Sarah Chesney discusses the aims, ethos, key activities and the PS portfolio developed under the Flourish project. Evaluating the use of an eportfolio for CPD for admin and academic staff. Used to ease the admin burden and provide personal learning system (PLE?), within which is an eportfolio.

Academic model practice before students.

Over reliance on email and MSWord.

Duplicating information at:
- PDR
- REA
- VLE

Usability was key. Should I be using PPad for this report? Or consuming my Posterous in my PPad “blog”. PPad allows tagging of artefacts.

Eportfolios were not an instrument of monitoring and control.

PCTHE at Cumbria is done using PPad.

Posted via email from George’s posterous

After a long deliberation we decided that the Emerge Elgg site should not continue to operate in its current form.

From midnight 31 March/1 April 2009 we discontinued log-in to the Emerge Elgg site and suspended all feeds into the site.

I would like to thank all who have been instrumental in creating a vision a community of practice, supported by Web 2.0 technologies.

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It is sometimes asserted that while students are using web 2 tools extensively there is no evidence that they are using them to do deep learning. I believe this assertion should be questioned.

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There are many women in technology I admire. My field: learning technology is characterised, in part, by many female leaders. I think of Diana Laurillard, Grainne Conole (jfg them); colleagues: Rhona Sharpe, Patsy Clarke, Frances Deepwell, Judy Lyons in OCSLD; there’s Helen Beetham, Helen Barrett, Rose Luckin, Diana Oblinger; Robin Mason, who defined a practice through Mindweave and the Open University’s H8xx series of courses in the Institute of Educational Technology; my PhD supervisor Jane Seale: all people who have either shaped the field, shaped my view of it, or both. In writing this I realise the risk of naming more than one person; why have I not named every woman who has influenced the development of learning technology and my participation in it? How much have I got wrong already? Who have I forgotten? I won’t go on. You know who you are! Except perhaps a few more.
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Embedding needs building. Building needs scaffolding.

Gwen van der Velden recognises that change agents operate in networks of influence.

To make change you need:
- buy-in
- user engagement
- institutional solutions
- patronage
- a user-friendly pitch
- reputation-awareness.

Barriers to change include: student data systems, middle managers, staff learning needs.

Drivers for embracing technology: students, resource constraints, employers.

So answer these questions:
- What is your strap-line?
- Why would I support you?
- What problem, which I have, will you solve?
- Tell me what difference it makes.

Posted via email from George’s posterous

The Flourish project:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/usersandinnovation/flourish.aspx

Flourish, funded by the JISC, looked at eportfolio for HE staff in annual appraisal, accredited PGCert in Teaching in HE course, and CPD/Training. They used PebblePad in a “low-risk” environment running workshops, elearning retreats, staff information sharing channels, and using it with students.

The key message is if you want to use an eP for students you need to use it with staff first.

Posted via email from George’s posterous

I have set up a place to post our stuff from the writing retreat (I know, I know, another b***** site). Bear with me

We do not have a projector but most of us have machines, I thought this might work as a whiteboard. I have not made the site private – yet. But we can.

http://emerge.posterous.com

Suggested schedule
0900-0930 Review: task briefing

1030-1100 coffee: Task 1 feedback

1230-1300 Task 2 feedback

1300-1330 Lunch:

1330-1400 Review balance in light of Tasks 1 & 2

1530-1600 Task 3 feedback

1600-1800 Walk in country

1800-1930 at ease/continue working

1930-late dinner

Task 1
a. Working title of your article

b. What is the central question that your article will pose?

c. Name 3 or 4 intended readers (no profiling) and say why they might be interested in this question.

d. Specific features of specific U&I projects that illustrate or support or otherwise illuminate your central question

e. If you had only one sentence to summarize your paper for your readers (above), what should it be? Focus on the outcomes from the work, not the inputs.

To post to the site email:

post@emerge.posterous.com

Posted via email from Emerge

I was mildly annoyed (a usual state for me) a year or three ago when Ericsson bundled Blogger in the firmware of their good camera phones. I didn’t want to set up a Blogger ID, all I wanted to do was post to Flickr. For a while I tried to use Shozu (http://www.shozu.com/portal/index.do), but its Java applet crashed my phone. Repeatedly. I expect things are better these days. Now, of course, Flickr has email uploader addresses and phones pretty much come with mail accounts nnn@telco.com but I never really got my head around them. Then, I stumbled on Posterous via Iain Dodsworth’s TweetDeck blog (http://tweetdeck.posterous.com/). Posterous has about the easiest sign-up facility of any site, ever, and an “autopost to everywhere” service (http://posterous.com/autopost) that lets you send mails to e.g. flickr@posterous.com. So, I activated my dormant 3-mail account told posterous that it was mine and, snap. Take a pic and email to flickr@posterous.com. It just works. I like services like that. My posterous is here.

Posted via email from George’s posterous

An interesting question is raised by a Design Pattern problem, Others First, identified by Yishay Mor in the Pattern Language Network wiki:

Parents who create an online identity for themselves that includes any images of and text about their children inevitably create an online identity for those children. The children have no control over how they are presented or who they are presented to.

I include images of my child in online repositories, some open some private. So this led me to ask whether the problem identified, for it is a problem, was expressed to address a narrow and particular issue or a broad and general issue. Read the rest of this entry »

Another very useful Berkman talk on Immersive Interfaces by Chris Dede, Timothy E Wirth professor of Learning Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Dede develops a typology of immersive interfaces and illustrates their application in US middle schools. Even more usefully he presents a simple analytical framework for discussing immersive environments for learning: is it an environment or is it an interface? And, as frosting on the cake he gives sound cultural and pedagogical arguments for the use of immersive technologies in education.