple audience members takes place regularly (not simply because an audience member forced a question in), it should be noted.

So, after months of tallying on my iPad or iPhone -I love you Evernote - I have some informal numbers.  This is from 22 conferences, 103 sessions, and includes a lot of conference goers...I have no idea how many.  I should also mention that if I didn't go to the presentation, but simply heard about the presentation after the fact, it was not included here.  (I wonder sometimes if those conversations are legitimate...it's like the guy in high school who was always trying to convince you the swimsuit models showed up to every party JUST after you left...)  Anyway, here you go:

• 92/103 sessions had poor content, which means 11 sessions had great content.
• 99/103 sessions had poor presenters, which means 4 sessions had great presenters.
• 99/103 sessions had no audience interaction, which means 4 session had great interaction.
• 2 sessions had both a great presenter AND great content (although no interaction).
  

For those of you scoring at home, that does not even begin to approach an 'F'. Even in aggregate, less than 16% of the presentations I attended were...well, quite frankly they were pretty bad.

At least I got all of my email answered during this session

Let me give you one fresh example from a conference I attended in December.  There were 75-100 people in the lecture style, tiered room.  I was in the very back, at the top, looking down on the presenters and audience members (I was preparing for my session in that same room, which was next.)  Let me describe for you the middle row of about 25 people.

• 3 were visibly asleep
• 4 were checking email on their laptops
• 6 were checking sports sites - mostly fantasy football on their laptops
• 10 were using their phones (texting for help perhaps?)
• 1 was writing on a notepad
• 2 were passing notes back and forth to each other

It doesn't seem to matter what the topic is, what kind of conference it is, or who the speaker / audience members are, these sessions don't seem to be very helpful.  When I attended my own discipline's Communication conference last year, with people who explain to college students how to effectively communicate a message, there was no difference. When I went to a K-12 conference with teachers who certainly need more energy and enthusiasm to reach younger people, it was no different.  When I went to International conferences, it was no different.  (In fact, it was often worse as many of those conferences are made up of "conference papers" - essentially a person sitting in front of the audience reading a research paper out loud...seriously.)

OK...so, enough of the agonizing landscape.  You get it.  In fact, many of you are probably starting to develop a twitch as I've reminded you of things you would prefer to forget.  But here is my big question.

Why is it a surprise that education is having such trouble reaching students?

Apparently, we (educators) have a difficult time communicating with each other.  How can we possibly expect to communicate effectively with our 1, 2, and sometimes 3 generations younger students?  Why don't we apply what we know to work?  Why don't we use what we know to be helpful?

Tell, Show, Do, Review, and Ask in a multi-modal, multi-nodal way and we'll reach a LOT of people.  Why don't we do that?  Use ethos, pathos, logos, and mythos (if you're dying to think about it old-school) and we'll reach a LOT of people.  Why don't we do that?  Incorporate serious games, focus shifts, multimedia, and interactive strategies and we'll reach a LOT of people.  Why don't we do that?

I truly believe that we are our own enemy here.  I KNOW that there are some really creative, innovative, strategic instructors out there who are doing great things...but when they get to a conference to share it, they get very uptight.  The idea of presenting to peers is quite intimidating for many, so those ideas never really get a chance to shine.

Then, there are the conference submission boards who miss out on great stuff.  They don't seem to read or review survey results from previous conferences, giving preference to people who get super positive comments, having thereby illustrated that they have great content, are a great presenter, or include interaction effectively.  I watched a professor at Online-Educa Berlin present a fantastic workshop on rubrics.  She was poised, dynamic, and her content was top notch.  When I told her that she should give that session at some conferences back in the USA, she explained that she tried over a dozen times and never got accepted.  Something about the presentation just wasn't "sexy" enough for the committees, even though I watched her knock it out of the park in Germany.

So let me finish with this.  Let's change the way conference presentations currently run.  Let's all take a pact.  When we're given the opportunity to share our clever, creative, innovative, effective, or useful ideas from our classes with our colleagues...let's not blow off the performance until the plane ride.  Let's not forget what goes into a good presentation - effective nonverbals, logical reasoning, and passionate verbals.  Let's include some of the "cool" factor when we can, to illustrate the concept.  Let's not forget the power of story.  Let's agree to NEVER, EVER, under ANY circumstances READ our notes or (worse) READ our PowerPoint to the audience again!

We can do this.  It's not like we don't know how audiences respond most effectively.  We know that the lecture is one of the poorest ways we can communicate if we want our audience to retain, comprehend, and be engaged.  We KNOW what it takes.  So, let's just change it.  Yes, that simply, let's change our conference behavior.  Let us never again imply that what we say and what we do are not supposed to be joined at the hip.

Good luck and good teaching...and good conference-going!

(BTW - did anyone notice the ironic metaphor for education here?  Boring lectures, audience members not paying attention, little audience interaction, etc?  Hmmm...I guess that's another blog.)

New Release Brings Simplified, Modern Look, Greater Ease of Use WASHINGTON – February 8, 2012 – Blackboard Inc. today announced a major update for its flagship online learning platform with a new release incorporating a sleek, modern design that marks the platform’s biggest shift in look and feel in years. Service Pack 8 for Blackboard Learn™ 9.1 also brings a number of feature enhancements that make it easier to navigate the system, take advantage of its powerful capabilities and complete common tasks more quickly. The new design, applied to the user interface and throughout the course environment, is more intuitive and offers a real advancement in the system’s usability. The design also ...

The New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability (www.newleadershipalliance.org) recently released its report, Committing to Quality: Guidelines for Assessment and Accountability in Higher Education. The report suggests that higher education institutions can use the guidelines to help them answer the question, “Are our students Learning?” and contends this is the fundamental question underlying the work these institutions do to prepare students for success.
The guidelines in and of themselves are not really anything new to those of us involved in student learning outcomes assessment: 1. Set Ambitious Goals, 2. Gather Evidence of Student Learning, 3. Use Evidence to Improve Student Learning, and 4. Report Evidence and Results. Indeed, these guidelines form the foundation of most campus-level assessment activities.
What caught my attention in the report was the following statement included in the description of Guideline #2.
Evidence of how well students are achieving learning outcomes (i.e., “What is good enough?”) against externally informed or benchmarked assessments or against similar colleges and universities, where appropriate and possible, provides useful comparisons. At the same time, it is critical to keep in mind that the objective of comparison is not ranking but improvement.
This seems to be one of the biggest hurdles we face when trying to evaluate the results of assessment on our campuses. I imagine most of us would agree that being able to benchmark our assessment results with those of a group of peer institutions would be the ideal. With the exception of national normative data available to those institutions utilizing one of the several standardized tests such as the CLA, there seems to be very little comparative data available to achieve this benchmarking.
Many institutions now utilize various assessment management systems and/or learning management systems with assessment functions included. I wonder if consortia comprised of institutions similar in role and mission and other key characteristics would be willing to engage in assessment data sharing for purposes of benchmarking their assessment results. And I wonder if the process could be facilitated by the use of common learning and/or assessment management systems. Such organizations could provide an enhanced service to their client institutions by serving as a third-party to collect, aggregate, and then return assessment data to “member” organizations. By using the services of an impartial third-party, individual student data and identity of individual institutions could be kept confidential and thus help to ensure the data are not used for ranking institutions as suggested by the New Leadership Alliance in their report.
Given the increasing microscope post-secondary institutions are being viewed under, such an initiative could prove to be a giant leap in terms of demonstrating accountability and transparency to concerned citizens and other stakeholders. Perhaps more importantly, the availability of this type of benchmarking data would surely be vital to quality improvement processes among our colleges and universities with our students being the primary beneficiaries of such efforts.
Kimberly Thompson
Academic Trainer & Consultant - Assessment & Analytics
Pearson eCollege

This post could have been titled “What’s Your Teaching Philosophy in 110 Characters or Less?” because we’re asking you to participate in a challenge related to developing and succinctly crafting a version of your philosophy of teaching!

The Challenge*

Please review this this post and the examples provided below about writing a brief teaching philosophy. Then, we challenge our readers here to try it for yourself! We would like to receive your submissions via our Twitter account using a hashtag and to mention our Twitter name in your post. So, how do you do it? When posting your 110 character philosophy of teaching to twitter, please include the following in your post so we can follow your responses: @atcecollege #teachphilosophy

What is a Philosophy of Teaching? Why Should I Write One?

Though many formal teaching philosophy statements run two or more pages, having even a brief framework of your philosophy can be beneficial. According to Chapnick (2009), “creating a philosophy of teaching and learning statement is ultimately both personally and professionally rewarding, and is therefore well worth the effort” (p. 4). Defining our philosophy of teaching helps to provide a framework for our practice as educators.

Do you believe timeliness and access are important, as Stevens III (2009) does in this example of his principles? “The principles I follow are simple: be accessible to students and treat them with respect. Accessibility means being available not just during class and office hours, but at any reasonable time. I encourage them to call me at home, and I promise them a response to email messages within 24 hours” (p. 11). If yes, for example, your philosophy would feature timeliness and access as important to you and in your practice you would work to achieve these principles.

What the philosophy includes might reflect a diverse set of information and depends on the audience. The Teaching Center (2007) offers these as guiding questions: (1) Why do you teach? (2) What do you teach? (3) How do you teach? and (4) How do you measure your effectiveness? Let’s apply that framework here in our challenge!

Can I See an Example?

Of Course! Following the model described above, here are some examples:

Inspiring humanity social science and education engaging and interactive
authentic experience designs @atcecollege #teachphilosophy

Learning experiencing sharing knowing doing frequent engagement
anywhere anytime @atcecollege #teachphilosophy

Lisa Marie Johnson, Ph.D.
Academic Trainer & Consultant
Pearson eCollege

*Notes

• Do you want to follow the tweets associated with @atcecollege or the tag #teachphilosophy? You can search without a twitter account by going to the Twitter Search page: http://twitter.com/search/
  
• Hashtags on Twitter allow for “tagging” a post to twitter (tweet) that makes it easier to search for on twitter.  When you include the Twitter name preceded by the at-symbol - @ - it is a Mention of the account and your post shows up in a list of tweets that refer to that account.
• If you do not have a Twitter account, but are on Facebook, you could instead post to our ATC eCollege Facebook account in response to the comment about this post: http://www.facebook.com/eCollegeATC --Or, if you’re not on Facebook or Twitter, feel free to post your philosophy here as a comment to the post itself. Posting to Facebook and commenting here does not restrict your character limit, while Twitter will restrict your post to 140 characters. Our requested tags @atcecollege #teachphilosophy will take about 30 characters from the 140 allowed, which is why we are asking for 110 characters or less.
• Want ideas for how to incorporate twitter into your teaching through challenges, such as this, and other activities?See this article from MindShift.

References

Chapnick, A. (2009). How to write a philosophy of teaching and learning statement (pp. 4-5). Faculty Focus Special Report - Philosophy of Teaching Statements: Examples and Tips on How to Write a Teaching Philosophy Statement. Magna Publications. Available from http://www.facultyfocus.com/topic/free-reports/

Stevens III, R. S. (2009). Education as becoming: A philosophy of teaching (pp. 11). Faculty Focus Special Report - Philosophy of Teaching Statements: Examples and Tips on How to Write a Teaching Philosophy Statement. Magna Publications. Available from http://www.facultyfocus.com/topic/free-reports/

The Teaching Center (2007). Writing a teaching philosophy statement. Available from the Washington University in St. Louis: http://teachingcenter.wustl.edu/writing-teaching-philosophy-statement

Seamless Integration with Leading Sales CRM Aligns Training, Business Goals WASHINGTON—January 31, 2012 — M5 Networks, the market leader in cloud-based business phone systems, has selected Blackboard Learn™ for Sales as its employee and sales training platform, Blackboard Inc. announced today. With the product’s full integration with Salesforce CRM, coupled with community-based and informal learning tools, M5 determined that the platform will provide the most effective environment to help maximize employee learning retention and align with company performance metrics. Blackboard Learn for Sales embeds the concept of social learning directly into the Salesforce CRM platform by incorporatin...

Start Date:
Jan 27 2012 8:30AM  

Prerequisite(s): None

Games are increasingly being used for teaching and learning and to increase student involvement in academic courses. This workshop will address how participants can use games and game-like activities in their classes to increase learner motivation and participation, and how they can receive assistance to do this.

Objectives:

• Explore the uses of games for in-class and out-of-class activities.
• Discover the fun things you can take from games and learn how to apply them in more traditional learning situations.
• Learn about the Educational Gaming Commons at Penn State and what it can do for you.

Fee 0

When I first applied for my current position as an Academic Trainer and Consultant with Pearson eCollege, I considered doing the interview-presentation we require of all applicants on the iPad’s use in education. At the time, the first iPad was newly released, or fairly newly released, and it was being touted all over the Internet as a “game changer” for education. The primary idea was that it was supposed to replace textbooks and provide (college) students with one device that would serve as notebook, textbook, and laptop.  In exploratory fashion, I ventured into the Apple store and played a bit with a display iPad; one of the Apple “Geniuses” spoke with me about its uses in the classroom, including how easily students could go back and forth from textbook to taking notes.
“Can they do both simultaneously?” I asked. “Can they have the book and the notes app open at the same time?”

“No,” she replied. “But it’s so easy to get out of one app and into another, so it’s almost the same as doing both simultaneously.”

“So, they can annotate their textbooks? Write notes as they read in the text itself?” I asked.

“Uh, no, but there’s a notepad on every iPad, so they’d just have to close their textbook and open the notepad. The textbook will automatically be bookmarked so they don’t lose their place.”

“Hmm,” I replied. “Is there a wide variety of textbooks available in electronic form through iBooks?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered. “Tons. There’s really not a discipline in which we don’t have electronic textbooks already available through iBooks.”

I opened the iBooks app and did a few searches for textbooks in my discipline—I started first with literature anthologies. There were none. I decided that was perhaps not a fair test—maybe literature anthologies are not technically classified as textbooks?—and searched for some fairly common writing textbooks. Nothing.

“Well, thank you for your help,” I said, and walked out of the store.

I decided after this experience that the iPad was not quite a game-changer in education, at least not in terms of its ability to replace textbook, notebook, and computer, particularly for higher education. There were and still are too many things it doesn’t do—word processing being foremost among those. I know there are workarounds, but there’s not a way to get the most functional and common word processing program onto an iPad. An inability to view Flash content on the iPad is another commonly remarked limitation. However, after receiving an iPad for my birthday in November, I’ve revised my opinion. I think the iPad might be a game-changer for education, but in ways other than I imagined back in April of 2010.

Elementary Education

The iPad has become one of the most popular items in our house and is particularly beloved by my eight year-old daughter.  I downloaded a number of math and spelling apps for her, and she still—two months later, a long time for an eight year-old to play with anything—plays with these apps almost every night.  Her favorite, SplashMath, is really genius—it teaches math concepts rather than rote memorization, but it also rewards the kids with an aquarium, and once they pass a certain number of questions correctly, they earn animals to put in their aquarium. Crabs are the first level; you get quite a few crabs, and the children can go into the aquarium and make the crabs dance, learn about real crabs, and find out about their crabs’ personality (I think the crabs are generally happy—they definitely dance quite a bit). The next level is clown fish (they’re grumpy), then squid, and then, the Holy Grail of the aquarium, angel fish. The fish in the aquarium interact with each other—for instance, the squid’s ink will stun the angel fish, so you have to feed the angel fish to revive it, but you must get more math questions right to earn food. This is probably my daughter’s favorite app. The questions are not too basic or too hard, and they teach her actual concepts, so it’s been a really worthwhile download.

Around the same time that we got the iPad, my daughter’s third-grade teacher sent home a packet of information about various websites the elementary school now had accounts with. One, for example, is a website where the teacher had set up accounts for each student with their “word work” pre-loaded. The website will test each child on spelling and using the words in a sentence. The word work is unique for each child based on his or her language proficiency and fluency, so each student must login to the teacher’s account and find his or her name, which will then reveal the lists. There are quizzes/games that the students can play with their word lists as well. Another website, this time one devoted to reading, allows the teacher to create an account and then select e-books for each individual child based on that child’s reading level. This website required me to download the Photon browser app to the iPad so we could view the Flash content on the page, but it still works very well.  My daughter can choose whether or not to read the books on her own or, alternatively, select an option to have the computer read the book to her. If she reads it on her own, difficult or important words will be linked so she can click on them and hear them pronounced and defined. Finally, the instructor had created a Google account where the students can upload PowerPoint slides with notes on a current research project. My daughter uses the iPad to work with all of these websites.

The best part of using the iPad for elementary education is its lightness and ease of use for children. It is extremely simple to operate; the interactivity of the screen—the swiping, the pinching, and the tapping—all make it a really intuitive device for children. (Not that most children today find technology at all complicated—my daughter was Googling with no help on how to do so by the time she was 6.) I have less anxiety when she uses the iPad than I do when she picks up my laptop to use, which inevitably results in a sticky trackpad but also a panicky call for help—“Mommy! The screen is totally black and I can’t make it go back!” It’s also lighter than a laptop, so she’s usually snugged up on her beanbag chair with the iPad while she uses it.

On-Ground Teaching

My colleague, Rob Kadel, blogged in September about why the iPad didn’t work for his fully online teaching (you can read his blog here). I agree with his comments in that blog. For fully online teaching, there’s no practical way to use an iPad unless you collect no papers that have to be graded and returned and don’t need to actually build your online course (or make changes to your already-built online course). There’s no full integration with Microsoft Office, and, as I mentioned above, if the iPad is really going to be game-changing for higher ed students, there simply must be. However, I have found the iPad to be fun, if not wholly game-changing, in terms of how I teach in the face-to-face classroom.

I began teaching a writing course on-ground in January. Before the first class, I went to Best Buy and purchased an adaptor so that I could project what was on my iPad using an overhead projector (much to the consternation of the sales clerk, who could not for the life of him understand why you’d want to project from an iPad). I also took the entirely text-based notes I use for lecturing in that class and, from them, built a Prezi (www.prezi.com). Then I downloaded the Prezi app for iPad, and voila—there were all my Prezis on the iPad. In the classroom, I was able to project my Prezi; I use it as a kind of visual aid, something to help those students who are visual learners rather than aural learners. It’s not really a “lecture” or a “presentation” of content in the strictest sense of the word—I just use the Prezi as a way to initiate a series of mini-discussions with the class about various topics. I’ve found that it works extremely well. The students really appreciate having the added cue of the words on the screen as I am talking (usually just two or three words at a time—keywords, in a sense), and they’ve asked me to make the Prezis available in our online course shell for them to revisit.

But bringing the iPad to class each time I teach has enabled me to offer my students more, to really enrich the course materials in a way that, if my experience can be described as representative, is still not common in many on-ground classrooms. Rather than writing URLs on the board when I want to point them towards a helpful resource, I can just browse to it on the iPad. Rather than telling them to Google something to find out about it, we can do it together as a class and discuss the accuracy and credibility of the results. If I want to talk about resources for conducting research on their papers, I can browse to the library’s website and show them the databases I’m talking about as well as how they work. I can use one student’s topic for the purposes of demonstration, and we can engage in a discussion about search strategies, Boolean logic, and keywords. Before using the iPad, I would usually just describe what I was talking about as fully as possible and then jot down, on the board, the steps they needed to take to do whatever it was. The iPad enables me to demonstrate and make the class more “active,” if that’s the right word. In that sense, it’s been a great addition to my on-ground teaching.

Jennifer Golightly, Ph.D.

Academic Trainer & Consultant

Start Date:
Jan 25 2012 12:00PM  

Prerequisite(s): None

Associate Professor of Earth Science Laura Guertin will discuss a version of the Amazing Race game codeveloped with the Educational Gaming Commons. Using a Google Earth API, the game gives students a location and asks them to click on the closest location on the map for points. By presenting a Google Earth interface, it allows students to begin to learn specific locations and understand their geographic relationship.

Objectives:

• Understand how to promote geographic literacy through games
• Discuss other areas of higher education where geographic literacy is critical and how games could enhance learning geographic skills

Fee 0

Start Date:
Jan 25 2012 12:00PM  

Prerequisite(s): None

Associate Professor of Earth Science Laura Guertin will discuss a version of the Amazing Race game codeveloped with the Educational Gaming Commons. Using a Google Earth API, the game gives students a location and asks them to click on the closest location on the map for points. By presenting a Google Earth interface, it allows students to begin to learn specific locations and understand their geographic relationship.

Objectives:

• Understand how to promote geographic literacy through games
• Discuss other areas of higher education where geographic literacy is critical and how games could enhance learning geographic skills

Visit the following link at the starting time indicated above to participate in the live overview: https://meeting.psu.edu/egcbrownbag/

If you need technical assistance prior to attending this workshop presented via Meeting@PennState (powered by Adobe Connect), please contact the ITS Help Desk. Official support of Meeting@PennState (powered by Adobe Connect) for Penn State faculty, staff, and students is provided by the ITS Help Desk at http://helpdesk.psu.edu, or 814-863-2494, or 814-863-1035.

Fee 0

University Opts to Partner with Leading Vendor Rather than Develop In-House WASHINGTON – January 23, 2012 – Seattle Pacific University (SPU) has selected Blackboard to develop a mobile app to provide on-the-go access to critical student services and campus information, the company announced today. After thorough review, officials at SPU found that partnering with Blackboard was more cost and time efficient than developing an application in-house, and better positioned the university to establish a long-term mobile strategy to increase and sustain student engagement. In their review, SPU officials found that they lacked the internal staffing and financial resources to build and maintain a m...

SAN FRANCISCO, FAIRFAX, Va., and WAYNE, Pa. – January 23, 2012 – Hellman & Friedman, Datatel+SGHE, and SunGard Data Systems today announced that the transactions to combine the businesses of Datatel and SunGard Higher Education have closed. As a result, more than 3,000 employees will be dedicated exclusively to delivering solutions to education institutions in 40 countries.
 
The newly formed company will have a new name, which will be launched in the first half of 2012. Until that time, it will be referred to as Datatel+SGHE.