April 2009 Archives

Remember Hitchcock's "The Birds?" There were only a few at first. By the end of the movie, thousands.

Twitter is much the same. At first, just Twitter. Now, there are hundreds of support tools and sites, all designed to enhance your Tweets.

For example, Mailana will create a visual map of your Twitter friends:

Pretty neat! Yet I'm feeling overwhelmed, just as the actors in the Birds were. How to keep up with all this?

Enter Listio, a great service that tracks all sorts of Web 2 apps hot out the gate, including Twitter support tools. Be careful of subscribing to it via RSS, for you'll be flooded with posts. The world is changing at an ever more rapid pace.

Will you embrace the birds, or run in fear?

Wow - it's been a fun and frantic few weeks. For the 2009 TLT Symposium this year, the Educational Gaming Commons ran a series of pre-conference quests. They were designed to introduce the players to the various PSU-specific and Web 2 education technologies available, including:

• ANGEL
• SCOLA
• Turnitin
• iStudy
• Adobe Connct Pro
• iTunes U
• Twitter
• Blogs at PSU
• ETS Wiki
• Wikispaces
• Google Docs
• YouTube and ETS Channel
• Facebook
• Digital Commons
• ETS Master Community Hub

The various quests enticed the players to try Twitter, wikis, blogs, and even to post a slef-made video to YouTube! The final quest was done face to face the day before the Symposium. We used the Lorax, a PSU-specific web site that helps one locate trees on the University park campus. Using riddles and tree numbers, we pointed players towards building on campus that have something to do with education technology. The best part of that quest was the social interactions that took place as we walked from building to building.



Here are some of the comments we received:

"This quest certainly opened up my eyes to utilities on the web and sparked many ideas for revamping my stat class with podcasts, vodcasts, updates or assignment reminders on Twitter, quests on the Nethernet for projects, flash games for teaching crucial basic concepts... well I said it all on my blog - super ideas!  I hope all future TLT symposiums have the same impact on me."

"I completed this quest and enjoyed seeing educational sites that I had not previously known about. I especially liked SCOLA and iStudy."

Next year, we may run two tracks - one like this for those new to these tools, and an advanced game that really tasks the players intellectually and wrings the most out of Web 2 tools.