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 a blog to some good use.
I believe this was spearheaded by Mike Ho, Student Life program advisor, as I saw some of his work listed in his eportfolio, where the podcasts also exist. In fact, Mike and others will be on hand October 14, 2005 at Scottsdale Community College, for the The Wide, Wild World of ePortfolios our Ocotillo eportfolio group is planning — this will be an afternoon where interested folks can drop in and see/try hands eportfolios and eportfolio-like tools in use around our system:
Last year we did lots of exploration about who is doing what in the burgeoning world of electronic portfolios. There are so many tools and so many different uses that it is impossible to define what an ePort is, let alone identifying the best tool. This event is intended to expose the participant to different tools/applications and then allow for additional follow up with whatever tool(s)/application(s) they find most interesting.
The list of demos are still being rounded up and will include faculty, staff, and students who are using the Maricopa ePortfolio, LiveJournal, MySpace, OSP, Taskstream and maybe a few more in the mix (I’d like to see someone set up a demo station with Elgg running).
It’s too bad Alisa Cooper from South Mountain Community College is not available that dayy, as she is really doing some great “small technologies loosely joined” with her introductory composition courses including a community journal (LiveJournal site) and a PbWiki for providing assignments and places for her students to post drafts, and… some podcasts.
Thanks for the compliments Alan! Mike has done a fabulous job piloting your suggested program – WordPress for us. Their project is a shining example of individuals using a technology to advance their goals and objectives. A model for us all, to use technology to further our work rather than using a technology simply because is new and trendy. We appreciate the props! Jen