CogBlogged Tagged ‘ed tech’

Albert IP, from Random Walk in E-Learning reports today At the most recent LOM (Learning Object Metadata) WG meeting in Orlando, it was decided that the work on the LOM RDF binding will be discontinued. The reason quoted is the formation of a new taskforce between IEEE LOM and Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. And in a related story submitted as a crumpled blurry fax obscured with unidentified beverage stains bearing the name of L. Lighips: Lorem ipsum ad semper noluisse efficiendi mel, nisl iudico graece vis te. Quo debet euripidis constituto ne, at sea volumus scripserit. Mei te inani splendide. Invidunt consequuntur nec ei, vel mollis audire impedit ad, pro nominavi voluptua ut. Vix cu munere denique hendrerit, sed at aperiri probatus accusata, laoreet mediocritatem pri cu. Ubique tempor habemus ut his, tritani placerat similique ex mel. Noluisse appetere ius ei, eum falli discere cu. An nec accusam delicatissimi, et [...]

Just as pleasant as the Sonoran desert flowers that unexpectedly pop up in the Spring, comes a new blog from our Paradise Valley Community College– the Student Life Blog is not about personal “diaries”, but provides regularly updated program information from the college’s Student Life Center, including upcoming events at the PVCC Coffeehouse, photos, leadership programs… and what is very cool, are some podcasts (nice that the listings give a “table of contents” of segments in each podcast)! This is such a wonderful break of business as usual here where the main way that information seems to be shared about these activities are lavishly decorated HTML email messages. There seems to be around 10-20 of these per week for various events around the system– and there is no archiving, no searching, no record once an email is trashed. So Bravo, to the Student Life group at Paradise Valley for putting [...]

This afternoon I am doing an hand-on workshop on our Maricopa ePortfolio tool for the participants in our Maricopa Faculty Internship program. We have had some program like this for a few years where a year’s full of experiences, projects, mentoring is supposedly captured in a one page Word document report. I’ve been applying pressure for some time, that we ought to have intern / fellowship programs either blog, eport, or journal somehow along the way, as the old saw goes– the journey being more important and interesting that just the final destination. It’s like a vacation road trip across Australia, and the only memorabilia you save is the brochure from the tour bus. Anyhow, we have created eport accounts for all the interns and are asking them to use it to post their resume, their materials developed as they move through the program, but most importantly, use the blog [...]

Mmmmm….feeds… in an eportfolio…. mmmmm… Audree has released another new exciting feature for the MyEport software used at her Chandler-Gilbert Community College and the Maricopa wide service we host for the rest of our system. It has had already for months or more, the ability to syndicate content out from an a publish eportfolio (e.g. to enable easy tracking of specific eportfolios). Now it features the ability to embed content from external feeds into an eportfolio page (see the details and examples listed in the latest enhancememnts). There are two ways of doing this- one is the ability to add one or more feeds as a sidebar to any desired eportfolio page. For example, that rascal guide to the MLX, Biff Cantrell, has a aidebar feed of new MLX items on his main entry page and a collection page, but is side bar syndicating this very blog in his own [...]

What a nice surprise this morning when a colleague mentioned Helen Barrett, the “grandmother of eportfolios” was just down the hall! She is here one day to do an eportfolio/Taskstream workshop with our Teacher Education program. Being in need of some good audio speakers for her demo, I loaned her my Harmon Kardon Sound Sticks, so the room was rocking to music when I left. We are fortunate to have Helen as a guest speaker last February for our ePortfolio Dialogue Day: Digital Stories of Deep Learning for Students and Faculty which was a rousing success all around. She is the world guru on eports and a great colleague.

Here at Maricopa, we’ve been trying to corral the herding cats of electronic folios for several years, back to a Dialogue Day in 2002, to a not so fruitful play with a consortium (it put the software cart before the eport need horse), to creation of our Ocotillo Action Group in 2004 to an excellent Dialogue Day with Helen Barrett in February 2005. Along side that was been the evolution of the MyEport developed at Chandler-Gilbert Community College thanks to Audree Thurman, and made available to the other Maricopa colleges on a server hosted in our office. We’ve seen a rise up the curve in tis use by faculty and several groups of students in Art, Teacher Education, and Library Technology. The software works well because of an easy to use but flexible interface, and is getting richer with tools for slide shows, quiz/polls, RSS and other forms of syndication, [...]

Audree, the brilliant programmer behind the system used at Chandler-Gilbert Community College as well as the version we share with the rest of Maricopa is rolling out some exciting new features for this software. How about a wiki inside an ePort? Audree has rolled into the eport system a version of UseMod wiki. She just gave me access to the test server, and the most interesting aspect is the inclusion of a Wiki creation tool. Just like the other “pages” in the MyePort software, the owner can create as many wikis as they decide. What is slixk ia that for each Wiki set up, the eportfolio author can elect from different wiki permissions: Only the eportfolio owner can edit- perhaps use for simple page construction, or maybe brainstorming a list of goals, or… The eportfolio owner can elect to give editing access to only users on the eportfolio system Maybe [...]

I recently got an email notification that a peer review has been done of a former project that is available in MERLOT. While it is listed as being loaded there in 2002, actually Negative Reinforcement University (NRU) was developed as a CD-ROM in 1996 and converted to the web in 1997. Although I’ve not even thought about NRU in a long time, I think the old Shockwave version might actually still run (Yup it does! and I even remembered some of the hidden cheats in the game- but wow, is it crude and pixelly). It’s approach was an unabashed rip-off of Myst. Actually, it was one of my favorite projects- the outgrowth of an idea to have teams of students and a faculty member work as a team to create some educational content using a movie-making metaphor (see the Studio 1151 Press Release). This is not meant to poke fun [...]

In Executing Learning Objects, Resurrecting Sharing and Reuse, Scott Leslie takes some well thought shots at the sacred cow term of “learning objects” (and his animation of the “execution” could use more blood, guts, and squeals). As part of a workshop for the BC Educational Technology Users Group, Scott has nicely posted his materials in wiki fashion (he is now an alumni of the Brian Lamb School of Wiki Presenting, I signed up more than a year ago and the thought of “power” and “pointing” has never reached any proximity)…. as Scott writes: I began the session with a formal execution of the term “learning object” which you can see at the link above (feel free to reuse this – maybe if it’s played enough times the term will finally die off)…. As I go on to explain, it’s not the concepts the term was supposed to foster that I [...]

Did you catch the obits? Teemu Leinonen, one of the members of the FLOSSE Posse has bravely cast out the notice in “Learning objects – Is the King naked?”. He argues that the IEEE definitions of “any entity, digital or non digital hat may be used for learning, education or teaching” is broad enough to mean nothing, or that if everything is a learning object, what does that mean? Because any entity in the universe – digital or non-digital – can be used for learning, education and teaching… I know that many people are using the term “learning object” when they talk about pictures, graphics, simulations, piece of texts, video and audio clips that are specifically designed for learning purpose and can be combined together to build up larger learning material units. This all makes sense. But why should we call them “learning objects” and not just learning content, or [...]