Category — Community

Below is a link to a summary of our Feb 2005 CoP meeting and discussion with Barb Ross & Jennifer Gurrie from WebCT. Thanks to Michelle for leading the meeting & to Alison for taking notes!

Meeting Summary

Posted on behalf of Cindy Underhill

Just a brief update on the progress of this working group. Essentially we were brought together to look at the potential for e-portfolio use in Adult Basic Education programs. To date: we have decided on three platforms to pilot: SEGUE, OSPI and ELGG.

We have formed three test groups around these platforms. Our next steps are
to:

* create our own portfolios using the three systems.
* defeine a use case for the ABE programs
* examine the pedagogical issues

A rubric for assessment is in development and we will use this to guide our explorations. The goal is to test in April, evaluate in May and prepare to incorporate into some classes for September.

FYI:
BCCampus has worked with David Tosh and co. to develop some short, contextual “help” demos – dealing with a few aspects of portfolio development in ELGG. These can be viewed from the BCCampus Ed Tech Community of Practice site under Discussions > E-Portfolios > E-Portfolio ABE Pilot Project: http://community.bccampus.ca/bccampus

Here’s a brief summary of our last CoP meeting…

Discussion Points

1. Project/dept updates: Representatives from Science, Education, Nursing, and Agricultural Sciences gave short updates on e-portfolio activities in their departments.

2. Interesting conversation of how to introduce folio thinking to larger classes. How to encourage students to reflect on their learning & make connections between their courses. One point made was that there is a definite benefit to continuing with the same software from year to year. By doing this, students don’t have to engage so much in learning new technology from year to year.

3. Sample e-Portfolios: Everyone agreed that sample e-portfolios should be available on the website. Many students in the pilots are eager to see example e-portfolios when embarking on their own. Members also suggested that we include examples of reflections. Kele & Alison will take the lead on assembling examples and will poll the community for input & feedback.

4. iWebfolio demo: A few members shared their thoughts on the iWebfolio demo that was held on Jan 19th. Scott Johnson from Nuventive travelled to UBC to demo iWebfolio 3.0, their latest version. This was not a live demo & consisted of a series of screen shots and a teleconference with Dave Choban, Nuventive’s CIO. A live demo should be available in late March. Initial reaction was very positive and many felt that Nuventive had indeed listened to feedback from it’s users. One huge improvement is the ability for users to choose themes and navigation schemes for presentation.

5. K-12 e-Portfolio Initiatives: Kele reported on a couple of meetings she attended with BCcampus & school district representatives on the potential to bridge portfolios from K-12 to higher ed. See seperate summaries of these 2 meetings in separate blog postings in “Community” area.

6. Upcoming events: see a list of the internal & external events in the attached agenda.

I attended this forum in Surrey on January 13. It was particularly interesting to hear the teachers raising their issues of concern. One common thread was concern over how they were to integrate the portfolio practice and process into their teaching practice. I’m not certain of the status of portfolio implementation in other school districts, but Surrey seems to be quite proactive in their approach.

Here is a short summary of the meeting and the topics discussed.

This is a summary of the initial meeting, attended by Marianne Schroeder and myself, on bridging e-portfolio use between K-12 and post-secondary.

Download file

I attended the School District 43 (Coquitlam) e-Portfolio container meeting on November 26, 2004. There were several software demos during the meeting. I have compiled a the notes from the meeting. Please find the file under the “Continue reading ….” section.Meeting notes

Since the instance of OSP on http://station17.olt.ubc.ca:8800/portfolio/
is demonstrating some strange behaviour (e.g. It does not allow anyone to log in), we are planning to move the testing to another server http://station01.olt.ubc.ca:8800/portfolio/.

Please also take note that the OSP instance sitting on the old server will soon become unavailable.

If you would like to check out OSP, you can self-register an account from here.

The generic template I developed earlier can now be found here

The Community of Practice had our last CoP meeting on Oct 27.

During the meeting, we also had a short discussion on Jenny Moon’s paper on reflection. Thanks to Bob for preparing a summary on the paper.

The meeting minutes and the summary can be found in the extended entry (Click on “Continue reading “October 2004 Community of Practice Meeting””).Related files:

• Meeting Minutes (.doc)
• Reflection Paper Summary (.doc)

I attended Marc Prensky’s Talk at ISPI yesterday. It was an interesting talk on how games can facilitate learning.

The talk’s theme is on *++Engagement before Content++*–to invent learning that everyone will love.

My notes are in point form, I hope it will give everyone a good summary.

The slides will be posted on the ISPI website later.*Today’s learners are different*
Some fun facts to prove this:

* 2 Billions of ringtones/year
* 2 Billions of songs/month
* 3 Billions of text messages/day

bq. Brains like ours alter profoundly to fit the technologies and practices that surround them” by Andy Clark

Introducing the *++Digital Natives++*

* Conventional speed –> Twitch speed
* Step-by-Step –> Random Access
* Linear Procession –> Parallel Processing
* Text first –> Graphics first
* Work oriented –> Play oriented
* Standalone –> Connection

* take in information faster and process it faster
* can do more than one thing at a time if we practice more.
* play oriented doesn’t mean it’s less serious
* not just use technology differently but approach things differently as well

What about *++Digital Immigrants++*–think __real life__ happens off-line

Some *Terminology*
“RPG” = Role Playing Game
“RTS” = Real Time Strategy
“modding” = modifying the game with the tools that come with the game

Wiki = easy website creation tool
Pageslap = email a person with a questions then get a reply with only a URL
Astroturf = (I’ve missed this, please fill me in if you know what this mean… )

__There should be a glossary online on www.marcprensky.com, but I can’t find it anywhere__

*Fun Fact*
You go home for only 2 things:

# your wallet
# cellphones

bq. It’s not attention deficit–I’m just not listening. by text on a t-shirt.

*++Motivation and Engagement comes before Content++*

* Educators have methodology, but not into engagement
* Today’s students are motivated by their own interested.

bq. Players are producing as much as they are consuming–perhaps more.

Some games:

* In$ider: learn derivatives
* Metatagging – the ESP Game, tag images.
* COTS: Commercial Off the Shelf
** __Something__ Tycoon
** “The Typing of the Dead”
* commercial template

bq.. *Learning is the big secret why they play*

“I love to know that I’m getting better”

p. There are two types of games:

# Casual
# Hardcore

*Game design is crucial*

* keep you in your sit
** to keep you focus and thus engagement
* frequent and important decision making
** often very interesting decisions
** but students ask one question every 14 hours averagely
* *game play over eyecandy*
* good pacing
* complexity
* important choices
* immediate feedback
* adapting to player’s skill

__Add one instructional designer = suck out more fun__

*++Make e-Learning more Game-like++*

# Focus on Engagement
# increase rate of decision making
# provide clear goals that learners can and want to reach
# allow customization and exploration
# increase adaptivity
# *Don’t just add eyecandy, add it for a reason*

* empower students? do they do it at their leisure time?

* Games had become sports: cyber-athletes

* How to make games more spectacular-friendly*
* bigger screens
* in$ider –> if you have a very good player, people want to see him play

* get students to pull, not instructor pushing them
* adapt to their skills: __cheatcode__: rules to make the game easier to play
* idea of iteration
** not only do it by doing it
** but also do it in play
* fun may be different for different people

e.g. America’s Army — free game: US government wants to get 16-18-year-old to join Army.

* Educators
** e.g. In a modern classroom setting, an instructor pointed out some fact. Then students just told the instructor that the data he got is invalid. The student had just searched on the web. So next time, the instructor give students time in class to do the research on a topic and discuss it after.
** not to give content
** give context and facilitate discussion
** then get content after.

* game is a tool
* cellphone is a good platform

Questions from the audience:

* copyright issues?
**Creative commons license.
** sharing it
** attitudes on this issue are changing
* Digital divider
** what about the students without these technologies
** we need better system
** don’t want to buy technologies and use it for 10 years (US school system K-12)

*Related Links:*

* “www.teachopolis.com”:www.teachopolis.com
* “www.socialimpactgames.com”:www.socialimpactgames.com
* “My Reflections on Marc’s Talk”:http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/alison/archives/009147.php

I have recently update the e-Portfolio software requirements matrix.

We will be reviewing this matrix during our next CoP meeting (October 27, Wednesday, 1:00-2:30pm), so please feel free to print a copy for notes and discussion.

Related files:
e-Portfolio software requirements matrix

Recent updates include:

* the interoperability of iWebfolio and WebCT CE or WebCT Vista, and
* the added functionality of OSP 1.6 (beta) for downloading an e-Portfolio as a .zip file