Recently in Presentations Category

I was doing some updates to my PSU Blog this morning -- mostly exporting old sites out of the MT 3 environment that we are looking to discontinue on October 15, 2008 (that was a hint). At any rate, I setup SFTP to PASS to move some images around and clean up my directories when I came across some of my old work.

When I say old work, I mean it. I came across a presentation I remember doing for an ETS Show and Tell back in 1999. At the time I was a World Campus Instructional Designer working on Electrical Engineering courses with my friend and colleague, Dr. Stu Kurtz. Stu and I both had a real interest in doing something very innovative ... and while I think Stu and I drove each other crazy, we really drove our collective bosses even crazier. At the time, Stu and I wanted to deliver a full on course experience, complete with a bunch of rich media files (sorta like enhanced podcasts without the RSS), real world scenarios, links to videos, and a whole bunch of executable Mathmatica activities. We had a huge problem getting all of this to work from a web browser, so I built an Authorware "launcher" application that linked it all together. I hate to say it was fun finding ways to work the web back in the day.

At any rate, the presentation is still sitting in my PASS space -- I always did hate PowerPoint, so I did my preso as a simple website. If you have any interest in what we were doing back in the day at the World Campus take a look ... a couple things to note ... the first is how much stuff we built for each and every course (help files, getting started guides, and other items) and the other is the use of First Class as the communication environment. Crazy stuff.

I will be talking at the eEducation meeting tomorrow sharing some examples of where the Blogs at Penn State platform can be used. What I plan to do is show some novel uses of blogs. The links and brief descriptions below will be used to navigate the presentation

Using the Blogs at Penn State for more traditional website development

The Lyceum: The Official Blog of the Graduate Program in Philosophy at Penn State
Undergraduate Research at Penn State Brandywine and Beyond

Using the Blogs at Penn State for ePortfolio

Dr. Laura Guertin's ePortfolio
Dr. Chris Long's ePortfolio

Students Using the Blogs at Penn State

gIST Graduate research blog
Flat Tyre: Patching and inflating cycling and its technologies from the ground up

Travel Abroad Journals

Tina's Alaska Adventure 2007
Rome 2008: Penn State Communication Arts & Sciences

Using Blogs for eLearning Course Content Creation and Management

Original HTML course page
Course Topic in a Blog
Master Course Space

Blogs in the Classroom and Social Ratings

As we are seeing more faculty ask their students to blog, we are thinking more about how to effectively aggregate content from multiple sources. There are several ways to do this, but the most promising is aggregation with social ratings.

CI 597C: Disruptive Technologies
Social Ratings Site

I spent a few minutes providing an update to the e-Education Council today related to Digital Commons, Blogs, and the Community Hubs. I am linking it here as a PDF. Download file ... any thoughts for me, send them along.

Here is just the Digital Commons portion as a Keynote 08 file.

I know better than to complain about being busy. I watch my colleagues struggle with the same issue I do -- time. As in, I don't seem to have enough of it. Between family, meetings, more meetings, presentations, meetings, and the occasional opportunity to actually accomplish some work (yard, desk time, or whatever) getting focused time seems to be more and more difficult these days. I can't tell if I am getting any better at juggling it all or if I am just delusional ... really no need for anyone to answer that one.

The one thing I have been doing a lot of lately (and more and more in the coming days and weeks) is giving talks, presentations, or leading discussions around topics I am interested in. That, to be honest, is one of the highlights of my work. I've said it before that I am lucky enough that my hobby is closely tied to my job, so I get to spend a great deal of time working/playing in the space I enjoy. What is even cooler is the opportunity to actually engage other smart people in conversations that are tied to the work we are doing at ETS.

Tomorrow I get to present at the PSU Web Conference with Jim Leous. Anytime you get to do a talk with Jim you do it. His depth of knowledge and approach makes any co-presenter look good. If it is anything like our "Sonny and Cher" routine from last year it should be a blast. Tuesday I get to hit the road and visit Google in Pittsburgh with our CIO, Kevin Morooney. I have been spending way too much of my time lately working to understand all of Google's offerings in the web space to be ready for this. Return on Thursday to present at an interesting conference here at PSU -- Technology In Business Schools Roundtable Annual Meeting. It is hosted by my former boss and friend, Dean James Thomas -- again, should be fun. A couple of days later I am one of the keynote speakers at the Third Annual One-to-One Computing Conference, hosted by Kyle Peck. Dr. Peck is a pioneer and leader in the field of instructional systems and has been a very good friend to ETS over the last 2 years -- anything Kyle wants we try to deliver.

So there it is ... nothing too crazy, but a week that I have been pointing to as being a bit over the top for me. Would I trade any of it? Not in a second. All I wish I could do is print a ticket for more time with the family -- maybe Summer will kick in sometime in July!

I was expecting this to be a small group meeting and more of an open discussion, but at the last minute it turned into a more formal presentation. I used a mash-up of slides from Maricopa and my standard Web 2.0 in the Higher Education Enterprise talk I've given several dozen times to produce a talk related to Platforms for Digital Expression at Penn State. I feel like the talk is finally turning into something that creates both interest and value. I know I had a great time talking to that group.

It was a well attended session that lasted about an hour. There was some time left over for question and answer at the end that I think helped make a difference. I enjoyed the time spent doing this. An archive of the talk is available via Media Site Live. Enjoy and please let me know what you think!

Slides are attached as a PDF. Download file.

I have been asked to take part in a day long series of briefings to the Penn State Outreach Advisory Board focusing on the PSU World Campus. Their Board looks to be a smart group of people who have been selected based on their ability to help our Outreach organization make big decisions. I haven't been involved in Advisory Board style meetings since I left the College of IST about 18 months ago -- that used to be a regular activity for me.

At any rate, I have been asked to start the series of presentations this morning to lay out some of hte challenges and opportunities we face as it relates to teaching and learning with technology. I'll be doing my usual Web 2.0 thing, but with a slightly different slant this time -- I want them to be excited and interested in how emerging technologies are becoming more a part of everyday life and learning. We shall see ... I have attached the PDF of my slides.

I had a good time talking with this group. I always enjoy spending time with smart people with good questions.

Jeff Swain, ANGEL New Product Specialist, alerted me to the ANGEL v7.1 Town Hall meeting to be held on May 2nd here at Penn State University Park. Join Jeff for what will be a great opportunity to learn about the new ANGEL.

The Town Hall will provide support staff and others who work with ANGEL a chance to preview the new ANGEL interface either in person at University Park (101 Ag. Administration Building) or via Adobe Connect. This is an open discussion forum where in depth exploration of all the new tools and features will take place. Time will be available at the end of the seminar for questions and answers.

This past week I did two sessions at the ITS Event and Expo. From the reports I received there were well over 1,100 people who walked through the show floor. Both of my sessions focused on podcasting and blogging at Penn State ... they were only 25 minutes a piece, so I had to leave out the wiki portion of what I had planned to do. I have had several requests for the slides, so I have linked them here as a PDF ... enjoy and please feel free to leave comments.

Download the presentation ... BTW, sorry the file is so big (11 MB). I used a few high-resolution photos in it.

I thought it would be a good idea to provide a link from this space over to a presentation I did for the all ITS Staff meeting that happened back in January of 2007. This was a Spring 2007 Podcasts at Penn State update ... instead of delivering it in Keynote, I decided to use the PSU Blog tool to do it. I was obviously interested in sharing the information about the podcasting project, but was also excited about showing a few novel uses of a blog. I think it worked fairly well.