Congrats to Taylor McLendon

Congratulations to the Vitale Digital Media Lab‘s own Taylor McLendon for being in the inaugural class of the DP’s PennTen.  Taylor was nominated by the Penn community as one of the most impressive ungraduates at the University–someone who makes an impact to the local or global community and will continue to do so after graduation.

Read the full article about Taylor (aka Ivy Sole) at http://dpwebadmin.github.io/taylormclendon/index.html

Taylor is graduating in May, so be sure to drop by the lab soon to wish her congratulations in person!

Lending New Nikon and Canon DSLR Cameras

At the suggestion of a lab user, the Vitale Digital Media Lab recently added some brand new Canon 70D and Nikon D7100 DSLR cameras to our equipment lending program.  These are a significant step up from the Nikon D3100 cameras we’ve had up til now.  This brings us up to 8 DSLRs, which remain the most popular items that we lend.

The new cameras provide significantly better image and video quality, higher resolution, less noise, more dynamic range, better color depth, longer battery life, faster and more accurate focus, and better performance in lower light situations without a flash.  The Canon 70D also has a very useful flip-out LCD screen that you can tilt so you can get better shots when you’re shooting at unusual angles.

The cameras are identified by model number in our lending system so you can reserve the ones you like. If you’re new to borrowing, check out our overview of How to Reserve Equipment.

I hope to add more of these in the future, so please let us know what your experiences with the new cameras are like.  If you have additional suggestions for purchases, please let us know and we’ll do our best to get it.

New Semester, More Lynda

In October 2013, we launched a pilot project lending Lynda.com Pro licenses for remote use. We started with 4 licenses to reserve and increased that to 6 after we saw more demand. The licenses are so popular that we now have 10 for remote use every day of the week, in addition to 2 licenses for walk-in use in the Media Lab. You can read more about the borrowing process and check out a license on our remote lending page.

Lynda.com offers a great way to complement our in-person WICshops. Almost every topic we teach is available self-service on Lynda. We hope you will take advantage of the extra licenses this spring. Happy learning!

Conference Takeaway

It is our pleasure to announce two new “Conference kits” reservable online for faculty to borrow from the Vitale Digital Media Lab at the Weigle Information Commons. The kits can be borrowed for up to eight days. Each kit contains an Apple Mac-book Air and several video adapters to make it easy to present at a conference (as well as in a classroom).

To reserve, login to WebCheckout with Pennkey, click on “Add Resource”, and look under “Presentation Aids” for the “Laptop Presenter Kits”. Please review our equipment lending guidelines for loan details. WIC provides workshops and tutorials on presentation software such as Prezi and PowerPoint, so let us know how we can help make your next conference presentation the best it can be!

Interview with Dr. Charlene Wong

Researchers (from left) Mike Kaiser, Charlene Wong and Cjloe Vinoya (Photo by Emma Lee/WHYY) Link to WHYY NewsWorks story below.

Charlene Wong is a pediatrician in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program here at Penn.  I spoke with her about her recent study on how young adults use Healthcare.Gov to choose health insurance, and also about the ways in which the WIC was able to support her team in that process.

Q: Hi Charlene.  Tell me about the study you did.

CW: We did a study looking at how young adults are able to navigate and make decisions about the health insurance plans on HealthCare.gov. We were really excited because from the study we were able to make 6 recommendations about how to change and improve HealthCare.gov to better support people in making informed, smart decisions about health insurance.

Infographics in PowerPoint

George Hundt is getting his Masters of Environmental Studies.  As an assignment for Yvette Bordeaux’s class on climate change, he had to create an infographic, and Dr. Bordeaux suggested using PowerPoint.

George wisely planned the entire graphic out on paper first (see his sketches below) and then came into the Vitale Digital Media Lab for assistance in translating his ideas into PowerPoint.  (Having no prior PowerPoint experience, George had also watched the Lynda.com PowerPoint training videos that we make available to Penn students, faculty and staff.) He was here for several hours, but finished the entire thing in one day.

The final info graphic is included here, and you can see what high quality work can be achieved just with PowerPoint and a little elbow grease.

Thanks to George for letting me share his work in our blog!
 

Lab Closed This Friday

The Vitale Digital Media Lab will be closed this Friday, August 15, while we do our semi-annual inventory and install new computers. We should have some exciting additions when we reopen on Saturday at noon!

If you need to borrow equipment that would be due on Friday, let us know and we’ll extend it to Saturday or Monday for you.

World Cup on the Big Screen

Working on your media project but don’t want to miss the big game? No problem! Join us in the Vitale Digital Media Lab this afternoon to watch South Korea vs. Belgium in the World Cup on the big screen while you work!  The lab closes at 7:00pm tonight.

Got Audio?

So you want to work with audio?  Well, we’ve probably got what you need. This post contains a rundown of useful audio equipment you can borrow from the Vitale Digital Media Lab.

Also, here are a couple tips to keep in mind while you’re using the equipment:
1. Record the best sound you can.  It’s a lot harder to fix sound after it’s already been recorded.
2. Familiarize yourself with the equipment and practice recording with it before using it on a critical project.

Meet the eBeam

One of the most exciting  additions to our equipment lending program is the eBeam capture system, which you can use to capture, record and play back your whiteboard lessons to engage your students, near or far. As you teach, your notes on any dry-erase whiteboard can be recorded with audio, creating a complete digital file of your lesson that students can access for learning at their own pace. It works with both Mac and PC computers. (Direct video recording is possible on PC only. The eBeam can be combined with screen video software on Macs.)

We’ve created a webpage to bring together the information we have about the eBeam system on our website at http://wic.library.upenn.edu/wicfacilities/ebeam.html

If you’re interested in finding out more about the eBeam or in getting a hands-on look, we’ve scheduled an introductory sessions this Wednesday, June 11 at 1:00pm.  Sign up online at http://wic.library.upenn.edu/wicshops/