BuzzLion for the Week of October 25

Let's start things with Allan Gyorke, assistant director of Education Technology Services (ETS), who recently took a brief tour of the course management system Blackboard. Since Blackboard now owns ANGEL, it's worth taking a look at the video Allan posted, and reading his thoughts.

Those of you who are Unicode users may know of Elizabeth Pyatt's excellent Unicode blog. Elizabeth, instructional designer with ETS, posted in her blog a look at the recent release of Unicode Standard 5.2. She outlines some of the new features, including the addition ancient Egyptian.

Brad Kozlek, programming manager with ETS, posted this week about the pedagogy of blogging, specifically the digital dialogue activities of Chris Long, a philosophy professor at Penn State. It's a very interesting look at how this technology is a great open education resource, expanding and tearing down the walls of a classroom.

Dave Stong, graphic artist with ETS, recently posted about Penn State identity marks. If you frequently use identity marks in your Web work, it's worth a look. He also includes how to download them.

Finally this week, Brett Bixler, lead instructional designer with ETS, posted a list of EGC Works podcasts to the Educational Gaming Commons. The podcasts are done around every three weeks, and focus on faculty use of educational gaming and virtual worlds in Second Life. Around 10-15 minutes each, they are a great way to catch up on the latest in educational gaming at Penn State.