Higher Education Technology Events at Penn
There’s never a lack of things to do to expand one’s mind at Penn! Here are some great events coming up that are relevant to anyone interested in engaging students through technology:
The session lineup for the Penn UICONF looks amazing and highly representative of current technology trends in higher education. I’ve attended past versions and have always left with useful information that I could apply to my job.
As for the HigherEdCamp, I also had a great time at last year’s event. The unconference style allows for creative sessions that lead to unexpected positive ideas and conversations.
Hoesley Digital Literacy Fellows
We have recently announced this new program that aims to demystify technology, provide hands-on training and a website building project, and foster career connections. We w
ill accept 15 rising juniors and seniors – application deadline of March 24 – and this cohort will spend next year with us at Weigle Information Commons learning about a variety of new technologies. Our goal is to attract a cohort of Penn students who do not already have experience with these technologies.
We began designing this series two years ago with colleagues in SAS, Career Services and of course in Penn Libraries. I have enjoyed the discussions about what skills today’s Penn grads need for the workplace – and when tough cuts on training topics are needed – which skills look most important. We settled on eight broad topics but there was, and continues to be, a temptation to sneak new topics in here and there. The topics in no particular order are:
- Graphic Design and Visual Literacy
- Web Resources
- Files, Folders, Formats
- Spreadsheets
- Presentation Software (such as PowerPoint)
- Web Design Concepts
- Using the Web to enhance your job search
- Collaboration and Management
We would love to involve more people with Hoesley Digital Literacy Fellows. We need your help in getting the word out to current sophomores and juniors for the March 24 deadline. We would like to bring in guest speakers for each workshop who use one of the topic areas in their jobs so students can more easily visualize why it might be worth taking time to learn about pivot tables or HTML tags.
Designing Online Social Learning at Penn
Editor’s note: This blog entry was written by Lisa Minetti, Curriculum Design and Assessment Specialist at the College of Liberal and Professional Studies.
Over the past year, the Program Development Group at the College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS) has developed and implemented the Penn LPS Commons, a custom-built online learning environment designed to center participants on the social interactions that drive learning communities. Built with Drupal and Moodle, the LPS Commons includes social networking, learning management and collaborative web 2.0 tools as well as robust permissions models which allow select elements of online learning communities to be shared with public audiences as institutional Open Educational Resources (OERs). In our beta year, we’ve delivered 27 blended and fully online courses to over 1400 participants from 65 counties. Whew!
As we emerge from our first year of work, we’d like to invite the campus community to come and hear us talk about our efforts both designing this new online environment and optimizing flexible instructional designs which allow student-generated conversations to drive the online course experience.
Please join us as we co-host the March meeting of the Pennsylvania Distance Learning Association (PADLA) on March 16, from 8:30-11:45 am in the Bodek Lounge at Houston Hall. Complete details about the event can be found on PADLA website. Members of the Penn community can attend this event for free, but others are asked to register in advance.
Hope to meet you there!
POSER and DAZStudio: Easy 3D Worlds and Figures
The terms “3D” and “easy” rarely go together. Modeling environments or characters in 3D programs is often time consuming and frustrating and the learning curve for most programs doesn’t seem worth the effort. Trying to incorporate 3D modeling or scenes into a class project can seem nearly impossible because it takes all semester for student to even feel comfortable with programs like Maya or 3dsMax.
But there are two easy-to-use programs (both Mac and PC) that are excellent for human and animal figure posing and animation. “Poser” (available for purchase from SmithMicro at http://my.smithmicro.com/mac/graphics.html) and “DazStudio” (available for free from DAZ3D.com) both can be used within minutes of starting and animations can be easily accomplished in just a few minutes more. Both Poser and Daz formats are popular with independent model designers and you can purchase (often for as little as $.99) thousands of models online or download many free ones (see DAZ3D.com, contentparadise.com, poserworld.com).
Daz images will be used to demonstrate here but the programs are very similar in their layout and tools. Poser has more sophisticated animation capabilities.
1. Models are loaded into the program by selecting from the content folder that holds the models that come standard with the programs as well as those purchased separately.
2. Models include human of all ages and sizes, as well special humans like “The Freak” which is an oversize, muscular male that can be morphed into various monsters. Animals, plants, and props are also available.
3. Pre-designed poses can be applied to the figures or each body part can be manipulated and posed separately.
4. Switching between different views (front, sides, top, perspective) can make modeling and positioning easier. This scene is shown with 4 views and the screen can be split in numerous ways. A background image or color can be added as can complete 3D environments that allow the positioning of figures within a 3D space.
5. A final rendering, as a still image or an animation, can be produced in high quality and many different formats, including with comic book textures.
Daz3D will be demonstrated in a workshop on March 1, 2010 in the Weigle Information Commons, 10am to 11:30am. Register at: http://tinyurl.com/y8fma6f
Digital Nation on Frontline
In case you missed it, Frontline on PBS this week was “Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier” . The program covered a variety of topics of interest to those of us involved in technology and education, including
- students’ perceptions of their ability to multitask compared to the realities of research on the subject
- the perceived demand for classes to be more engaging and interactive than they were a generation ago
- the benefits and possible perils of immersive virtual worlds such as SecondLife
See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/ to read more about it or watch the episode online.
The Future of Video in Education
Editor’s note: This blog entry was written by Lisa Minetti, Curriculum Design and Assessment Specialist at the College of Liberal and Professional Studies.
In a New Media Consortium web conference tomorrow entitled The Future of Video in Education, Dr. Marni Baker Stein, Director of Program Development at the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, will be speaking about our innovative use of open source video on the Penn LPS Commons using Kaltura.
Our “revolutionary video project” involved the delivery of over 30 hours of broadcast-quality lectures in a fully-online non-credit course to more than 1000 participants in 62 countries on 6 continents. Course participants watched the video lectures and discussed them using tools of the social web. Come hear a bit more about this and other exciting video projects:
Connect@NMC: Kaltura Inspire: The Future of Video in Education
This Webinar will explore how video and new forms of multi-media enabled learning are revolutionizing education across the country. Video in Education now goes beyond simple publishing and includes internal university ‘YouTubes’, deep learning management system integrations, collaborative video editing assignments, video for distance education and libraries, and media-powered blogs and social networks. Kaltura has developed an open source alternative to proprietary video platforms that is flexible, easy to integrate and includes custom tools specifically for education.
Join us for a showcase of revolutionary video projects. Penn State’s Chris Millet, Penn’s Marni Baker Stein, 2Tor’s James Kenigsberg, and Kaltura’s Leah Belsky.
Note you will have to pre-register to attend via http://www.kaltura.org/education-webinar-registration?ref=NMC
Over the next few months we’ll publish here descriptions of other video projects we’re working on with Penn faculty. In the meantime, why not share some information about a project that you’re involved with?
