Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology

ANGEL 7.1 Preview: Having 15 minutes to talk about what is new with ANGEL 7.1 must have felt like trying to explain the theory of relativity in 15 minutes, but Heather did a great job outlining the new features. One of the new features that I found interesting is the Game feature, given all the talk recently about the value of games in education. There are just a few right now, but hopefully that will change. Also, for those who want to learn more about ANGEL 7.1, I cannot recommend the ANGEL Community Hub enough: http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/angel/

e-Portfolio Update: Along with tracking progress through a college career, the e-Portfolio is a great tool for job hunting. It also allows faculty to check the progress of students. With all the talk about Web 2.0, I find it interesting that you can now create a blog within an e-Portfolio. The blog is simple, but it enables students to do some reflective writing about their academic experience. Another aspect of Web 2.0 that I noted in e-Portfolio is the ease of use. A student does not need to know HTML to make an e-Porfolio. One comment that Glenn made was that keeping an e-Portfolio up for six months after graduation may not be enough; he suggested the University increase that to 18 months.

Interactive Learning Objects in Excel for Active Learning: This was interesting to me because I hear a lot about learning objects as being fairly complex items that a professor would need help constructing in Flash or something, but Abdullah talked about creating them in Excel. Abdullah said that they can be used to solve simple problems, enhance discussion, etc. They are great for stimulating thinking to get the learning process moving.

Clutter Control for Online Education (Quick Tips to Make Learning More Efficient!): First off, Ann going through 10 tips in 15 minutes and managing to cover all of them was quite an achievement. A few of them included: Start your course with an orientation to help students prepare for the course and its style; clean up the lesson tab in ANGEL so it is easy for students to navigate; drop the cognitive load, as it helps students focus; and use side bars in ANGEL for extras.

Teaching and Learning with Virtual Teams: Sadan mentioned that virtual teams are gaining importance not only in the academic setting, but in the workplace as well. These teams work together using IM, email, cell phones, etc. The example of academic virtual teams was interesting to me in that students at first were not very open to the idea of virtual teams. That to me is surrprising given how Web 2.0 they all seem to be. However, Sadan said that while most were negative to virtual teams and working with each other over a distance, at the end of the course most students said they were positive about virtual teams.

PULSE results on Penn State students and Social Computing: Andrea referred to the ITS Forum on student use of social internet found here: http://tlt.its.psu.edu/fmc/itsforum/. Let's hear it for smart use of existing technology; I thought using the ITS Forum breeze presentation was brilliant. As for the talk itself, I thought two things were quite interesting here:

- Employers are increasingly searching MySpace and FaceBook accounts, so students need to pay attention to what they are posting.

- Just under 50 percent of Penn State students have had someone tell them what is appropriate to post on a social Internet site and educated them on the risks of posting too much information. This seems way too low to me. Think about that number. I believe that parents and schools should have offered this sort of education.