Elgg has recently publicized a set of new features that should give users with an improved experience. New features include dashboard, themed communities, and better searching. For more information, please visit:
http://curverider.co.uk/?p=15
Campus Technology Magazine has published an article, “Electronic Student Assessment >> The Power of the Portfolio“, that examines the innovative ways a number of U.S. post-secondary schools are using portfolios as assessment tools.
Helen Barrett has posted an online document, titled “Purposes of Digital Stories in ePortfolios“, that examines how to merge these two learning tools. She provides a number of good examples of digital stories.
The Vancouver Sun & Canada.com published an article in mid-August titled “Sophisticated new tools help students.” The article focuses on the internet and digital devices that are enhancing studies from art history to geography and features Land & Food Systems, Cathleen Nichols, and Arts’ Ancient Spaces.
Read the article.
UBC Okangan has announced their 2nd Annual Learning Conference (note that this conference takes place on a Thurs-Fri and is followed by the Wine Festival!). Here are the need-to-knows:
UBC Okanagan’s 2nd Annual Learning Conference
Learning Free of Boundaries
May 4 & 5, 2006
UBC Okanagan, Kelownahttp://www.ubc.ca/okanagan/ctl/conference
Learning Free of Boundaries
The second annual UBC Okanagan Learning Conference will focus on learning free of boundaries – boundaries between disciplines, boundaries between professions, boundaries between learning spaces, boundaries between learners and learning materials and boundaries between learning and technology.
The conference will open with a keynote address by Dr. John Willinsky, Pacific Press Professor of Literacy and Technology at UBC and recent winner of the Blackwell Scholarship Award for his book The Access Principle. Dr. Willinsky will speak on “A Newly Open and Public Quality to Learning”.
Lifia is hosting it’s second Pan-American e-Portfolio Working Forum in Vancouver on April 18 & 19. UBC’s own Cyprien Lomas from Land & Food Systems will be presenting along with others from Canada and the U.S. For more information & to register, go to: http://www.lifia.ca/en/index.htm
Helen Chen (Stanford) will be here at UBC this Friday March 3 to share her thoughts on emerging technologies and community building. Helen’s work is very much aligned with the work of UBC’s e-Portfolio Community of Practice with crossovers on research and reflection.
This talk is hosted by Skylight in the Faculty of Science.
Here’s a short description of the topics Helen will be covering:
How can we identify and build opportunities for students to effectively reflect upon and integrate formal and informal learning experiences in a language and format that is relevant to how today’s students understand and live their lives? Drawing from examples from Stanford’s Folio Thinking research program and the work of the National Coalition on Electronic Portfolio Research, this session will engage participants in an interactive discussion about theoretical models for framing ePortfolio design and research, the potential contributions of the ePortfolio model to assessment and scholarship of teaching and learning efforts, and scaffolding and facilitating reflective thinking using wikis, blogs, and other social software technologies.
It’s not too late to attend this excellent talk! You can register here:
http://www.tag.ubc.ca/programs/series-detail.php?series_id=167
From day 1 of UBC’s campus-wide e-portfolio pilot, one of the key goals has been to choose a campus-wide software solution. It has become clear that that goal, first stated 3 years ago, was ahead of it’s time. We haven’t yet had success with this one and have found that a one-size fits all may not be the way to go. However, recently announced developments with a number of tools (WebCT, iWebfolio, Keep Toolkit, Elgg) give us hope that an easy-to-use and scaleable solution may be in our future.
A message came through on a WebCT listserv this morning detailing the top 5 reasons to upgrade to WebCT Campus Edition 6. Reason # 4, copied in below, is to get ready for the WebCT Portfolio. A number of our pilots have used WebCT (the student presentation) for student e-portfolios. We’re looking forward to seeing how this will work and are hopeful that it will indeed be easy to learn.
4. Get ready for the WebCT Portfolio!
————————————————————Moving to WebCT Campus Edition 6 will also pave the way for
you to start using the WebCT Portfolio. Targeted for release
in the first half of 2006, the WebCT Portfolio is a personal
portfolio solution that will make portfolio initiatives easy
for institutions to manage and for students and instructors
to learn.
Educause is sponsoring the following webcast on the 2006 Horizon Report. If you have the time, I recommend attending this session. The report was distributed during the ELI Annual Meeting in San Diego and is worth a read. UBC is a member institution, so go ahead and register if you have the time.
—
Topic: Emerging Learning Technologies: The 2006 Horizon Report
Date: March 6, 2006
Time: 1:00 p.m. EST (12:00 p.m. CST, 11:00 a.m. MST, 10:00 a.m. PST); International participants: You may wish to visit this external time-conversion Web site to calculate the event’s start time in your time zone.
Duration: 1 hour
Facilitator: Larry Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, The New Media Consortium
The annual Horizon Report identifies and describes six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education within the coming one to five years. It is a collaborative effort between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative.
Join Larry Johnson at this seminar to find out about the trends identified in the 2006 report and what they may mean for teaching, learning, and technology at your institution. Johnson will also describe the process behind the report’s development, NMC’s Horizon Project.
This free seminar is an exclusive benefit for ELI member organizations—you and any others at your organization are invited to attend. Virtual seating is limited, however, and registration is required.
Register here.
This year UBC’s e-Portfolio Conference has been rolled into the larger UBC Learning Conference. This is a wonderful development in a couple of ways:
The Call for Proposals is now out, marked with a March 10/06 deadline. So, bring your innovative ideas on teaching and learning, using technology in the classroom, and student engagement forward and submit something!
Follow this site for more details about the conference as they become available:
http://www.elearning.ubc.ca/ubclearningconference