Testing Center in Pollock
I had the good fortune to attend the last few minutes of the first open house for Penn State's new e-testing facility in Pollock. You may have missed the news story about it, but don't miss one of the remaining open houses,
* October 25th, 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
* November 13th, 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
The facility is really impressive. There's lots of technology at play but it isn't in the way. When the facility is not being used for testing, it will act as a general purpose computer lab at the flip of a switch. The layout is inviting and functional.
About 40-50 people came to the first open house yesterday and from what I was told, enthusiasm was almost as high as interest. I highly recommend checking out this facility as it will be one that many faculty and students associate with their IT experience at Penn State.
Hats off to all involved in this project. And please, to anyone I spoke with yesterday (Chris, Jonathan, Brian, et al), jump in here and highlight anything I missed in this very brief overview of the facility.
This may be the most interesting, complex and challenging project I have ever worked on. What was really cool is we were given the freedom to imagine how things could work, with few preconceived notions, and then the resources to turn those ideas into reality.
Or near-reality . . . it isn't quite done yet but we'll begin developing some public web pages describing the technical designs and systems that nerds and other institutions may find interesting.
General information is linked from testing.psu.edu.
When the testing facility is being used as an open lab, we will be staffing it with ITS Lab Consultants. This began yesterday. (Monday 10/08/07) We will continue to staff the 2nd floor lab 24/7 so help will be available both upstairs and downstairs.
I put the pictures from the open house at https://confluence.et-test.psu.edu/display/photos/Pollock+Testing+Center
You can edit the attachment comments to put labels on each picture if you like. I have not figured out how to make confluence put the pictures in the order I want, yet.
Al W.