tech-ed collisions

Confusion reigns with ePortfolios

If I was to do a word association test on eportfolios the first word that I would think of is confusion. Almost every substantive article I have read on eportfolios starts out with the author(s) defining what they mean by eportfolios. I have had to do this myself and can relate to this need. Eportfolios mean so many different things to people. And so it continues... a great article appeared the other day on the Campus Technology website entitled "The Portfolio Enigma in a Time of Ephemera". The article starts out describing just how confusing the eportfolio landscape is and then quickly moves into the problem area of assessment and how that is adding to the confusion. The author (Trent Batson) then quite nicely defines eportfolio as a learning approach rather than a technology. I think there is quite a lot of merit in this statement, at least in terms of many types of eportfolios. For me, eportfolios generally consist of a number of technology services that are combined in some way to support and demonstrate aspects of learning. My main interest in eportfolios is how they can be used to support and enhance lifelong learning. In this sense, I am especially interested in how eportfolio services can support those of us who are not part of any formal educational organisation. To some extent this alters how assessment is viewed (assessment takes on a different perspective at least). However, although I have thought for some time that 'eportfolio for all' would be a good thing (am desperately trying to find out how successful various regional implementations actually have been), I am struggling with how to maximise the benefits obtainable from the idea. If eportfolio is a process, or approach, any sort of regional 'eportfolio for all' will face some significant challenges. Firstly, getting it noticed at all is challenging enough, then creating a compelling enough message to be seen as something useful would be an interesting challenge in itself. Finally, how do you ensure that the 'eportfolio process' is well understood by all. The service will have to be extremely well designed, simple and intuitive to use. The article then goes on to an interesting discussion on the temporal value of eportfolio artefacts and challenges how we construct knowledge and then how to manage it over time. Interesting views if you are considering eportfolios of your own.

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Filed under  //   eportfolio  

another great touch screen interface

Even though the CES is on the other side of the world, thanks to the proliferation of bloggers. tech reviewers (and of course, their own website) etc we can still get an idea of what's new and exciting at this years show. Touch screen and other innovative interfaces and the use of gestures are really interesting for me at the moment so if was with interest that I read this review of PQ Labs iTable on CrunchGear. Check out the following review/demo by CrunchGear at the CES to see just how impressive the multi-touch interface is: It's inevitable that this product will be compared with (and compete with) Microsoft surface and I am guessing that there are some things missing like object recognition but all the same, this is pretty impressive. More demos of it are available here. I am looking forward to the time when we don't have to physically touch the screen for it to interpret our gestures (or need a WiiMote type of wand) so that I can interact with the system from a distance - kind of like the EyeToy but with much more precision of course.

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Filed under  //   interface  

on the future of ePortfolio - Roundtable

Found this interesting discussion on ePortfolios courtesy of a Stephen Downes post. It's a transcript of a panel discussion from a conference held by LaGuardia Community College in April last year but has just appeared on the Academic Commons site. Over quite a period of time now we have been researching the application of ePortfolios and ePortfolio policy from a number of perspectives and it is interesting to see just how often LaGuardia appears on our 'horizon' in relation to ePortfolios. Anyway, back to the discussion. It starts off with the age old tension between student centred ePortfolios and institution centred ePortfolios or as Helen Barrett, one of the panel members refers to it:

the Assessment OF Learning on one hand, and on the other: assessment FOR learning, assessment AS learning.
The conversation moves on to discussing how LaGuardia went about implementing their approach to ePortfolios and as one of the panel members says:
We did a lot of planning before we started talking about systems. So the systems supported the process, as opposed to buying a system and then tweaking the process to fit. And we were lucky. We had so much support from the administration. And faculty development was key. We got buy-in from all the stakeholders, from the administration to the faculty to the students. Each had its own level of challenge, of course. But without all of this falling into place, I don’t think it would have blossomed the way it has.
It seems, from the discussion, that LaGuardia is doing very well in balancing the needs of the institution with the needs of the learner. Panel members then start talking about transformation and if you like 'light bulb moments' they had along the way on their own ePortfolio journeys. There seems to be general agreement on a change in the educational paradigm, where educators are learning along with their students and what this means in their approach to teaching. The panel then moves onto lifelong and lifewide learning, which is one of my areas of interest and Helen Barrett throws out the challenge of what can you do for students after they graduate (in relation to ePortfolios in a lifelong, lifewide context). Now this interests me because many, many of us are lifelong learners with no current affiliations with educational institutions or have multiple (e)portfolios scattered all over the place. I have been wrestling with the benefits that systemic or regional ePortfolios may or may not provide for all of us. Provision of ePortfolio tools/services such as that which can be provided through a great many Web 2.0 type services are simply not enough. Some people will be able to exploit and benefit from such services far better than others. Importantly, it seems to me (from the transcript of the panel discussion at least) is that what LaGuardia and others like them may be doing is providing their students with the skills and competencies to benefit from the 'things' that ePortfolios provide. This is a real challenge for regional implementations that are trying to reach out to members of the public that have no connection to an environment where they can learn about things like reflection. I have rambled on a number of times about ePortfolios and mentioned a number of regional implementations from around the world and it is hard to gauge what, if any, success they are having. I wonder what strategies they are employing to help their populations develop the skills necessary to really take advantage of the services they are offering. Anyway, this is getting seriously sidetracked from the panel discussion. It starts to get really interesting then as panel members start to examine the narrative/story telling aspect of ePortfolios and what that means for assessment. It seems that it is here that panel members become really passionate about what they are saying. At about this time it seems that the panel opens up for questions from the audience which seem to be focussed on implications for faculty and how to get buy in from the faculty. All in all, an interesting discussion touching on some of the big challenges and potentials for ePortfolios.

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Filed under  //   eportfolio  

on Facebook and Identity

Very interesting post appeared on the ABC news site titled 'Lawyer uses Facebook to serve documents'. A Canberra court has approved using Facebook as a way to serve documents. Apparently, the co-defendants have been hard to reach but there are Facebook accounts which list them as friends and has their birth dates. This would seem to be enough for the judge to qualify Facebook as a legitimate way of serving them. It would be great to see the full transcript that outlines this decision because quite a bit more information would really be needed to properly identify a person. Somehow I don't think I can walk into a bank and have an account created simply by pointing to a website with a claimed birth date and list of friends - that's why they have the 100 point checklist. Claiming identity and authenticating identity are worlds apart. Think of your favourite celebrity. How many sites are there of them that contain far more personally identifying information on them than a birth date and list of friends yet are not maintained at all by the celebrity. What about sites that masquerade as people. It's not difficult to setup an account on social networking sites masquerading as someone else (see this post discussing a number of fake John Howard Facebook accounts). Some services, such as ClaimId, offer an attempt for you to (re)establish your digital identity. Web personalities such as Leo Laporte use this to try to help them. So that's one problem. But just like defendants may not often be at home, what guarantee is there that they will access their Facebook accounts or receive notification that there has been an attempt to contact them via it? Will logs be requested of social networking service providers, ISPs etc in an effort to prove such accounts have been accessed by the 'claimed identities' of the account holders? How many social networking accounts have you opened that you no longer access or particularly care about? How many have you forgotten about? It would seem to me there are a whole lot of potential challenges to this judgment but it certainly highlights the importance of your digital identity(s)!

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Filed under  //   Facebook   identity  

from the JISC: IP rights in a Web 2.0 world

Nice work again from the JISC. This time on IP rights in a Web 2.0 world. There's a great animation explaining rights from three different perspectives and a free diagnostic tool nicely licensed using CC of course!

Filed under  //   IP   Web 2.0  

on Twitbook

Just reading the article on the unsuccessful negotiations of Facebook to buy out Twitter. My first thoughts are that I am relieved that deal didn't go through. According to the article it failed over the price. I wonder what Facebook and Twitter users think of such a takeover. According to this ZDNet post,

The microblogging service competes directly with Facebook's own "status" feature, to the point where many Twitter users have configured their Facebook statuses to display their Twitter statuses.
Given that, some Facebook-Twitter users are probably ok with it. What about Twitterers only, or those that like the simplicity/purity of Twitter. My immediate visions are of a Twitter interface wrecked by 1,000's of useless plugins and irrelevant, annoying advertising. Then we have interoperability. One of the great things about Twitter is its openness. It has great apis, very liberal use of RSS. Not so sure that Facebook has quite the same philosophy here. Sure, Twitter is or has been unreliable at times but at what price (to the total experience) should those niggles be addressed? Business is business and these companies need to work hard to maintain their position but I hope in any negotiations they consider their respective end-user communities and what attracts those communities to their relevant services. Can't miss the opportunity to do a plug for the social network that we developed here - have a look at me.edu.au if you want to see an alternative designed for those in education and meet up with some educators doing some fantastic stuff on the Web.

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Filed under  //   Facebook   Twitter  

on the challenges of emerging technologies and education

Tomorrow morning I am participating in (what I hope to be) a really engaging online discussion on emerging technologies and education. There should be about a dozen participants in this discussion with a mix of technologists and educators that are doing really interesting stuff in their environments with technology. This conversation is part of the SICTAS work that we are engaged in and I hope we get some really valuable insights into where technology is going and where there may be opportunities in education with those technologies. One of the challenges for this type of discussion seems to be the levels of comfort with technologies across the education sector. There is no doubt that there is an increasing number of educators doing fantastic stuff with technologies in their classrooms and achieving great results with it. As with many other areas of society though, there is also a large portion of the sector not engaged with technology but in many cases, wanting to be. When we talk about emerging or new technologies to these different groups, we can often be talking about quite different technologies. To some, the types of concepts in, or services we refer to as Web 2.0 are challenging enough or are very new. To others, mashing up electronic whiteboards and virtual worlds is mainstream. So it is with interest that I am looking forward to the release of the first Horizon.au report. The Horizon.au Project

will produce a report focusing on emerging technology and its applications for education in Australia and New Zealand.
This project aims to identify emerging technologies and classify them around their 'time to adoption horizon'. From the preview available on the website, this is how it's going to look over the next few years:
Time-to-Adoption: One year or Less * Virtual Worlds / Immersive Environments * Cloud-Based Applications * Social Bookmarking * Alternatives to Copyright (originally Creative Commons Licensing) Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years * Geolocation * Alternative Input Devices * Open Education and Courseware * Seamless Logon Integration Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years * Deep Tagging (originally Tagging Within Rich Media) * Next-Generation Mobile (originally Integrated Ubiquitous Technologies) * Lifestreams (originally Life Portfolios) * Flexible Screen Technologies
For some of us, some of these technologies may already be quite embedded in our practice or thinking however one of the great challenges for reports such as the Horizon.au report is to consider the sector more broadly. The Horizon.au project goes on to list challenges facing the sector and lists a number of critical challenges including:
  • security, policies etc limiting access to information, collaboration etc.
  • technology skills of educators in relation to students
  • evidence of the efficacy of new technologies being a barrier to experimentation
  • broadband availability
When creating a vision for what a future might look like, I hope we concentrate on the possibilities first and don't get too drawn into the barriers/blocks that will inevitably appear. There will be much time for tackling those issues later. On the list identified by the Horizon.au project, do you think they have it right? Are there any technologies that have been omitted? One that I have been thinking about is the importance of games in education. The report mentions games very briefly (some virtual worlds have games elements within them) and some of the alternative input devices (eg Nintendo's Wiimote) get a mention but what of the value of technology based games and games themselves? Cheers, Jerry.

Filed under  //   emerging technology  

Nice set of videos of Project Wonderland

Project Wonderland is an open source toolkit from SUN for creating 3d virtual worlds. This set of videos provides a great overview of the types of things you can do in them, what some people are actually doing, and what new functionality is available. One of the projects that I never seem to be quite able to get around to is installing a virtual world platform at home. To date I have had one attempt at Croquet and want to try Wonderland. Whichever is the easiest to get up and running usefully will win with me. I've got Croquet up and running but haven't really got much further with it yet.

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Filed under  //   virtual worlds  

bend me, shake me, anywhere you want me

...As long as its online, we're alright. Apologies to the American Breed for the remix! However, this is not about one hit wonders from years gone by, it's about technology - screens that bend, input devices you can shake, anywhere and anytime. What's over the horizon for us with new technologies and how will they be used in education? Lets start with screens - have a look at what Sony is up to - video courtesy of break.com.
Sony Flexible screen - Watch more Entertainment As I commented in a previous post, I am really interested in interfaces where I don't have to use a keyboard and the Nintendo Wii just keeps going from strength to strength. I can't believe it was so long ago now that I first posted about it. Using the whole body rather than just fingertips and eyes has got to have merit in all sorts of applications. How about gestures, not simply those we make with a mouse, but potentially the body, as in Minority Report. There is a fantastic scene in this film showing one particular vision of how interfaces may evolve. Its great to look at science fiction for ideas on future technologies but these types of interfaces are almost with us (eg Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch interfaces). Then there's this demo from Cebit 2008. We are running an online discussion thread over the next month on future technologies and if you are interested in this area and would like to join the discussion, feel free to join the Edna group on Future Technologies (the invitation key is FT2012). We hope to wrap it up with a panel discussion from a small group of experts which we will then publish and feed into further work on emerging technologies for education.

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Filed under  //   interface  

Australian ePortfolio Project - final project report released

I've been looking forward to this one for a while now. The Australian ePortfolio Project (AeP) is an ALTC funded project to "investigate ePortfolio practice in the higher education sector in Australia, in order to provide strategic and practical guidance about the use of ePortfolios in academic institutions." From its website, the project aims to:

* Analyse ePortfolio practice in the higher education sector in Australia and internationally * Review the range of ePortfolio applications used in universities * Identify significant issues related to ePortfolio use in Australian education * Examine the potential relationship with current National Diploma Supplement / Australian Higher Education Graduate Statement project * Consider the impact of ePortfolio use on student learning outcomes * Recommend ways to share excellent practice in the implementation and use of ePortfolios * Identify opportunities to advise and support further development of ePortfolio initiatives in the higher education sector * Establish a project website to facilitate national and international sharing and discussion of ePortfolio issues * Develop an ePortfolio community of practice initiative to support the future use of ePortfolios in Australia * Consider the future policy direction required to engage and inform ePortfolio adoption in academic institutions * Position Australia on the international ePortfolio scene through leadership in research into ePortfolio practice in Australia * Host a two day symposium to facilitate the sharing of ePortfolio experiences both in Australia and overseas.
The final report was released on 22nd October and is available here. It identifies four areas where strategies could be introduced to develop eportfolio practice, which are:
  • government policy
  • technical standards
  • academic policy
  • learning and teaching
There are a number of recommendations in the report which, if followed would support strategies in these areas. While the project has a natural focus on higher education, it is broader than that and some/many of the recommendations are valid and appropriate for a wider context which is where I am interested (eportfolios for life-long learning). For example, the policy recommendations include engagement by Government Departments with industry, professional and employer bodies to develop a common understanding of eportfolios in relation to employability skills. Strengthening the relationship between the VET, school and higher ed sectors is also encouraged to support lifelong and lifewide learning needs. The Australian Higher Education Graduation Statement also gets a mention - I think services around verification and authentication of claims in eportfolios are a great way of enhancing the credibility of portfolios and would provide a very valuable service. I am also interested in the recommendations around standards. Support for international standards and specifications in relation to eportfolios is also recommended. This is an important area for me. I believe eportfolios have tremendous potential for us when viewed from a lifelong perspective. To realise even some of this potential, the e-portfolio needs to extend beyond the boundaries of the educational institution. I have discussed this many times before and there are plenty of well-known and respected people out there promoting models of eportfolios based upon services that can be aggregated to build portfolios of choice. Institutional eportfolios do have their place though so to support lifelong needs, content within them needs to become truly portable. Ownership needs to be sorted out and simple methods for supporting interoperability with other eportfolios and related services need to be implemented. While I would love to see something like the recent call in Holland for all workers to have access to an eportfolio implemented (I am sure that would support current challenges and agendas here) in Australia, making eportfolios in general more interoperable is a good starting point. There are a number of recommendations around better supporting teaching and learning in relation to eportfolios that also deserve serious consideration. For them to be effective, e-portfolios cannot be tacked on to courses/curriculum etc - they need to be fully integrated and part of a teaching and learning practice that is appropriate to a 21st century (digital world). To do this, further research will be needed and support/training mechanisms put in place too. The report goes on to propose a number of potential models for the future. These are:
  • a national eportfolio for all model
  • a locally driven eportfolio model
  • a Web 2.0 model
  • a zero-action model
These are described in the report in detail and perhaps the one thing that I would like to consider would be a hybrid model. National schemes can be problematic for us in some ways however I think there is a place for certain types of eportfolio services that could be made available nationally or systemically. The Graduation Statement for example, would make a great plugin service that an eportfolio application could integrate with and I am sure there are plenty of others. If we do nothing (the zero-action model), the Web 2.0 model will have an impact as learners (that means potentially, all of us) seek to fill in the gaps in existing eportfolio implementations (the Web 2.0 model is with us anyway and for many, is seen as a more attractive alternative to institutionally bound offerings). The AeP final report is the culmination of a lot of work and should be read by anyone with an interest in this area. While I have wandered all over the place (off on tangents etc) in this post, I really recommend reading it if you are serious about eportfolios.

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Filed under  //   eportolio