ETS Spaces
Thursday, September 4th, 2008 | No Comments |
Filed Under Clickity-Clack, Community, ETS
Just running through a lunchtime feed reading frenzy and came across a post by my friend and colleague, Bart Pursel. Bart and I have worked together in one capacity or another for the last half dozen years or so; first when he was an Instructional Designer in the IST Solutions Institute and now as a Fellow of sorts in ETS focusing on games for education. Bart spends about a week a month in our offices … sort of a part time residency for him. Today I read a post he wrote at his excellent Virtual Learning Worlds blog titled, Evolving Spaces. It is interesting to read his view on our ever-evolving space here in ETS — another one of the grand experiments we are always talking about. Either way it was interesting to read and I thought I’d share.
Word in the Cloud
Thursday, September 4th, 2008 | 4 Comments |
Filed Under Clickity-Clack, Microsoft
With the release of Office 2008 for the Mac and (I think) 2007 on the PC Microsoft introduced the .docx file type. I have no problem with it, but I no longer use Office only Google Docs. The problem is that from what I can tell Google Docs will not import .docx files … when I get one via email I am out of luck. But a couple of links emerged today … the first is the utility that Microsoft itself provides to change the file types. Simple application that is downloadable from the Microsoft site. The second, and I haven’t tried this one yet, is a site called Zamzar. It looks promising, allowing you to convert files into dozens of formats via the web. So the next time you get a .docx and need to work with it, there are option.
Zamzar Online File Conversion
Scholar Blogging
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 | 3 Comments |
Filed Under Moveable Type, PSU Blogging, ePortfolio
As I type, members of the ETS staff are working with a group of students from the Penn State Schreyer’s Honors College to get them going on a very cool new project we are a part of. About a year ago, I was having lunch with Dean Chris Brady from SHC and we started talking about how important it is for students to think critically about the things they are learning both in and out of the classroom. The thing Dean Brady talks about is the importance of the things that go on outside of the classrooms in an honors education. We talked about how powerful blogs could be as ePortfolios and really looked at how categories could be easily used to link program goals and outcomes to student posts. We promised each other we’d find a way to make it happen.
A year later and I am thrilled to see we are launching a pilot with first year Honor Scholars who self selected in based on a great post by Dean Brady that will see them posting their learning and life experiences over the course of the semester, year, and perhaps their entire college career. One of the key ingredients here is the linkage between the SHC mission and the students’ reflections. Scholars will use the three main themes of the mission as categories … these themes are:
- Achieving academic excellence
- Building a global perspective
- Creating opportunities for leadership and civic engagement
So as the Scholars move through their academic careers they will reflect on events in an ongoing fashion and critically select the categories that match the experience. The other piece that makes this very interesting is how Dean Brady envisions these Scholars’ advisors using the portfolios to assist in academic advising. The way it typically works is that as a student comes to visit an advisor for a meeting, the advisor pulls the transcripts and talks to the student about their curricular progress. With the added notion of the category driven portfolio, these same advisors can quickly use the categories to filter content and get a more complete look at how the student is progressing through their college career. I am very eager to see this take shape.
My colleague, Erin Long, is the lead instructional designer working on the project with the Scholars. She wrote a post that outlines some of the things we’ll be asking the Scholars to think about as they participate. I like situations where we end up with “wins” on multiple levels — students thinking critically about their intellectual development, faculty more actively participating in the advising expereicne, and us getting honest feedback in a real world use of the technology. We’ll be reporting back throughout the year … are there other things we should be considering along the way?
Partly Cloudy
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 | 2 Comments |
Filed Under Google
I started last month writing quite a bit about living my life in the cloud with my new MacBook Air. I’m now even further into this experiment and I show little sign of turning back. There are a few things that continue to confound me — when I travel, for example, I take a ton of pictures and don’t want to dump them to the Air, but I have little other choice. I hate the idea of having multiple digital versions of the pictures … this seems like a silly thing, but trying to go completely into the cloud isn’t going to work for me. Keynote presentations are a whole other issue, but let’s just say I need to have at least a half dozen or more stacks so I can assemble presentations to fit the audience. And no, Google Presenter isn’t going to work (yet). So I guess at this point I can’t say I have left all local applications behind, but Microsoft Office is no longer part of my routine.
What really prompted this post is Google’s announcement of their Chrome open source browser project. What I find interesting about it is that it really looks like a micro-operating system to me. In other words, it will have built in functionality that will allow it to run web applications at new speeds with layers of protection that are usually reserved for an operating system. I’m no specialist here, but the fact that they are writing their own javascript engine (even though webkit already has one) tells me they want to make working with google web apps feel like working on the desktop. Imagine the Google Applications running in a browser that has its javascript tuned perfectly for performance from the applications … and then add full on Google Gears support and their little browser can now do anything you local app sitting on the OS can do.
If Chrome is successful, I imagine we’ll see new breeds of devices that can take advantage of the Chrome/Gears combo in new ways. I know I won’t be switching to it for full time browsing, but as my life in the cloud experiment continues I will be exploring it as the alternative for working with my Google Apps. It doesn’t look like a Mac version will be first out of the gate, but when it hits I’ll be ready. Any thoughts on this one?
Change of Seasons
Sunday, August 31st, 2008 | 1 Comment |
Filed Under 2008, Family, Thoughts
Spring has always been my favorite time of year. There has always been something about shifting out of winter and seeing the hope and promise of new opportunities. The new green grass, the buds on the trees, and the extended hours of daylight all seem to recharge me. Historically I’ve been less bullish on Fall. I always seem to dread the move from Summer into Winter, often ignoring the fact that Fall in PA is a wonderful time of year. But for the second year in a row I find myself really excited about the change of season … it never used to mean much to me, but I am strangely eager to see the leaves change. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.
Yesterday I went to the opening PSU game and took my daughter along. We had great seats and unlike the game we attended last year, she made it well past the first three minutes. She seemed to look at it all with very different eyes this year. I think she is seeing the spectacle of it through new lenses … the energy of the crowd and the power of the student section in particular really seemed to perk her interest. At times I caught her paying quite a bit more attention to the fans and the surroundings than the game itself. But, since at one point she said, “Daddy, I only cheer when all the people in blue do” I figured the game of football hasn’t quite made it into her conceptual framework. No problem … Beaver Stadium is quite the place to take in the sights and sounds of the experience.
Pass Attempt
It dawned on me as I prepare to see her off to first grade this year that answering the bell in the Fall is one of the things I’ve started to look forward to. I tend to measure my life in semesters for the most part — spending two decades in school and now a third as a member of the higher education community, my view of time is influenced heavily by the academic calendar. Maybe that is why my interest in Fall has started to take over — I see huge promise in the start of a new year. Not sure, but I like it.
It also makes me realize that I am feeling a real sense of belonging … I am now more than ever convinced that my choice to be in higher education is the right one. If I am eager to hear the school bell ring at the start of a new year, I must be in the right place. I’ve struggled with this choice for quite some time, but feel proud of the fact I spend my time here. I am watching with great anticipation as my daughter heads off to public school to see how long her enthusiasm for school lasts. I hope it is a lifetime.
