The Symposium promises to be a forum where participants can explore what is meant by gamification and game design thinking, discover the research behind the movement to gamify learning, and test out ways to gamify their own content and approaches to course design. The keynote address and a featured workshop will be offered by Dr. Karl Kapp, an Instructional Technology Graduate Professor at Bloomsburg University. Dr. Kapp is a national speaker, consultant, and author of numerous books, including The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education (2012). 

Registration will open in late August: Sign up to get notified. Questions may be directed to Nancy O’Neill, Associate Director of the Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation, at noneill@usmd.edu. Please share this announcement and the attached flyer with interested colleagues.

DoIT would like to announce that UMBC now features a 100 gigabit connection speeds available on campus. In addition, there is now a Netflix node installed in the Data Center on the ground floor of the Engineering Building. 

The Netflix node is a server that holds the video content that is streamed to your device. When streaming a show or movie from Netflix, your data is typically streamed from nodes deployed across the country and world. Traditionally, Netflix tries to have your stream come from a node that is closest to you, delivering the best possible streaming experience. 

This is all possible thanks to the Netflix Open Connect program and Norwin Malmberg, Chief of Network Technology at Maryland Research and Education Network (MDREN). The Netflix Open Connect program partners with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide Netflix customers the highest quality viewing experience possible by localizing substantial amounts of traffic. 

MDREN acts as an ISP and provides advanced network services to multiple University System of Maryland (USM) schools, private colleges, and community colleges throughout the state. Malmberg contacted Netflix and was able to  get membership into the Open Connect program, thanks to MDREN consuming sufficient Netflix bandwidth throughout all the varied partner campuses and organizations to qualify for a node.

UMBC volunteered to partner with MDREN and host the node on our campus to provide the best possible service to not only our student, but students throughout the state. 

Users won't have to do anything on their part and instead just stream Netflix on their device as they normally would, as the server selection for delivering your stream is done behind the scenes by Netflix software. “For instance, you may requests a movie that isn't on the server on campus.” Petry said, “Netflix knows what content is on which servers and will direct a server that does have it to start streaming it to you. The win for them is to have the most popular content as close as possible to avoid long network paths.”

Happy streaming.