Recently in educational tech Category

The QR Code: Up-and-coming, or flash-in-the-pan? It seems that manufacturers are anxious to try every new technology that comes along, and marketers are no better. Magazine ads are rife with those pixelated boxes. Business cards offer QR codes as a way to jump to personalized URLs. Even at Summer Camp, we're using QR codes in various ways to demonstrate ways this technology might be able to add content to the learning environment. I may be hardcore tech, but some things are a tad too "out there" even for me. I'm waiting for one of the several crazy someones I know to get one (you know who you are) so I can scan their code.

Hopefully in a SFW location.

Remember those crazy kids who started a podcast a couple of years ago, talking about tech stuff, local people, and perhaps a bit of the loony? Of course you do. Chicken and Stars, for lack of a better definition (possibly lacking any definition at all), was a podcast devoted to discussing issues relevant to our local Penn State community. Featuring the lovely Shannon Ritter (@micala), Regi--errr, Daniel Ritter (@reginaldgolding) and yours truly (@robin2go), we recorded our podcast on Wednesday nights and had featured guests Skype into the show. Of course, in between fits of laughter and fun, we had the occasional insight and, more importantly in my mind, it was one of the first attempts at engaging the local social media community, all for a mere right click download on your keyboard. 

I used to have a problem with blogging; I'd get stuck coming up with things for me to talk about, or I'd take so long trying to craft the post that I'd miss the moment and forget the message. Now that blogging is part of my job, I don't have to put it off every time the time the topic comes up. Additionally, by using a number of different types of blogging platforms, I've gotten a little less compulsive about having to write pages and pages (although perhaps not in evidence on this particular blog ;D ). Here at ETS, there is an experiment in multi-author blogging called, appropriately, Stuff.

I caught this on my twitterstream today:

Last week I got to do something really fun. Along with Erin Long, Hannah Inzko and some others around Penn State's University Park campus, we were asked to judge student Sparky Award submissions for Jeanette Novakovich's English 202C Technical Writing course.