Friday, October 6, 2006

Telling Stories. I was so pleased today to hear so many colleagues talk about using eportfolios to find out more about their students. I worry that in too many initiatives eportfolios are seen simply as tools that bring efficiences to the teaching and assessment production line. ePortfolios offer so much more than that - they offer personal spaces for story telling: stories about the learner; their aspirations; successes; values; capabilities and concerns. The eportfolios I am thinking of are those that are owned by the learner not the instituion; that are concerned with learning not assessment (though I be [Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research blogs] 11:28:16 PM      Google It!.

New workshop wikis. The nice thing about participating in workshops is that it forces you to update your resources and general knowledge about what is out there. Jan, kele, and I prepared a 2 hour version of our original 6 hour workshop on Digital Tools for Feedback and Assessment at the ETUG gathering last week, and in the process did some well-needed updating to the wikis that link the resources we talk about in the presentation. We moved them off the old careo server, so all the URLs have changed, and we added a few extra pages as well. Unlike the workshop we do for the UBC audience, this one pushed us to locate tools that were available to everybody, and not just the UBC community. Most of the tools we talked facilitate peer feedback and group work, but some participants were looking for tools that provide computer generated feedback. Therefore I've included 2 new wiki pages for Concept Tutor and Quiz Image, two of my favorites from the Engage group at the University of Wisconsin. The starting page is this one: Digital Tools Voice tools Track Changes Concept Tutor Quiz Image As always, this was a great opportunity to learn from the participants and hopefully we'll see some of their contributions to the wiki at some point, since it would be nice to know a bit more about how others are dabbling with tools and feedback in their own institutions. [Connections] 11:23:47 PM      Google It!.

First TLT Talk: Clickers in the Classroom: An Interactive Panel. Just a plug (and a reminder for me) for our first Teaching and Learning with Technology Series Talk of the 2006-07 year, set for later this month (Sept 26): Title: Clickers in the Classroom: An Interactive Panel This September UBC is rolling out a new version of a teaching tool to the wider campus. Student Response Systems, commonly referred to... [Michelle's Online Learning Freakout Party Zone] 10:58:33 PM      Google It!.

stu.dicio.us - what a student-developed, student-focused learning/study tool looks like. http://stu.dicio.us/ Thought I've been away I did try to catch up in Bloglines the last 2 days and I didn't see this making the rounds so hopefully of interest - stu.dicio.us, while still in beta, is an incredibly simple student-focused tool that currently supports note taking and scheduling, with file storage and self grade-tracking coming soon. There are three things about it that are really beautiful: - it is REALLY simple, and yet quite useful. Try the note creation facility; it's a very nice web-based outliner that uses keyboard commands (more below) - all class notes are shared (you have to agree to this to use the system). So not only does this create an ecology of class notes for individual classes (with basic 'tagging' principles in play as to how to identify a class, no heavyweight SIS-integration here) but by searching on certain terms you may find class notes from other classes, even from other institutions, around specific keywords (which does raise quality issues, but one assumes the developers could bring practices from other social softwares to bear here). - based on the amazingly simple interface, I assume (though I couldn't find such an announcement on their site) that a prime target for the app will be cell phones/PDAs and other mobile devices. So... a web-based, mobile-accessible site for students to store THEIR notes/information about THEIR studies, which simultaneously gives them access to other students' notes as well. So cool. - SWL [EdTechPost] 10:12:41 PM      Google It!.