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Community Really Does Care at Behrend

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Penn State Behrend professor Anne Campbell wanted to find a way to get her students more engaged with the community this Spring as well as boost their public speaking skills for CAS 100H.  So she signed up for the Mobile Media Pilot and received 12 iPod touch devices that her students used to create interviews with both campus and local service organizations, charities and the like.  These interviews were then shown in class as a compliment to persuasive speeches meant to raise awareness about each community group profiled.

And, the results were even better than she’d hoped.  Anne shared her excitement with me by email:

“I think that going into the community and filming the interview made the students more passionate about their organization.  Not only were the speeches more persuasive than previous semesters without the device, but the class collected $200 for the organization of the most persuasive speakers …”

Campbell and her students divided the $200 raised between the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life ($150) and the Therapeutic Riding Equestrian Center ($50), extending the awareness raised by the project through charitable donations.

“I really like[d] it because [the iPod’s] super portable and user-friendly. I wasn’t distracted with the technology and the mobility is good for the type of interview we’re looking to achieve.” – Camille M

Anne plans to continue assigning these video interviews and has already begun mapping out a project for the Fall 2013 semester with me.  I can’t wait to see what her students come up with next.  You can see more student videos and learn more about the project by visiting her Mobile Media Pilot profile page.

Dinner & A Movie Event at Greater Allegheny

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Dinner and a Movie Conversational Space

Media Commons hosted a new kind of event at the Greater Allegheny campus last night.  Entitled “Dinner & A Movie”, the evening get together was an effort to use a film as the starting point for a conversation with faculty and staff about digital media in the classroom.

Hannah Inzko and I started things off with a brief introduction to the evening’s main feature, PressPausePlay.  Then, participants spent 80 minutes exploring the conundrums of signal vs. noise, craft vs. radical democratization and other implications of the digital media revolution that has steeped our current cohort of students.  When everyone has the tools to make art at their fingertips (through spaces like Media Commons and at home), what does it mean to be an artist?  And how do we engage with these creators in the traditional classroom?

Conversation followed over a tasty dinner spread provided by the campus catering staff and included faculty from History, Art, Criminal Justice as well as the Library on campus and at Penn State Beaver.  Greater Allegheny’s chancellor, Dr. Curtiss Porter also made an appearance and we had a great discussion about upcoming project ideas for his Civic Engagement course.

Dinner and a Movie Invite

Dinner & A Movie was a fun collaboration between Media Commons and head librarian at Greater Allegheny, Courtney Young (to whom we are so grateful).  It’s also an offering that we’d love to try out at other campuses across the Commonwealth this coming Fall semester.  Let us know if you’re interested!

Where the iPad Goes, Students Follow

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“Five years from now when young students come into college, the expectation is going to be a lot different than it is now. They’ll be used to using tablets in middle and high school,” Stoltzfus said. “We have to be the ones that are pushing the limits.”

– Wired (Can the iPad Rescue a Struggling American Education System?)

It’s a valid point, this. Anecdotally, when we do Mobile Media Pilot training sessions in the classroom, there are very few hands left down when we ask if students have used an iPad, iPod touch or iPhone before.  Slightly more when asked about producing video or editing on these devices, but the number is dwindling with each passing semester.  From the Media Commons point of view then, it’s really sink or swim: the students have the skills and experience with tablet computing and it’s not long before they see its absence in their classes (as at least an option) as a real limitation.

Media Commons @ Teaching for Engagement Event

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A few days ago, Media Commons had the pleasure of joining the traveling IDS staff in hosting an event about classroom engagement strategies at Penn State Fayette.  I traveled with Brian Young and Heather Huhges on a blustery winter morning and was pleased to find a wonderful and thought-provoking space in the Cultural Center on campus.

Cultural Center at Fayette

Settling in among the artifacts and art, Heather started of our presentation with a quick set of introductions and then a simple-seeming question: “What’s your biggest engagement challenge?”  Faculty participants took several moments to come up with their own answers and then a conversation about real-world teaching obstacles commenced.

Introduction

We then moved into a slide deck presenting some of the engagement strategies and technologies that ETS recommends and, most importantly, how they fit with different classes and teaching styles.  Questions were encouraged and many came our way, especially during the demonstrations of tools that followed immediately after the presentation.

Conversation

With 17 attendees, the three of us were quite happy with the attendance and the discussions in the room, even through lunch, were enthusiastic and we each started a dialogue with at least two new (future) clients.  Based on our early evaluations, participants were most pleased with the communications about the event, it’s logistics and agenda and the level of relevance and interest to their disciplines.  One comment suggested that the event could have been more Meida Commons-focused, a very flattering remark that will surely result in a follow up session focused on media projects.

Thanks to all who braved the cold weather to join us at Fayette!  And special thanks to Bobby Salitrik and Cheryl Farren Tkacs who helped us get everything schedule, set up and advertised.

– Nick

Wake Up Waggle and Other Oddities

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Multi-Touch_Gestures_Gabriele_Meldaikyte_slide

“Multi-Touch Gestures” by Gabriele Meldaikyte

“Artist Gabriele Meldaikyte’s ‘Multi-Touch Gestures‘ series remakes the actions through which we interact with our smartphones. Meldaikyte turned five actions, flicking, pinching, tapping, swiping, and scrolling, into lo-fi, non-digital devices made of paper, plastic, and wood that mimic those gestures.”

This quote is from a Hyperallergic article talking about a research project called “Curious Rituals” which aims to catalogue the odd things we do with our bodies that have become an everyday part of life with technology.  From the “on the phone aimless amble” to the “iPad photographer” two handed point-and-shoot (one I’m now promoting via Mobile Media Pilot), our odd dances while interacting with devices have become ingrained in the daily experience to the point of becoming overlooked.  “Curious Rituals” and “Multi-Touch Gestures” aim to tease these behaviors out, look at them from all angles and preserve them for the future.

(via my personal blog)

The Mini is a Big Deal

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The Media Commons Mobile Media Pilot is now entering into its seventh semester and we have been collecting a lot of great feedback from faculty who have participated and students who have completed their assignments. What has been echoed over and over again is that, while the majority likes working with the iPod touch for its ease of use, light weight and all-in-one shoot-to-publish utility, its small screen and short battery life would be improved upon.

“If only there were some device that cost nearly the same amount of money but offered more visual real estate and juice while still affording the same usability,” we thought. And then Apple’s iPad Mini came along.

While the Mini is a step down in size from the original iPad, it doesn’t lose any of the functionality of the larger device. And, when compared to the iPod touch, it actually becomes quite a step up. So we got a 10-pack and decided to do a pilot within a pilot and roll them out as part of the Mobile Media program this Spring.

iPad Minis

To keep them safe, each iPad has been covered with an i-Blason ArmorBox, which should also prove helpful for video reflections with its built in, landscape-format kickstand. The armored iPads are then packed into a Case Logic netbook shoulder bag which provides room for extra production notes and other odds and ends as well as providing a home for the Lightning cable, power adapter and MC contact card.

Five of these robust little kits will be traveling with one section of Dr. Mary Beth Pinto’s Marketing 344 at Behrend as the students do consumer research in the Erie area. (The other section of the class will be getting iPod touch devices, allowing direct comparison of experiences when we follow up at the end of the semester.) The remaining five will be journeying across the Atlantic as students in the Education Abroad program at New Kensington explore Ireland and complete video assignments that document their trips.

I’m particularly keen on finding out how students like working with the larger form factor – it’s still lightweight, but will it be too big to easily shoot video? And will the expanded iMovie interface on the iPad allow students to create richer videos? It’s going to be an interesting chapter in the Mobile Media Pilot, so stay tuned!

Hue by Philips – One Button Studio’s Soulmate?

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Across the state, there are many Media Commons locations that have existing studio spaces that are seeing less and less use as students take increasingly simple video gear – Sony Bloggie Touch or iOS devices – out into the field.  An idea that’s come up for re-energizing these rooms is conversion to One Button Studios.  A brilliant concept, as it maximizes existing campus room allocations and creates more usability in a familiar environment.

But imagining further out, I’m intrigued by the idea of providing graduated levels of functionality in the converted rooms.  One Button Studio could be level one: completely automated, preset and ready to roll.  Level three is also easy: bring in the traditional studio lights, backdrops, etc and use them in the space, even in conjunction with the OBS lighting bar.  But level two is where it gets interesting.  What if we deployed something like Philip’s new Hue lighting system in the space? What is Hue?  WiFi enabled, color shifting, iOS controlled bulbs that can do this:

philips hue demo film from Kevin Howes on Vimeo.

In my imagining, students could take out an iPod touch or iPad mini, record video and audio in the field, bring it back to the OBS and set up lighting wirelessly for more scenes, interviews, etc and then plunk down in a comfy chair in the Knowledge Commons at their campus to do touchscreen editing before sharing online.  And teaching studio use would be more fun than ever with an iPad mini as my primary tool, wirelessly switching between lighting presets and beaming iMovie training to the projector in the room.

Death by PowerPoint? No more with Haiku Deck.

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[F]or anyone who has had to squint at a PowerPoint presentation that was essentially just the unedited text from the reader’s speaking notes, Haiku Deck offers a merciful alternative. In an academic lecture or a business meeting, an overly dense slide show is like a Pavlovian signal to zone out.

For students, colleagues or coworkers who struggle with creating compelling, simple and memorable PowerPoint slides, Haiku Deck from Giant Thinkwell may offer salvation.

The free app for iPads allows users to type in just a few keywords about each slide and then it automatically scours Creative Commons images for bold background photos that tell the story for you.  Even better, it plops in correct attribution information for each slide created, a godsend for some class settings, as I’m sure you know.

While the aesthetic may not be for everyone right of the box, a $2.99 expansion pack will provide another 11 themes and there are plans to offer some font packs in future versions to tweak the basic text layout.

Learn more about Haiku Deck at the Co.Design blog.

DefCon’s Badges: Cooler Than Yours

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Part art, part game and entirely cool, the badges put together for DefCon this year also have a purpose:

“Those doing the hardware hacks will have to find someone to do the puzzle side,” Clarke says. “It will drive them to find someone from the other side of the house.”

Learn more at Wired.

Campus Technology 2012

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Boston is not an easy city to get to, it would seem. At least out of the University Park airport, which canceled my early morning flight and saw me instead arriving at 3:00pm on the day of pre conference workshops. So began my trip to Campus Technology 2012 – and so much for tightly scheduled plans.

Luckily, day two was far more productive. I attended the keynote session lead by Mark Milliron of Western Governors University.  Gary Chinn had mentioned Western Governors to me only a few weeks before so I had a passing knowledge of what the concept behind this online institution was going into the session.  Milliron is a very clear and concise speaker and shared a lot of insight with the audience about who our students are now – and who they are likely to be increasingly in the future.  The days of teaching to students who walk from their dorms to your classroom during bank hours are not going to end completely, but we should really expect more evening classes, more flexible scheduling of assignments and, most encouragingly to me (since I did school in three years and made my own major), more ownership of educational pathways taken.

It all sounds a bit like what I encounter on campus travel.  Many students are employed during the day in various fields (nursing, coal mining, factory IT staff, high school teachers) and are looking to upgrade their careers.  Many work odd shifts that require evening classes.  They are also engaged in online classes when they can’t find them on campus at convenient times.  And all are only interested in learning what they absolutely need to to increase their career hunting capacities and ensure they know what is necessary for their own growth.

What was alarming was the amount of laughter and even derision heard in the crowd at the mention of things like teaching late at night or offering à la carte educational paths.  It seemed like folks were aware of the shift coming their way in education but perhaps aren’t willing to accept that it’s not only coming soon but already here in a lot of ways.

All that aside, the rest of Tuesday consisted of some standard issue sessions on re-purposing classroom spaces at Indiana University to promote collaboration (a good session but they included far too many examples – more in depth on one example, particularly the one with no new furniture purchases, would have been better), a student panel on learning with mobile tools (which was hosted by CDW-G and felt a bit too much like a promotional session on their products and services) and a lunch in the vendor hall followed by poster sessions.

It was during a lap around the vendor booths that Hannah and I had a great conversation with the three reps from Media Core.  Their product can best be described as Kaltura if remade in Apple’s image.  It’s a gorgeous platform for sharing videos within a controlled environment and seems to make managing, encoding and even uploading videos a very simple process for not just the administrative team but also the end users.  There’s even a robust iOS app for mobile video sharing.  What they lack is an online editor with group collaboration capabilities – but they took our information and let us know that they are looking for pilot testers of exactly that.  To say we are intrigued by this is an understatement.  I’m not usually one for this sort of vendor interaction, preferring to thoroughly research on my own and then get in touch but I’m glad we stopped by!

The second day was spent listening to Greg Siemens of Athabasca University talking about the history of educational changes coming about because of shifts in technology.  He also made clear that we are not just on the cusp of major changes in the way we educate and learn but probably in the midst of the changes already happening.  It was a great talk and met with a more subdued and introspective seeming audience.  Perhaps it was sinking in?

After a final session on an iPad pilot at University of the Sciences I headed to Boston’s Logan International for my 2:30 departure which would connect to Philadelphia and send me on to State College for a mid-evening arrival – plenty of time to be back for presenting at Learning Design Summer Camp.  Except Stormpocalypse 2012 occurred, grounding all planes and royally screwing everything up.  10 hours in the airport, a very late flight into Philadelphia, an overnight stay at a friend’s house, a three hour drive across PA and a lost and found bag later and I finally arrived just in time to miss presenting at LDSC.  Ah well – that’s the joy of air travel via State College, I suppose.