Monday, July 28, 2008
Showcase vs. Workspace
Labels: portfolios, Web2.0
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
NECC 2008 update
I just had a wonderful conversation with a high school English teacher, who used my website for resources on working with her 11th grade students on electronic portfolios (she showed me some examples). She started her students with a blog, but many of them went far beyond the blog and created their own presentation portfolios using one of the Web 2.0 tools. She herself had to use one of the commercial e-portfolio/assessment management systems in her graduate program, and she said, "It took all the thinking out of it. They gave me the standards and told me which artifacts to put into each one! It wasn't as effective as what my students did!" I am hoping she will share her story with my new Google Group: web2eportfolios. I invite others to join the group (please give me your reason for wanting to join as you fill out the form).
I had another delightful conversation with a tech coordinator from a small Texas school district, who talked to me about his proposal for hosting ePortfolios for his 1400 student school district using WordPressMU. We talked about this strategy, and how they could implement the blogs and pages that the tool supports. Their district has already established a GoogleApps account for branded GMail in their district as well as all of the other Google tools. They are also setting up servers to host podcasts and video sharing. I am hoping he can also tell their story through my new Google Group.
Labels: NECC08, portfolios, Web2.0
Monday, June 30, 2008
Google at NECC 2008
On Sunday, I did a day-long workshop on Web 2.0 Tools for Classroom-Based Assessment and Interactive Student ePortfolios. We started with a blog and them moved to Google tools (GoogleDocs Documents for creating artifacts, GoogleDocs Spreadsheet for creating a table to keep track of artifacts, GoogleDocs Presentation to create a linear presentation portfolio, and Google Pages to create a hyperlinked portfolio (without the interactivity of the GoogleDocs tools). One of the participants, who had been playing with the Zoho tools, and especially the Zoho Notebook, tried the Google Sites tools (released in February) and found it to meet his needs better than the other tool. I will need to try the Sites tool when I get home.
Labels: NECC08, portfolios, Web2.0
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
New article from ECAR
This ECAR research bulletin details the arguments emerging in the blogosphere and elsewhere both for and against the learning management system. It examines whether the LMS is destined to continue as the primary means of organizing the online learning experience for university students. The bulletin is a companion to an earlier ECAR research bulletin that examines the factors leading to the selection of the open source learning management system at the Open University in the United Kingdom.The article was written by Niall Sclater, Director of the Virtual Learning Environment Programme at the Open University in the U.K. A small part of the article discussed the role of two different ePortfolio systems being used in the OU: Mahara (developed in New Zealand) and MyStuff (developed in-house by the Open University).
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Web 2.0 & commercial ePortfolios
The author of this Campus Technology article also published an earlier article, "ePortfolios Meet Social Software" which discusses some of the "stickiness" issues with ePortfolios, and the interest in the "own-it-for-life model" of implementation.
Labels: portfolios, Web2.0
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Learning about ePortfolios
Labels: assessment, portfolios, reflection, training, Web2.0
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Workshop in Durango, Mexico
Yesterday, we began the workshop with Blogger and also Google Groups so that we could carry on a dialogue after the workshop is over (we will continue the dialogue online through December). I also showed them RSS feeds this morning (using GoogleReader), so that they can keep track of changes in blogs and other documents that have RSS feeds, like GoogleDocs, which we also covered this morning. Tonight we started to adapt the European Language Portfolio Word documents into GoogleDocs. We also looked at pulling together a presentation portfolio with the GoogleDocs Presentation tool, and then embedding the presentation into our blogs. Most of them were able to create a quick presentation, publish it, copy the code and embed it into their blogs (much as I did earlier in this blog).
Tomorrow morning, I will introduce them to online storage, where they will store audio clips and video clips of students' English speaking skills. We will learn how to store those files online in a free file storage website, and how to embed those links both into a blog and into a GoogleDoc or a Google Page document. I will be introducing them to Google Pages later, so that they can see a web page authoring tool.
This was a very ambitious schedule for these three days. The workshop day was different. We worked 9 AM to 1 PM, took the afternoon off, and came back for a 6-8 PM shift. It was nice to take off the hot part of the day, eating my heavy meal in the afternoon, but it still makes a long day! I am really impressed with the participants in this workshop. They are participating in a fast-paced workshop, learning a lot of new technology skills in their second language, staying past the end of the workshop to keep exploring new things. This is my second workshop in Mexico, and I am very impressed! I'm also able to practice my Spanish, reinforcing the class I have been taking this spring.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Blogs and ePortfolios
This ain’t yo mama’s e-portfolio, part 1
This ain’t yo mama’s e-portfolio, part 2
This ain’t yo mama’s e-portfolio, part 3
Alan Levine had discussed these issues in 2004, around the time I began this blog: Two Rivers Mix: RSS and e-Portfolios.
Penn State University switched over to the Movable Type blogging tool at the beginning of this year, and here are several weblinks that provide more information.
WHEN IS A BLOG NOT A BLOG?
ePortfolios at Penn State
I have already blogged about the research on blogs at the University of Calgary. It is important to emphasize that blogging tools facilitate personal publishing and reflection, which make this type of tool an essential part of any comprehensive ePortfolio system.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Harvesting Gradebook
Right now at WSU, one of the things we're developing in collaboration with Microsoft is a "harvesting" gradebook. So as an instructor in an environment like this, my gradebook for you as a student has links to all the different things that are required of you in order for me to credit you for completing the work in my class. But you may have worked up one of the assignments in Flickr, another in Google Groups, another in Picasa, and another in a wiki. Maybe you've also made some significant contributions to Wikipedia. So, I need a gradebook where I have the link you've provided me, rather than a copy of the work, and the gradebook should be capable of pulling in all of these various sources.
Labels: assessment, Web2.0
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
GoogleDocs updates
Monday, April 28, 2008
More Web 2.0 Conference Presentations
- Scott Berkun, Berkun Consulting on Innovation and Creativity, Problems and Solutions
- Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody on "cognitive surplus" and the participatory web
- Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Foundation on Opening the Mobile Web
- An interview with Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape and now with Ning, a social network building site
Labels: Web2.0
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Web 2.0 Conference Presentation
The first one is that the Internet really is becoming the platform, a global platform for everything, everything connected, and the nature of that platform is this amazing tool for harnessing collective intelligence. It's not just about participation. It's about literally we are building a platform to make the world smarter, to make businesses smarter, to make ourselves smarter. This is an amazing revolution in human augmentation. We're at a turning point akin to literacy, or the formation of cities. This is a huge change in the way the world works.These ideas bring me to the potential that these tools have for learning, both on a global basis which O'Reilly is focusing on, but also on an individual level, and the impact of Web 2.0 as a learning platform, beyond the specific tools. This video provides a profound look at how this technology could literally change the world, helping us to tackle some of the most difficult problems that we face as a nation and as a planet.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
More Online Storage services explored
- ElephantDrive - 1 GB free space, Email: YES - URI: NO
- DropBoks - 1 GB free space, Email: NO - URI: NO
- 4shared.com - 5 GB free space, Email: YES - URI: YES (very nice interface, but free account expires with 30 days of non-use)
- bluestring.com from AOL (more of a digital storytelling service, saving specific file types -- audio, video, images -- but not PDFs)
- openomy - 1 GB free space, Email: NO - URI: YES
- allmydata.com - 1 GB free space, Email: YES - URI: YES (one of my favorites, so far)
- hp upline - unable to set up account
- mozy home free - 2 GB free space, Email: NO - URI: NO (not a file sharing service, only a back-up/file syncronization service; requires client software download)
- getdropbox - 2 GB free space, Email: YES - URI: YES (still in beta, not giving out passwords or downloading software, yet) - The video demo on their website looks impressive.
- scribd - unlimited free space, Email: YES - URI: YES (this site calls itself the YouTube for Office/PDF files, but only stores these specific types of documents, not audio or video files)
- idrive - 2 GB free space, Email: ? - URI: ? (Windows only client software download required)
- divshare.com - 5 GB free space, Email: YES - URI: YES (another of my favorites)
Labels: archive, digital preservation, Web2.0
Monday, April 07, 2008
Web 2.0 Workshops
- ePortfolio 2.0: using Web 2.0 for Authentic Assessment at the Eifel ePortfolio & Digital Identity conference in Montreal, Quebec, Canada; May 5, 2008; 9:30am–3:30pm (a "bring your own laptop" workshop)
- Web 2.0 Tools for Classroom-Based Assessment and Interactive Student ePortfolios at the National Educational Computing Conference in San Antonio, Texas; June 29, 2008; 8:30am–3:30pm (a "bring your own laptop" hands-on workshop)
Labels: conferences, ePMontreal08, NECC08, training, Web2.0
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Portfolios in the Cloud
In my reading, I found a new and interesting provider of personal digital document storage: Wells Fargo Bank! Their vSafe service will provide their customers online space to store and organize copies of important documents. "By protecting information in an electronically secure and centralized location, customers can easily access and recover copies of critical documents in the event of a natural disaster, theft or hard drive crash, or while traveling." I had not anticipated that online document storage would be provided by a financial institution, but security and privacy is a basic requirement of that industry. In the digital age, they could provide a digital safe deposit box for our important personal information. [I wonder if they would also allow hyperlinks to selected files? I have often compared financial portfolios (documenting the accumulation of fiscal capital) with portfolios in education (documenting the development of human capital).] But at $4.95 a month for 1 gigabyte, $9.95 a month for 3 gigabytes and $14.95 for 6 gigabytes of storage, it is fairly pricey for the increased security.
According to another article in Backup Review, another company in the Education market, School Web Lockers, is offering online storage of student and teacher work, accessible from home as well as school. "All School Web Lockers are backed up daily and preserved from year-to-year to allow students to easily create a portfolio of work." Again, I wonder if they allow hyperlinks to selected files from one of the many e-portfolio authoring tools.
Labels: archive, digital preservation, Web2.0
Online Storage Videos
- Drop Box - (YouTube video) (in private beta)
- Desktop on Demand - (YouTube video)
- AOL's XDrive - (BlipTV video) (1 GB free)
- Carbonite - (YouTube video) (not a free site - $50/year for "unlimited" backup storage)
- Roxio's BackonTrack - (YouTube video) (a product that you buy)
- Windows Live Sky Drive - (MSN video) (5 GB free)
Labels: archive, digital preservation, Web2.0
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Online File Storage Research
- Six Free Online Storage Services
- The Best Free Online File Storage
- Yahoo Group: Online Storage and Sharing
- Free Online File Storage
- 2008 Online Storage Services Report (the most current comparison)
- Box.net (I've had an account for more than a year, but haven't really used the service.) 1 GB free storage, maximum file size 10 MB (would not accept the MP3 file of my 12 minute 11.4 MB presentation) without an account upgrade. I had to edit the file down to less than 10 MB. Even then, it hung up in the middle of uploading the 9.9 MB MP3 file, and I was never able to add it to my account. Requires an upgraded account to create a permanent URI.
Email: YES - URI: NO - Omnidrive (When I tried to sign up for an account, I received the following message: We have currently reached server capacity and there are no more accounts available during the beta period. We expect to launch Omnidrive 1.0 during April, 2008.) That's too bad. Based on the features and description, it looks the most promising. 1 GB free storage
Email: ? - URI: ? (website says YES to both) - MediaMax (I read bad reviews, so I signed up with some reservations.) 25 GB free storage. I was able to upload files, either individually or as a batch. I uploaded an MP3 file, but it was too large to be downloaded without an account upgrade. It accepted the smaller file. After I transferred the files into a Hosted Folder, it showed the URL to link to each file. Files can also be shared by email. This was the most trouble-free and intuitive of the sites that I tried.
Email: YES - URI: YES - esnips.com - A very easy site to set up. I was able to upload my PDF files, but it rejected the MP3 file that I created, with the statement "Publish failed Suspected copyright infringement - upload denied." That won't work if students want to upload audio samples that they create. 5 GB free storage
Email: YES - URI: NO - Adrive - Very easy to set up and upload both PDF and MP3 files. No file size limit. A single click shares the file, and the list of shared files includes the URI. However, clicking on the link goes to a web page that downloads the file. 50 GB free storage
Email: YES - URI: NO
Labels: archive, digital preservation, Web2.0
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Web 2.0 Tools & Online Storage
I have also been doing some research on the different tools that can be used for online storage, as I found Google's March 2006 vision of "a place for users to store 100% of their data online.”
- "Google Plans Service to Store Users' Data" (Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2007) - includes a good comparison of different virtual storage services available:

- "Google GDrive coming soon?" (from downloadsquad blog, November 27, 2007, including a history of the GDrive developments) - Apparently the project has been called Platypus or simply "My Stuff" although that name is the name of the new open source ePortfolio system created by the Open University in the U.K.
To effectively use any of these virtual storage solutions as the digital archive for any e-portfolio system (or "lifetime personal web space"), they need to have the capability of OmniDrive and Box.net to "share files by creating a Web address that others can access." If I were to make a wish, I'd like an interface like YouTube or Picasa, that provides the HTML or URL to easily embed or copy/paste a hyperlink. I'm also hoping that the new interface allows more seamless integration between the different Google Apps (dare I hope "drag and drop" within a single window?). Now I have to switch between multiple windows to copy URLs for links to different documents. I hope the Google virtual storage service becomes available soon, and I hope it also works seamlessly with a Mac (not just Windows).
Labels: digital preservation, portfolios, Web2.0
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