Tim Robinson stopped by our ETIE (Emerging Technologies Information Exchange) on Wednesday. Tim is a guy that I've known for years (since I worked for the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences in the early 1990s). Tim caught us up on some of the things he and the College are working on for fall. The real kick off for the fall semester in EMS happens on August 21 when the first year students begin what EMS calls TOTEMS, Total Orientation To Earth and Mineral Sciences. EMS first-year students move into their dorm rooms early and immediately leave for three days at Raystown Lake where they interact with faculty and other EMS students. It's a really innovative program and guarantees that EMS students know a group of their fellow students before the semester even starts. Even if they move on to other colleges, they have friends all over campus for the duration of their Penn State stay.
Tim is also responsible for the sphere in the EMS student center in Deike Building. If you haven't seen this, by all means go see it. It's a 4 foot diameter sphere with four projectors projecting images onto the surface. At any time you can see images of the Earth, including weather patterns or ocean currents; the Moon; or Mars. We brainstormed a few new ideas for it. My idea about covering it with one-inch square pieces of mirror was soundly rejected. He told us he was headed down to Florida later this week to install one of these at a university down there.
Tim often guest lectures about information technology in the EMS first-year seminar classes. In my humble opinion, as one who had input on the creation of first-year seminars, I think EMS models "best practices" for what these classes are all about. Tim teaches various centrally provided systems -- ITS student labs, eLion, the Penn State Portal, the Penn State Portfolio, and the University Libraries digital collections. In many ways, this was no different from my freshman seminar (OK -- that's what we called it then), where we learned how to use the card catalog, find periodicals, and write "research papers." It's just been updated by several decades to reflect new ways of acquiring data and information and turning them into knowledge. Tim and the ET group spoke about doing something with mapping mashups for the fall. I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this in the fall.
It was great catching up with Tim and exploring our common interests. I wish him continued success with some of these innovative first year programs and hopefully, I'll be blogging about the results of some of these conversations soon.
Leave a comment