The call for proposals for the 2010 Symposium has closed. We received a large volume of high quality submissions again this year and we will do our best to accommodate everyone. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out prior to the end of the semester. Thank you to everyone who submitted. Your proposals really showcase some of the great work that is happening in teaching, learning, and research across the university.

This year's symposium will feature a morning keynote address by Dr. Michael Wesch, assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, a faculty lunch panel discussion, "Using Social Media to Engage Students," and a poster session at the end of the day. During the day we will also feature over 20 faculty-led breakout sessions showcasing innovative uses of technology to enhance teaching learning and research, a hands-on demonstration room, a Digital Media Commons showcase room, and a Educational Gaming Commons showcase room. If you have not done so already, please register to attend.

Members of the faculty who are using technology to enrich teaching, learning, or research are encouraged to submit a presentation proposal using the online form at http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/conference/proposals. Topics could include faculty and students collaborating on a project or an assignment showcasing any number of collaborative tools and new learning spaces involved with teaching and research. Some examples include the use of electronic portfolios and blogs, the incorporation of digital media, the use of games, virtual worlds, and simulations, and any best practices that foster scholarship in the digital age. Sessions can be in a variety of formats, including group presentations, panel discussions, poster presentations, demonstrations, small-group discussions, and other activities. Each session should include some discussion of practical aspects such as the tools used, sources of support, best practices, and how the application of technology can be transferred to other disciplines. The extended deadline to submit proposals is November 13, 2009.

I'm at a demonstration of Blackboard that is being delivered by a combination of Blackboard and former ANGEL staff.  The demo covers their current version, BB9, not what they plan to develop as part of their Next Generation strategy.

Blackboard's Mission:
"To increase the impact of education, by transforming the experience of education"

Three main product lines:

• Blackboard learn - typical content management features
  
• Blackboard transact - secure access to campus buildings, student meal cards, etc...
  
• Blackboard connect - notification and alerting platform through a variety of forms (text, email, etc...)
  

Their "Project NG" will focus on integrating product lines and make it have more of a Web 2.0 drag-and-drop feel - which will eventually be released as Blackboard.  Blackboard has committed to work on ANGEL 8, which will include some new features as well as some features that will eventually help transition to Blackboard.

Core Features of Blackboard (most of this isn't too surprising):

• Content delivery with custom paths
• Communication tools
  
• Assessment tools for feedback and analysis
• Portfolio capabilities
• Participation in common cartridge/IMS development
  

Advantages over ANGEL:

• Very scalable platform
• Building Blocks program - frameworks for building custom tools with hooks into Blackboard API's

Moving to an actual demo now.  Version 9 focused largely on an interface change that brings together the best parts of Blackboard and WebCT.  After logging in, users are presented with a dashboard/portal that's much like ANGEL's home page that lists courses, announcements, headlines from external sources, and other panels that can be added by the user and may be customized based on the user's attributes (e.g. student in the college of engineering).

Left-hand navigation (upper left) with links like tools, discussions, surveys and quizzes, groups, blogs, journal, web Links, Help.  Lower-left navigation for instructor course administration tools.  Good news here: you can place any tool within the course within the course content, so they could view content and then go right into a discussion area.  That should help maintain a more natural academic workflow for students and instructors alike.

Showing the editing features now.  The order of items in a content area can be dragged around to reorder, as well as the items in the left-side menu.  They have a visual editor available when you create a new item that standard web content, equations, and raw HTML mode.  They have some built-in support for quicktime movies to display the movie in-line and include ADA features.  Includes basic release controls (via dates).  Evaluate menu can link directly to SafeAssign (much like Turnitin).

Have about 1000 developers within Blackboard and another 2500 developers outside Blackboard who are working on the feature set, interface, and building blocks.  On their developer site, they have extensions, language packs, and course content that can be downloaded and integrated.  Their open development framework is hosted at edugarage.com.

They have a short video of their interface that can be found at blackboard.com/release9.  Not much there - just a taste if you haven't seen it before.

Overall, the demo didn't show too much beyond the content presentation features.  We really need to get our Blackboard 9 sandbox running and dig into the communication tools before we can really see how it works.

As of today, blog posts made on the Blogs at Penn State platform and tagged with tltsym should appear on the TLT Symposium account on Twitter.  That's assuming everything works out.  To do this, I am using a site called TwitterFeed that should repost anything in an RSS feed to a Twitter account.

Faculty members are invited to share innovative uses of technology to enhance teaching, learning, and research at the Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology. This free event will be held Saturday, March 27, 2010 from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, University Park. A continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. This year's theme is "Digital Scholarship and the Culture of Teaching and Learning."

The keynote speaker is Dr. Michael Wesch (http://ksuanth.weebly.com/wesch.html), assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. Dubbed "the explainer" by Wired magazine, Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the effects of new media on society and culture. His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award and the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and he was recently named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. He has also won several teaching awards, including the 2008CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities.

Members of the faculty who are using technology to enrich teaching, learning, or research are encouraged to submit a presentation proposal using the online form at http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/conference/proposals. Topics could include faculty and students collaborating on a project or an assignment showcasing any number of collaborative tools and new learning spaces involved with teaching and research. Some examples include the use of electronic portfolios and blogs, the incorporation of digital media, the use of games, virtual worlds, and simulations, innovative and engaging practice in large enrollment courses, and any best practices that foster scholarship in the digital age. Sessions can be in a variety of formats, including group presentations, panel discussions, poster presentations, demonstrations, small-group discussions, and other activities. Each session should include some discussion of practical aspects such as the tools used, sources of support, best practices, and how the application of technology can be transferred to other disciplines.

The deadline to submit proposals is October 30, 2009. For more details and to register, visit http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/. The Symposium is sponsored by Information Technology Services.

The Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology will be held Saturday, March 27, 2010 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 "Digital Scholarship and the Culture of Teaching and Learning."

Our keynote speaker is Dr. Michael Wesch, assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. Dubbed "the explainer" by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the effects of new media on society and culture. His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award and the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology. He was recently named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. He has also won several teaching awards, including the 2008 CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities. See examples of his work on the Keynotes page.

There is no registration fee and a continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. Click here to register: The 2010 Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology