Archive for July, 2006
July 20th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
E-Portfolios for Learning Blog by Helen Barret . ‘I have created this blog to discuss my ideas on electronic portfolios to support lifelong learning. I hope to share some of my concerns about the current direction of electronic portfolios in High Education and K-12 schools.’
My “Online Portfolio Adventure”. ‘I am exploring different online portfolio systems, free web server space or other strategies for developing online electronic portfolios. My purpose is to find options that are most appropriate for high schools and average individuals who are not associated with a higher education institution.’
See also What is an ePortfolio? and History of ePortfolios at ePortfolios Portal
Educause: An Overview of E-Portfolios by George Lorenzo and John Ittelson (PDF)
Technorati Tags: ePortfolios
July 20th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Using podcasts for e-learning. ‘Christine Wilks from Make It Happen gives a brief overview of how podcasting can be used for e-learning. A series of podcast episodes could be an effective way to deliver learning content as part of an online course, or to support face to face learning beyond the classroom.’
Make It Happen: Learncast. ‘At Make It Happen we are committed to delivering quality online learning experiences. That means trying out new media and methods to find out what works best. Here we begin to explore the potential of podcasting as a medium for e-learning.’
e-Learning with Christine Wilks
Technorati Tags: eLearning, Podcasting, Educational Technology
July 18th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Education 2.0 - more than just e-learning. ‘Smart buildings and tech-savvy teachers boost learning. Universities and colleges are looking at how technology can improve their teaching and bring their content to wider audiences. And it’s not just about sitting students in front of PCs to type up their essays either. It’s a broader issue exploring how technology can change the way teaching is done, how learning can be extended beyond the college gates and whether new buildings can have technology embedded in them to create a better learning environment.’
ZDNet Education IT: Education 2.0. ‘I read Marc Wagner’s post regarding mobile data protection with interest, since a gift 2 years ago to our school had provided most of our teachers with laptops. These laptops are, by and large, highly utilized and often contain a variety of very sensitive data. These data can include grades, special education documents, discipline documents, letters to parents, and even union-related or administrative materials. In Marc’s article, he talked about using Internet technologies to access files stored securely on a school network or server. While this represents a best-case scenario, many schools, especially in the K-12 arena, may lack the resources in terms of systems administration and/or bandwidth to support VPNs or other remote access technologies.’
NoahBrier.com: Education 2.0. ‘Education is a very big issue. While we’re all busy talking about 2.0, America’s children are being taught like the computer has yet to be invented. If we think making change in the media/tech world is hard, try your hand at education. Trust me, I have a mother whose job it is to find ways to help schools connect with students the system’s disenfranchised.’
Web 2.0 in Education
Technorati Tags: Education 2.0, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Education, Educational Technology
July 16th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Open source powers Welsh e-theses project. ‘A newly launched electronic theses deposit system, the Repository Bridge allows theses produced at Welsh universities to be automatically and electronically added and stored at the National Library of Wales. The system is part of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)’s digital repositories programme. JISC works with further and higher education by providing guidance, advice and opportunities to use ICT to support teaching, learning, research and administration. The project is based at the Aberystwyth and Swansea universities and provides a regional hub for the UK-wide electronic theses online service (EThOS) project, which aims to develop a UK database of theses.’
Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS) Project. ‘The aim of the EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service) project is to deliver a fully operational, easily scaleable and financially viable prototype UK online electronic theses service, and supporting infrastructure. This service will enable students, researchers, and in fact anyone else with an interest in post graduate research theses material, to search the EThOS and to access, from the desktop, the full text, in secure format, of electronically stored theses, following selection.’
Open Archives Initiative
Technorati Tags: Ethos, JISC, Open Archives, Open Access
July 13th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
The power of the podcast by Kim Thomas. ‘Sometimes, a very simple idea can turn out to be genuinely revolutionary. Despite the geeky name, podcasting is a democratic technology that can be used by anyone. Podcasts are just digital audio files (MP3s) made available over a website; users can listen to them on their PCs, or download them to an MP3 player such as an iPod. Podcasting may, as a handful of universities are discovering, have the potential to make education a more learner-centric experience. Several North American universities are already using podcasting, but one of the first UK institutions to do so was the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where physics lecturer Andy Breen decided to introduce it as an experiment in September 2004. Initially, he recorded his own course lectures and uploaded them to the department’s virtual learning environment (VLE). The trial proved successful, and in February, it was extended to other members of the department. Currently four of Andy’s colleagues are podcasting their lectures, and the college’s library has created a pool of recording devices to enable other departments to follow suit.’
July 13th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Breaking China: ChinesePod takes on language learning. ‘Language learning is about to change - at least that’s what Hank Horkoff hopes. With his company ChinesePod staff picking up some serious media attention around the world, more than 20,000 people have subscribed for free, podcasted Chinese lessons and 2,000 are paying for the company’s full package. Every day the Shanghai-based ChinesePod team dishes out a fresh lesson of Chinese, on subjects as diverse as ordering food, Mao Zedong’s impact on China and the World Cup.’
Technorati Tags: ChinesePod, Podcasts, Learning Chinese, Educational Technology
July 13th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Podcast craze hits classrooms. ‘Some say digital lectures can let students catch up. Hoping to appeal to tech-savvy students with a shrinking attention span, more Boston-area colleges are pushing professors to go digital and record their lectures as downloadable files that student can listen to wherever, whenever. Supporters of the idea say that podcasts help students study better, allowing baffled freshmen to fast-forward to the part of an introductory lecture they didn’t understand and hit repeat. The University of Massachusetts at Lowell, for example, will try with 10 high-tech classrooms this fall.’
Technorati Tags: Podcasts, Digital Lectures, Educational Technology
July 13th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Podcasts help make history come alive. ‘As the use of iPods and other handheld listening devices becomes more prevalent among students, some forward-thinking historical societies and other educational groups are embracing the technology as a means to reach students and further preserve history. At Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, for instance, historians are using podcasts to provide educators, students, and other potential visitors with information about the park and its historical significance.’
Colonial Williamsburg - Past and Present: Podcasts
Technorati Tags: Podcasts
July 10th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
E-Learning Lab - Centre for User Driven Innovation, Learning and Design is established by the project Virtual Learning Environments and Learning Methods, which is a project connected to The Digital North Denmark. The object of E-Learning Lab is to support development and use of e-learning regionally and internationally. The aim is to create a dynamic research, development, and resource centre that through participation in regional, national, and international collaborations gathers and contributes to development of the most recent knowledge within this field.
Technorati Tags: eLearning Lab, eLearning
July 9th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
JHSPH OpenCourseWare. ‘The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) project provides access to content of the School’s most popular courses. As challenges to the world’s health escalate daily, the School feels a moral imperative to provide equal and open access to information and knowledge about the obstacles to the public’s health and their potential solutions.’
Technorati Tags: OpenCourseWare, OCW, Johns Hopkins, JHSPH
July 9th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
JIME Special Issue: Portable Learning - Experiences with Mobile Devices. ‘From the Editorial: This special issue of JIME brings together several papers that were produced following a symposium on Portable Learning - Learner and Teacher Experiences with Mobile Devices held in June 2005 at the UK Open University. There is considerable interest in how mobile devices of various kinds can support learning in different contexts ranging from their use in formal settings such as schools and universities through to more informal settings. The area of mobile learning is a very busy one with a regular stream of conferences and workshops. However, as with all technologies in their early days, there is a real need to distinguish the hype and rhetoric from the empirical evidence and reality of use. The symposium papers were grounded in the developing literature and in empirical work. They focused on user experiences and often explored the potential in terms of scenarios of use.’ (PDF)
Using Mobile Technology to Create Flexible Learning Contexts. ‘This paper discusses the importance of learning context with a particular focus upon the educational application of mobile technologies. We suggest that one way to understand a learning context is to perceive it as a Learner Centric Ecology of Resources. These resources can be deployed variously but with a concern to promote and support different kinds of mediations, including those of the teacher and learner.’ (PDF)
Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME)
Technorati Tags: mLearning, Portable Learning, JIME
July 9th, 2006 by Jorge Goncalves
Computer-Based Assessment in E-Learning: A Framework for Constructing “Intermediate Constraint” Questions and Tasks for Technology Platforms. ‘Technology today offers many new opportunities for innovation in educational assessment through rich new assessment tasks and potentially powerful scoring, reporting and real-time feedback mechanisms. One potential limitation for realizing the benefits of computer-based assessment in both instructional assessment and large scale testing comes in designing questions and tasks with which computers can effectively interface (i.e., for scoring and score reporting purposes) while still gathering meaningful measurement evidence. This paper introduces a taxonomy or categorization of 28 innovative item types that may be useful in computer-based assessment.’
The Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment (JTLA). ‘The Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment (JTLA) is a peer-reviewed, scholarly on-line journal addressing the intersection of computer-based technology, learning, and assessment. The JTLA promotes transparency in research by strongly encouraging authors to include full data sets, analytic and/or coding scripts, and relevant software whenever possible in order to facilitate replication studies and secondary analyses.’
Technorati Tags: eLearning, eLearning Assessment
