Category — News

Hi there,

I most likely should have posted these on this weblog, rather than my own — but I thought I would “cross post” here:

I posted two weblog entires that muse about how “comments” in an e-portfolio should be considered “items” in their own right – and be able to be re-used. Hmm.. I wish I had been that succinct on the initial posts!

You can find them here:

1. Owning Comments..
2. Folllow-up: Comments Follow-up & Rubrics too…

3. If you want something somewhat entertaining: Metaphor for Reuse: Betty Comic

–Michelle

Here is another reflection from the BCEd Online Conference. This one from Bjorn Thomson, a Master’s of Education student who is working in 3 of our e-portfolio pilots. Thanks Bjorn!!
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BCEd Online

Natasha Boskic, Educational Technology Manager at EPLT , sent in this reflection from the recent BCEd Online Conference to share with the community…Thanks Natasha!
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Whenever I go to a conference I am always faced with a difficult challenge of choosing one session to attend over the other. It was not easier here with 13 different rooms with simultaneous presentations. And, of course, the most interesting part

Dr. Marion Porath from the Faculty of Education forwarded this conference information to the CoP. Thanks Marion!
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On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to extend a cordial
invitation for you to attend one of the upcoming IPSI BgD
multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary conferences.

The first one will take place in Sveti Stefan, Montenegro:

IPSI-2005 MONTENEGRO
Hotel Sveti Stefan (arrival: 1 October 05 / departure: 8 October 05)
Deadlines: 1 May 05 (abstract) / 1 July 05 (full paper)

The second one will take place in Venice, Italy:

IPSI-2005 VENICE
Hotel Luna Baglioni (arrival: 9 November 05 / departure: 14 November 05)
Deadlines: 1 June 05 (abstract) / 1 August 05 (full paper)

The third one will take place on the Bled lake, Slovenia:

IPSI-2005 SLOVENIA
Hotel Toplice (arrival: 8 December 05 / departure: 11 December 05)
Deadlines: 1 July 05 (abstract) & 1 September 05 (full paper)
All IPSI BgD conferences are non-profit. They bring together the elite of
the world science; so far, we have had seven Nobel Laureates speaking at
the opening ceremonies. The conferences always take place in some of the
most attractive places of the world. All those who come to IPSI
conferences once, always love to come back (because of the unique
professional quality and the extremely creative atmosphere); lists of past
participants are on the web, as well as details of future conferences.

These conferences are in line with the newest recommendations of the US
National Science Foundation and of the EU research sponsoring agencies, to
stress multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary
research (M+I+T++ research). The speakers and activities at the
conferences truly support this type of scientific interaction.

One of the main topics of this conference is “E-education and E-business
with Special Emphasis on Semantic Web and Web Datamining”

Other topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Internet
* Computer Science and Engineering
* Mobile Communications/Computing for Science and Business
* Management and Business Administration
* Education
* e-Medicine
* e-Oriented Bio Engineering/Science and Molecular Engineering/Science
* Environmental Protection
* e-Economy
* e-Law
* Technology Based Art and Art to Inspire Technology Developments
* Internet Psychology

If you would like more information on either conference, please send an email to bled2005@ipsiconferences.org

If you plan to submit an abstract and paper, please let us know
immediately for planning purposes. Note that you can submit your paper
also to the IPSI Transactions journal.

Dave Tosh pointed me to TeacherEd.com, a new community tool to connect teachers online. The tool is powered by ELGG and was developed by David Ernst from the University of Minnesota. Perhaps this a tool that could be used to create a forum to connect K-12 teachers and post-secondary instructors on e-portfolio practice?

The International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning will be holding its 2005 Annual Meeting in Vancouver this October 14th-16th. The general theme for this year’s event is “Commitment, Community and Collaboration.” The deadline for submissions is June 1st.

For more information, www.issotl.indiana.edu/ISSOTL/call.htm

This came through the EPAC listserv recently: a call for public comments for OSP 2.5 requirements…

Today the Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI) released the
functional requirements and specifications for version 2.5 of the
Open Source Portfolio (OSP) for public comment. Version 2.5 will be a
major revision of OSP that includes the full set of features to be
developed using resources from the Mellon Foundation grant. These
requirements were written by the OSPI Functional Requirements
Workgroup, of which I am a member, over the course of the last six
months. We welcome comments from all EPAC members. The comment period
runs from today through May 12, 2005. Comments should be posted on
the discussion forums on the OSPI website. You are also invited to
participate in an open conference call with the functional
requirements group, which will be annouced shortly.

To access the requirements document and and discussion forums, visit
the OSPI website:
http://www.theospi.org/

We have reached the end of Year 2 of our campus-wide e-portfolio pilot here at UBC. So, it’s time for us to reflect on the year past and look ahead to the next 12 months of the academic year. The project members are currently busy collecting all of the project artifacts that have been created over the past year. These include: how to documents, sample e-portfolios, examples of reflection, lessons learned, presentations, testimonials from project participants. Our plan is to assemble all of the project artifacts into a blogfolio. This should be complete in a couple of weeks. I’ll post again, with a URL, once it’s ready for release!

Novak pointed me towards this article published on the Educause website:

“Beyond the Electronic Portfolio: A Lifetime Personal Web Space

This article may be old news to most of you (originally published in 2004), but it was new to me. I like the concept of personal webspace as the engine behind the e-portfolio. The authors also mention Vannevar Bush’s classic article “As We May Think” and his concept of the memex to extend an individual’s active memory. Interesting food for thought.

Here at UBC we could consider extending a personal webspace model to students. Students could store all their relevant academic, workplace and personal documents/artifacts there and choose which ones to pull into different contexts (e-portfolio, resume, online course, personal website). Do you think this would work?

More from the BCEd Online Conference…Helen Barrett, yesterday’s keynote at the pre-conference, has posted to her blog about the event. She is very concerened that the BC high school graduation portfolio will poison the well for future (e)portfolio implementations/experiences.

For more on this, read the post from Helen Barrett’s blog.