Podcast: Download (16.2MB)
On this edition of the ITS Coffee Break hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley talk about Lafayette’s Election Night Broadcast project and ask for ideas about how to improve Moodle, the college’s open source learning management system. In Tech News, they look at how video games are being used to encourage reading, check out a new ebook reader for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, and discuss new research that claims surfing the web is good for your brain. Finally, in Help News they talk about Adobe’s Kuler web app for picking color palettes and give a rundown upcoming brown bag lectures.
Getting the Podcast
- Subscribe to the Soapbox podcast rss feed using an aggregator (you only need to do this once; subsequent shows should download automatically)
- Subscribe to the Soapbox feed via iTunes
Show Notes
ITS News
- Election Night Broadcast
- Students did their own election night broadcast on RCN, including video they produced as well as real-time GIS maps.
- Moodle Collaborative Development
- What do you want to see? New modules? Usability refinements? We want to know!
- Send comments & suggestions to itsblog@lafayette.edu
Technology News
- Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers
- “Spurred by arguments that video games also may teach a kind of digital literacy that is becoming as important as proficiency in print, libraries are hosting gaming tournaments, while schools are exploring how to incorporate video games in the classroom. In New York, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is supporting efforts to create a proposed public school that will use principles of game design like instant feedback and graphic imagery to promote learning.” – New York Times
- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/books/06games.html
- IPhone Stanza Downloads May Top Kindle Sales
- “Stanza, iPhone’s free e-book reader application, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and is installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day, according to the app’s creator Lexcycle. This number is greater than a recent Citigroup estimate of 380,000 Kindles that it predicts Amazon will sell in 2008, reports Forbes.” – Wired.com
- http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/10/iphone-the-inci.html
- Study: Google does a brain good
- “Members of the technologically advanced group had more than twice the neural activation than their less experienced counterparts while searching online. Activity occurred in the region of the brain that controls decision-making and complex reasoning, according to Small’s study, which appears in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. Small said he can’t pinpoint why there was more brain activity in the experienced users.” – CNN.com
- http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/10/14/google.brain/index.ht
Help News
- Kuler: Color Palettes
- Upcoming Events:
- Election Mapping on the Fly with GIS: Election Results to Broadcast Maps
- 12:00-1:00 p.m., Mon., Nov 17
- Clickers, Coffee, and Cookies
- 4:10 p.m.-5:00 p.m., Tue., Nov 18
- How to have a scam-free holiday season
- 12:00-1:00 p.m., Mon., Nov 24
- Election Mapping on the Fly with GIS: Election Results to Broadcast Maps
Comments & Feedback
- Send comments on the show to itsblog@lafayette.edu