UoL PLE Project - Recently Updated Pages

Online Office Suites

AJCann — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:56:14 CDT

Use Joanna's cv as an exemplar for each:

Google Docs: AJC Google Apps Hacks. Philipp Lenssen. O'Reilley Media, April 2008. ISBN 10: 0-596-51588-X

Acrobat.com: Online PDF conversion, document storage (5GB free) & sharing, video conferencing:

Buzzword: Online Flash-based word processor, embeddable documents.
ConnectNow: Video conferencing, screen sharing, whiteboard and chat.

SlideShare.net: SlideShare.net is the world's largest community for sharing presentations. Some of the things you can do on SlideShare:
- Embed slideshows into your own blog or website.
- Share slideshows publicly or privately. There are several ways to share privately.
- Synch audio to your slides.
- Market your your event on slideshare.
- Download the original PowerPoint/pdf file
This is an extremely valuable site, but how do we integrate it into the curriculum (get students to make a presentation with PowerPoint and/or Google Presenter and put it on Slideshare with an audio narration?)

Zoho: (about) Probably the most comprehensive free office suite, includes: Writer, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Notebook, Meeting, Online Note Taker, Wiki, Planner, Organizer, Chat, etc.

ThinkFree: Three free office tools: ThinkFree Write (word processing), ThinkFree Calc (spreadsheet), ThinkFree Show (presentation). 1 GB of storage for documents. Documents can be pubished to blogs, webpages or as ThinkFree Docs and publish to PDF. There are also collabortaive capabilities. The Interface is very similar to MS Office.

Scribd: Matt iPaper more

Format Pixel: Matt Create you own online magazine (Publisher), high graphics use

Wikis

AJCann — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 13:55:07 CDT

Based on extensive testing, we find that WetPaint is the best of the free wikis we tested. Most robust solution, navigation is automatically added, editing and appearance are attractive, tagging is good, ad-free education sites available on request. Alternatives:

WikiSpaces - Found the editing features of this wiki frustrating and slow. Navigation is fragile and easily broken.

PBWiki - Poor navigation (needs to be manually inserted), tagging is cumbersome, unattractive bare bones appearance, counterintuitive to use.
Wik.is (about)

Working within the limitations of our first year timetable, we will not be recommending that students use wikis in their own right. However, we will be recommending WetPaint as a possible ePortfolio architecture.

ePortfolio Projects and Reports

AJCann — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:29:56 CDT

Open source options (UK)

ePET JISC funded project, Newcastle Uni
Petal JISC funded, Oxford Brookes
OSP open source portfolio initiative (park of Sakai)

Summary report A report to the JISC, encompassing a review of existing e-portfolio software applications in
use in the UK, and a synthesis of literature reviews on e-portfolio systems (March 2005)
Includes literature review and useful reference list (though may be dated)
12 systems reviewed, mostly dead only three years on....

my progress file
careers wales online
fdlearning - seems to be defunct? now tribal technologies (ex-LE?)
portfolio maker (no live link)
Folio (no live link)
learndirect
Loughborough college (private)
Newcastle University (eportfolios as listed under open source)
Rapid (Loughborough University - private)
LUSID (Liverpool University - private)
Eletronic portfolio system (University Southampton)
Petal (Oxford Brookes, as listed under open source)

HEA Physical Sciences e-Portfolio project:

http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/physsci/home/projects/jisc_del/eportfolio
We need to acknowledge this project, and it might be helpful in the development of exemplars. Example:
http://www.hull.ac.uk/chemistry/pdp.php

EU project MOSEP (more self-esteem with my e-portfolio)

The original Higher Education Academy guidance note on PDP (HEA 2005) states that the characteristics of effective PDP practice in universities would include:

1. Linking PDP to confidence building for students
2. Introducing students to PDP at an early stage in their course
3. Ensuring that the process is developmental and progressive throughout the degree
4. Embedding PDP within the curriculum
5. Aligning it to what best motivates individual students
6. Customising it to the needs of the institution and link to external levers
7. Ensuring the approach to PDP is understood by and is relevant to students
8. Clarifying what PDP is both to staff and students
9. Making sure of management commitment
10. Taking a holistic approach

Strivens, J. 2007 (A survey of e-pdp and e-portfolio practice in UK Higher Education Centre for Recording Achievement, Higher Education Academy, London) describes the previous work which has been done in this field.
A more recent paper (PDP implementation at English universities: what are the issues? J. Further & Higher Education 2008 32(2) 99-109) discusses the process of implementation versus the more complex conceptual elements of PDP implementation (promoting a reflective approach). Most practitioners in this area now agree that it is essential to go beyond the original Dearing Report concept of a mere "progress file" which does not encompass the more valuable reflective element of PDP. This is the attribute we are attempting to engender in our students and this project seeks to explore practical ways in which this can be achieved. Good practice will involve promotion of a culture which engages both students and academic staff, but it remains true that in UK HE institutions, implementing personal development planning is piecemeal and is a continuing learning process.

Australian National Symposium on e-portfolios, June 2008.

The background report covers:

Building an e-portfolio
Users of e-portfolios
Benefits of e-portfolios
Types of e-portfolio
Issues arising

Support Materials

AJCann — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:27:45 CDT

Students

We will compile comments on systems and technologies that we can use as source material for future support documentation.

Staff

Staff will need to have information about these technologies to enable them to assist their students. We will plan to produce a seminar/ teaching team roadshow to demonstrate of the power of social media for academic research. However, face to face session will only be the first step in the adoption campaign, and most of the effort will be put into peer-to-peer viral professional development.

Participatory Media Literacy: Howard Rheingold's social media course wiki.

Policies on Outsourced I.T. Resources

Case Studies

Can you "teach" PLEs?

Policies

AJCann — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:25:32 CDT

A collection of policies from other institutions concerning the use of outsourced I.T. resources:

Developing A Sustainable Approach to the Use of Web 2.0:

Bristol University policy on social networking, blogging and web publishing:

Social Networks: Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities. Amy Jo Kim. Peachpit Press, 2000 ISBN: 0201874849. http://www.naima.com/community/index.html

Does the community have a clear purpose?
Does the community have distinct, extensible gathering places?
Does the community have profiles that evolve over time?
Does the community promote effective leadership?
Does the community have a clear-yet-flexible code of conduct?
Does the community organize and promote cyclic events?
Does the community provide a range of roles with increasing involvement (i.e. visitor, new member, regular, leader, owner)?
Does the community support member-created sub-groups?
Does the community integrate what's online with the real world?

University of Edinburgh guidelines for using external services

Collaborative Tools

AJCann — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:21:30 CDT

Digg-type voting: IdeaScale (FAQ). This is an attractive site, but at present we can find no compelling pedagogical reason to use it within our curriculum.

Firefly: (new beta) Turns any page into an annotatable chatroom. Nothing to install.

Fleck: (features) Bookmark, annotate and share websites, add sticky notes to pages and collaborate in real time.

Ning (about): A free site which allows the creation ofprivate social networks, i.e. with a defined membership. Rich range of features, good access control.

Social networking

AJCann — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:20:31 CDT

Social Networks enable user to build online communities of friends, between which they can share information and communicate.

Facebook
MySpace
Bebo
LinkedIn

Although tools such as CourseFeed are available to import formal academic content into Facebook, we will not be recommending these to students so as to avoid invading online social spaces. This project will only involve social networks as illustrations rather than for any formal intervention, e.g. reading Facebook RSS feeds in an RSS aggregator.

Ning (about): A free site which allows the creation ofprivate social networks, i.e. with a defined membership. Rich range of features, good access control.

Technology

AJCann — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 07:06:19 CDT

Authentication

Blogs

Collaborative Tools

Email

File Conversion

File Flingers

Online Office Suites

Online storage

Presence (Microblogging)

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

Social Aggregation

Social Networks

Social Bookmarking

Video

Web Albums

Wikis

ePortfolio Examplars

richard.mobbs — Thu, 29 May 2008 05:40:28 CDT

Our examplar student Joanna Hughes has ePortfolios in:

Online File Storage

AJCann — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:51:47 CDT

ADrive (about): 50GB free storage, adverts

myBloop (about): No limits on storage, bandwidth or the number of files you can store. No music, adverts.

SynthaSite (about): Free website builder, no adverts.

Hosted.With.US (about): 100GB storage, many features. Adverts.

Google Sites (about): Free public wiki-like websites, no coding required. Lots of widgets available. Space? Adverts?

Microsoft Windows Live SkyDrive(about): 5GB free online storage, configurable access permissions.

Presence (Microblogging)

AJCann — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:47:53 CDT

I (AJC) intend to experiment with the use ofmicroblogging applicationsto support students:

To preserve everyone's sanity, I will use a dedicated Twitter account as a support channel for cohorts of students, and declare "office hours" when students can expect synchronous responses (outside of these times, they may receive a response but will not be an guaranteed an instant reply).

Blogs

AJCann — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:08:01 CDT

Recommendations for Students:

Working within the limitations of our first year timetable, we will not be recommending that students blog. However, we did consider WordPress.com as a possible ePortfolio architecture before deciding on WetPaint as out frontline ePortfolio recommendation.

File Flingers

AJCann — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:29:02 CDT

Recommendations to Students:
Sometime files are too large to be sent via email. File Flingers allow users to upload large files that then can be downloaded by the recipients. They work by temporarily storing your documents on a remote server, from which the recipient can download the document. We will point these services out to students in the session on email. Examples:

FileMail: (About) Free transfer for files up to 2GB for free, password files, customize how many times each file can be downloaded and how many days it will be available, ZIP and encrypt multiple files.
drop.io (FAQ): File sharing with RSS feeds, no login, 100Mb storage. Possible uses.

FileURLs: Share files up to 250Mb with a TinyURL-style link, password protection if required.

Bonpoo - No log-in required, upload (Max 250Mb), enter recipients email (up to 20) and send
GigaSize- Log-in required, upload (300Mb Max, up to 10 individual files)
MailBigFile- No log-in, upload (100Mb Max)
Transfer BIG Files - Log-in required, can store up to 1GB of data on your account.

What should be included in an ePortfolio?

AJCann — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:24:06 CDT

"collect, select, reflect and presentation" Julie Hughes

Academic Journal - a place to record academic progression and present an opportunity to reflect upon it, could be made public.
Personal reflection - a private area, for personal reflection
Demonstration area - somewhere to host work the student is proud of, could be in several formats e.g. written, presentations, images, audio recordings or video
Show piece - The details a student would want to show to employers
Andy Powell: Tthe 5 Ps of eportfolios - plan, ponder, promote, prove, preserve.

HEA Center for Physical Sciences: Development, Adaptation and Implementation of the e-Portfolio Framework

Pedagogy

AJCann — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:01:21 CDT

We will look at using the skills matrices to align competencies to tasks to create a curriculum for teaching PLEs.

Programme Learning Outcomes

from Skills matrix for Biological Sciences (2005-06)

(b) Transferable skills

(i) Oral communication
Communicate orally, with clarity and coherence, concepts and arguments in Biological Sciences
(ii) Written communication
Communicate in writing, with clarity and coherence concepts and arguments in Biological Sciences
(iii) Information technology
Demonstrate the effective use of IT for accessing databases and scientific literature; manipulating, processing and presenting data; presenting written assignments
(iv) Numeracy
Demonstrate the capacity to analyse and criticise data from experimental procedures.
(v) Team working
Demonstrate the ability to work as part of a group.
(vi) Problem solving
Apply a scientific approach to the solution of problems in the context of their chosen specialisations and appreciate the rationale of experimental design
(vii) Information handling
Demonstrate the capacity to access a variety of resource materials and to analyse evidence from both experimental procedures and the literature.
(viii) Skills for lifelong learning
Demonstrate the acquisition of the skills and attributes necessary for lifelong learning, including: intellectual independence, effective time management, the ability to work as part of a team, the use of IT and the capacity to access and utilise a variety of resource materials.

Assessment criteria (for portfolios)

rubric for assessment of portfolio Spelman College (PDF on page for download)
rubric for assessment of reflection Tapei American school (PDF on page for download)
open university scheme for assessing reflections on a student learning journal on s154 (will link file later)

Academic Integrity?

How do we design out plagiarism in the assessment of ePortfolios?
suggestions: ask for personal statements/ opinions, look for time stamping to show progress and regular updates

Literature

ePortfolios

AJCann — Fri, 02 May 2008 10:47:25 CDT

Possible ePortfolio systems

Exemplars

What should be included in an ePortfolio?

Other Projects and Reports

Possible ePortfolio Systems

AJCann — Fri, 02 May 2008 10:46:23 CDT

Commercial Hosted Solutions:

PebblePad:
Strengths: The strength of PP lies in the fine granularity of access control with the system makes possible. This is a very important attribute for building user confidence and encouraging the addition of online content.
Usability: The PP user experience was very frustrating. There are no consistent hyper-linking to enable you to navigate around your portfolio. I kept finding myself getting several layers into the construction of my webfolio, realising I had add or upload content somewhere else in the system, which meant I had to navigate back to desktop. Create something new before being able to complete the job I originally started.
I found this not only poor in terms of usability, but also getting the job done. Because, having to navigate away form the first task I started, meant I kept getting distracted or 'inspired' (in the loosest sense of the word) to make something new, distracting me from my original task. I can see this leading to me having a number of uncompleted item in my portfolio.
Furthermore, initially I actually found it unnecessarily complicated to retrieve any content I had created. Leading on from this, I would never want to produce a huge amount of content as the way it is stored and organised in PP is poor. No organised folder structure CMS, just long lists.
Item - evidence - reflection structure is good. However within these feature there is no ability to format the text, apart from using the word editor, this appears to be a huge waste of time, because once I had edited within Word, I could not get the content back into PP.
Themes are patronizing "Bubbles", "Cartoon Creatures" - not appropriate to professional portfolios for HE.
Interface requires reinventing the wheel since it is divorced from real world content creation - will impose unacceptably high training requirement. In addition, we plan to use RSS to monitor student updates of their portfolios during the assessed phase - no RSS output from PebblePad (except in the very limited blog output format)?
Matt's reflections:
After a period of using Pebble Pad, I have found that all the 'additional' features are near useless e.g. experience, achievement, due to the inability to edit the content. I resorted to mainly using the Webfolio feature. Tagging is rudimentary and does not follow usual conventions, so will be likely to confuse students when they encounter content tagging in the real world.
However, the webfolio is far from perfect. Here are a list of frustrations:

Copying text. If a wanted to copy text from another program/website into my Webfolio, once you switch Windows, copy the text and return to PP it refused to let me select the text editing area in PP. Therefore I had to exit the editor and relaunch in order to paste the content.
The only place withing the Webfolio pages multimedia content can be position is above the main navigation. No ability to put pictures in text.
I didn't really understand the 'additional' features (achievements) in the context of the Webfolio, as you can't pull the content from these features directly to the pages, therefore I found my duplicating information.
NO UNDO! How in the 21st century can a text editor not know the 'crtl-z' to undo short cut!

Finally, the cost of PebblePad licences will be a barrier to many students, especially when free alternatives are readily available. For all of these reasons, we will not be recommending PebblePad as an ePortfolio solution for this cohort of students.

Blackboard:
Limited by cfs login to lifetime of university course, no extension on graduation. (Similarly Plone limited by cfs login to lifetime of university course, no extension on graduation).

Free Hosted Solutions:

Blogs

WordPress:

Access control: Public or private, read only or read/write (so similar to WetPaint). As with WetPaint, invited users need to sign up for a WordPress.com account (they do not need to have thieir own blog). Students would need to grasp the concept of public and private online identities, possibly control access by cloning and editing their site.
Quite easy to set up, very flexible (tagging, categories)
Negative Points: The WordPress.com RSS feeds do not include static pages, only the blog posts. This does not fit very well with the architecture of the exemplar we developed since we plan to assess student portfolio contributions via the RSS feed.

Wikis:

Wikispaces: We abandoned the original project wiki on this site because of poor navigation and slow editing.
PBWIKI: Very hard to use, we quickly abandoned this site.

Wetpaint: Easy to use, nice to edit, simple and quick to create pages and good navigation, with nested sets of pages and an easy access menu. Some of the editing was not intuitive, finding the options for adding attachments and changing the order of the pages or renaming them was on 'more tools' option, none of which were available on the home page as this cannot be renamed, or reordered. Help and FAQ wiki was excellent and soon directed to the right tools for the job. Threads could be useful for tutor feedback. Lots of RSS for updates, threads etc, again useful for staff management.

Pros:

Easy to use.
Simple layout quickly constructed, well ordered.
Online storage of files and photos.
Public - ACCESS CONTROL? Access is controlled by invitations from the site owner. Granularity is less than PebblePad - all or nothing(?) but with read only or read/write control.
RSS everywhere.

Cons:

Layout looks a bit clunky (no round edges!)
Choice of styles (overall theme/template for colours/ banner) was pretty limited (no brown!)
Widgets were easy to use (RSS, Google calendar) but limited and output was fairly simple but worked
Advertising - felt a bit overwhelming, especially where there was limited content of my own on the page. Thought wikispaces was better for this. Advertising is removed from education wikis on request.

After consideration of all the alternatives, we will ask students to set up ePortfolios on WetPaint and demonstrate the exemplar on that site to them. If a student asks to use a different site we will permit this as long as the proposed solution meets the assessment criteria, but we will not promote alternative sites.

Online Storage

Box.net - 1GB free storage - read this
SkyDrive: 5GB free, public & private folders. Discussion here.

PLEs

Netvibes ginger- I liked the look of this. See digital ethnography example. Felt more like a much expanded iGoogle.

open source options (UK)

ePET JISC funded project, Newcastle University
Petal JISC funded, Oxford Brookes
OSP open source portfolio initiative (part of Sakai)

Web Albums

AJCann — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:24:09 CDT

Flickr (about)
Photoshop Express (about)
Picasa (about: Not cross-platform)

Are we going to incorporate these sites?

Social Bookmarking

AJCann — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:16:14 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Social Aggregation

AJCann — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:57:09 CDT

Unlike social networks where all socialisation and sharing happens within the interface of the network, Social Aggregation enables users to keep track of their friends information from several online sources, aggregating their output into, your personal repository. To avoid technology overload, we will document it as a resource, we will not be actively recommending social aggregators to students.

FriendFeed (about)
Spokeo (about)

As an alternative, we will illustrate social uses of RSS feeds such as importing Facebook feeds into aggregators.