Technology

information & communication technology

ePortfolios

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If you’re wondering about the value of ePortfolios in high school, then read Helen Barrett’s article in response to a student’s question, "I am a student in high school. Why is it manditory for me to make a proficient on my portfolio for me to graduate? I have all of my credits to graduate, but if I make lower than an proficient I don’t get to graduate."

Would you rather spend a day taking a series of tests that just make you nervous, don’t help you learn and only assess how well you can remember a lot of facts or solve a lot of problems, most of which are irrelevant to your life? And if you don’t pass those tests, you have to keep taking them until you do pass? Isn’t it much better to carefully and reflectively develop a portfolio that showcases your strengths and your growth over time?

For those interested in ePortfolios at the university level, take a look at ePortfolio@York

* You can also go to the Open Source Portfolio Initiative and see what this community initiative is doing around ePortfolios in general.

Via Jeremy Hiebert

Research on the Web

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Will, at Weblogg-ed (an excellent resource for educators), discusses teachers, students and information literacy on the Web.

"I think it’s better for everyone if we just give them a list of sites they can use when they do their papers," the principal said, "and tell them they have to have a certain number of those resources in the final product."



Now, this is a loose transcript of the conversation, but the point is clear. Instead of teaching effective use of the tool, the easy way is to limit the reach of the tool, rein it in and limit its effect. If that is or will become the prevailing view, we are all in serious, serious trouble…

I see with my children (Grades 5 & 7) that research skills and media literacy are not developed at all in the New Brunswick school system. These are critical skills, especially since there are fewer resources in our school and public libraries. My own research has found two good online resources for students. The KVL Research Portal is easy to use and my son has found it quite helpful. The Big 6 Information Literacy site has some good information, but is not as dynamic as KVL’s. My perspective is that if the schools don’t teach information literacy, then it’s up to parents.

Any other recommendations would be appreciated. I put "Student Resources" sites on FURL for future reference.

Portals – Lessons Learnt

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In the paper, A False Dawn Over the Field of Dreams? [full-text no longer available], Stephen James Musgrave looks at the UK experience with community portals, including educational ones. He refers to a study of portals that divided them into a four-layer scale of interactivity:

  1. Promotional: sites providing information but little interaction.
  2. Content: sites providing more sophisticated information and some interaction.
  3. Content Plus: sites providing very useful content and more advanced on-line self-service features.
  4. Transactional: sites which are accessible, complete, thoughtful, and coherent; and with more than one type of on-line interaction (e.g. payment, application, consultation, bookings).

Only 2% of sites were considered Transactional – pity.

In concluding how to blend people and technology, Musgrave states:

The People and Technology improvements addressed in this narrative are required so as to enhance a portal based delivery of citizen-centric services through the adoption of common standards, and the development of common components. Technology improvement through systems integration is required to achieve the interactivity demanded by users; giving services that will be valued by users. The use of open source software – with vendor support – is likely to become a "middle way" that gives ownership of core elements to the portal developer community; minimising problems with vendor lock-in, whilst enabling industrial strength portal products to be deployed.

Though not a portal, Scott Wilson’s graphical description of a Virtual Learning Environment shows some of the same principles as those espoused by Musgrave. It is a series of smaller pieces (many open source) loosely joined, and focused on the needs of the individual, not the institution. This approach could avoid the hopelessly optimistic "if you build it, they will come" syndrome alluded to in the title.

Where the jobs are

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As I said earlier this week:

I would infer that as cheap and easy Internet tools proliferate, those with specialised skills in coding, etc, may begin to lose their market worth – unless they also have the skills of inventiveness, empathy and meaning that Daniel Pink believes will be necessary for future employability.

It seems that this is already happening, according to this post from Daniel Lemire, on the lack of jobs for computer science graduates:

The message is quite clear, I believe. If you want to train yourself or students to produce software (programming or software engineering), you better be damn good because the job market is not there anymore. Will jobs come back? Automobile workers in North America are still waiting for the jobs sent to Mexico or elsewhere to come back. Now, programming or software engineering are not useless skills, far from it, but it might be a better strategy to aim for a business jobs where your programming or computer networking skills can be put to good use, for example. It seems that the job market is moving toward information technology (security, networking, using the right technology at the right time, understanding the implication of a given technology for business).


Real Benefits of Blogs

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Starting a blog can be a daunting task, as this tongue-in-cheek Kuro5hin article shows. Dave Pollard says that business is not embracing blogs because they don’t address immediate needs (e.g. in this fiscal quarter). Dave provides good pointers on how and why blogs should be used in business, and he describes his own adoption journey. His is similar to my own experience – heard about blogs, tested out some free stuff, started using a feed reader, and then added blogging to my static website. I don’t like to talk about blogging for blogging’s sake [too many instances of the "b" word in this post], but let’s face it; once you’ve tried it, you’re hooked. You don’t have to write a blog, as there is a heck of a lot just to read.

After an intensive year online, these are the tangible benefits to my business:

  • Using a feed reader (via RSS), saves a lot of time and bookmarking.
  • The information I get from bloggers is usually weeks ahead of the mainstream press. Call this competitive intelligence.
  • By blogging, I have raised my profile on the web and increased visits to my site by a factor of 1000 in less than one year. This is cheap marketing.
  • I use my database of posts when preparing reports, proposals and presentations. It helps to have a searchable system like Drupal.
  • Blogging forces me to think and reflect in order to write, so that what was just an idea in my mind becomes more concrete.
  • The underlying technology of easy posting and RSS to keep track of things, makes a lot of sense for collaborative learning and collaborative work – two areas of interest for my business.
  • Through blogging, I have met a number of business partners.
  • Blogging keeps me in touch with a lot of interesting people and expands my view of the world, providing new ideas for my business.
  • When I have a problem, especially a technical one, I post it on my site or someone else’s and usually get an informed answer within 24 hours. It’s like a large performance support system.
  • It allows people to get to know my opinions before they engage me as a consultant; saving time and potential frustrations.

Like e-mail, blogs are practical tools for everyday business. There are abuses of both (spam) but I think that blogs are one more tool that give the small business operator a real competitive advantage.

“This Internet Thing”

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Seth Godin marketing and branding guru, and author of Purple Cow, latest post is on how the importance of the Internet is only beginning to be felt. For instance:

Penetration. There are 50 times as many people using the Net as there were then [ten years ago]. 50x is a multiple you don’t see every day.

For those in the elearning or social networking business, this is a very important fact. It may mean that business models that failed 5-10 years ago, could work now. Time to clean out that closet of ideas.

Tools. You can launch most any online service with almost no custom programming. Changethis.com demonstrated to me how straightforward this has become. It also means that finding the world’s greatest programmer is no longer a critical component for most services.

I would infer that as cheap and easy Internet tools proliferate, those with specialised skills in coding, etc, may begin to lose their market worth – unless they also have the skills of inventiveness, empathy and meaning that Daniel Pink believes will be necessary for future employability.

 

ATutor 1.4.3

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ATutor, a Canadian Open Source Web-based Learning Content Management System (LCMS), has just released its latest version 1.4.3. ATutor’s trademark function is that it is designed with accessibility and adaptability in mind.

New in this release:

Forum Upgrades: System wide and shared forums for communication across courses. Create communities around groups of course forums, or around an entire ATutor course server. Alumni participation in course forums.
Subscribe to general forums or course forums, or subscribe to specific topic threads to receive messages by email. Quickly access current forum messages through the Forum Posts menu module.



Enrollment Manager Overhaul: Create, import, and export course enrollment lists, and manage enrolled students and alumni. New tabbed display for managing student information, managing course lists, managing roles and privileges, as well as creating and managing groups.



Language Overhaul: Language management has been completely re-designed. Translate, import, and export language from within your own ATutor installation. Support for the UTF-8 character set. ATutor is available in more than 30 languages.



Question Database: Create tests by adding questions to, and retrieving questions from, a test item repository.



Test/Survey Manager Upgrade: Create image based test items, arrange multiple choice questions vertically or horizontally, assign tests to a class, to groups, or to individual students, analyse test data and generate statistics.



Theme Manager: Easily copy, import, and export ATutor themes.



RSS Feeds: Syndicate ATutor course announcements to display them on remote Web sites.



Embed ACollab: Embed ACollab [collaborative workspace] into ATutor, or open it in a new window to participate in course group activities.

Easy Enrollment: Students can now enroll in courses through the Browse Courses screen.

Open source learning systems, like this SCORM compliant LCMS, are steadily improving and becoming viable options for any organization, public or private.

Some Free Advice for Higher Education

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Here is some free advice for any university or college, public or private. If you are wondering how you can stay in touch with your graduates and foster a sense of community, especially when it comes to future fund raising, then offer free blogs. This beats collecting addresses, making phone calls and all the other ways that development officers try to raise interest and money. Let your graduates be part of your university when you’re not asking for money, and they will be there when you need them.

Wellesley College is already doing it, so get on the wave now. If you need any advice, give me a call [shameless self-promotion].

From Cluetrain to Wirearchy

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In 1999 we had the Cluetrain Manifesto, with its 95 theses à la Gutenberg; the first ten being:

  1. Markets are conversations.
  2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
  3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
  4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
  5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
  6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
  7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
  8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
  9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
  10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

Many business executives do not realise the underlying reason of the Cluetrain Manifesto, and continue to build defensive walls between the company and their customers. They even use military terminology when referring to their markets. Get real folks, the customer is your lifeblood, and now has the tools to figure things out with or without you. Take thesis 7 – today we have more than just hyperlinks; we have peer-to-peer and Voice over IP to connect with anyone, anytime. Jon Husband, with his Wirearchy perspective, has developed his own 2005 manifesto on a similar theme [updated link]:

#1 Customers, employees and other stakeholders are all interconnected, and have access to most, if not all the information that everyone else has.
#2 The organization chart usually reflects power and politics in the organization … more often than not, customers and employees find work-arounds to create the experiences that delight.
#3 People interconnected by the Internet and software have ways of speaking to each other – and so they do that – all day long.
#4 Champion-and-Channel replaces Command-and-Control.
#5 Conversations are where information is shared, knowledge is created and are the basis for getting the right things done.
#6 Trust, Transparency and Authenticity are the glue that holds it all together.
#7 The Workplace of the Future will be more diverse – in terms of demographics, values, gender, race and language.
#8 New, integrated and sophisticated technologies are being developed and implemented – and the knowledge workers of tomorrow will be more interconnected than ever.
#9 We’re All In This Together
#10 There’s No Going Back to “Normal” – Permanent Whitewater is the New Normal.

Here are some ways that I can think of to develop a new company, based on Jon’s principles. You see, I always have to make things concrete – it’s in my nature ;-)

  • Build the company with an open connection to your customers, whether with the two-way web (e.g. blogs) or with a physical presence.
  • Develop your organisation chart based upon your customers needs, not your own. When I lived in Germany, what I found unique was that the bank tellers were the most senior people in the bank. Bank employees were not allowed to interact with customers until they knew how the entire system functioned. This meant excellent customer service.
  • Have all of your marketing material written by someone who can write in plain language. Maybe even pay your best customers to write it for you. In this way, it will reflect the customer, not you.

Please feel free to add your own …

Drupal for Learning

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Do you want to be in on the ground floor of the development of a new web-based learning system? Boris Mann sums up the activities of a lot of people who want to create a learning-oriented Drupal CMS. The time has come to get things going, and I know that Will already has a lot of ideas.

Having been on the inside of one proprietary LCMS, and having evaluated dozens of LMS/LCMS, I would like to see the creation of a much looser, but still learning-oriented, structure. I think that Scott Wilson’s graphic of a next generation virtual learning environment has some promise. I also believe that we should try to push the envelope and allow for different instructional strategies; something beyond testing through quizzes and questionaires. For example, Dave Jonassen has developed an instructional design methodology for problem-based learning and I know that he has been looking for someone to implement it on the web:

For the past few years, I have devoted most of my professional research and development to better understanding problem solving. Why? Primarily because the field of instructional design has largely ignored problem solving, so there is very little understanding of how humans solve problems or how to support learning, how to solve problems.

Does this sound like an interesting project for the Drupal community or anyone else?