centreforelearning

OpenClass integrates seamlessly with Google Apps for Education

CIT used to have an e-Portfolio service that did not have a high take up rate. There are several reasons for this that I can think of: It was provided under the build it and they will come model. I believe not enough was done to convince students and teaching staff about the benefits of building e-Portfolios. Consequently, no one was willing to integrate this into their course, as part of reflective learning. Keeping an e-Portfolio was seen as extra work, which neither students nor staff were keen on. Perhaps the software itself was not very conducive to building e-Portfolios. One key area with users seem to be that the e-Portfolio should have a customisable design and layout (at least on its public face). Our system was not flexible in that aspect. In fact, in the latter years, the option to publish the e-Portfolio was taken away entirely. The e-Portfolio service was a walled garden. It wasn’t easy to bring in digital artefacts, which may have resided on other public services, nor was it easy to repurpose that information into useful formats – personal reference, actual resume, showcase of work. No one figured how students would access the e-Portfolios after they graduated as it was all based on our single sign-on system.

The change will allow instructors to publish and share their courses — syllabi, handouts, and so on — under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY).

This will mean that, for the first time, content in Blackboard will be available to those who aren’t registered for a course — learners not enrolled, learners not on campus. Professors will be able to share their material to Facebook and Twitter.

Blackboard also says that it’s revising its policies so that institutions that do open up their course materials this way don’t incur any additional licensing costs when people access the materials, even via webinars and the like. That means non-traditional, non-enrolled, non-revenue generating students will be able to access the material as “guests” without forcing schools to pay more.

Facebook’s new Timeline gives users a large “cover photo” space at the top of the page. As we’ve already shown, this is a great opportunity to get creative with your profile presentation.

The "Mobile Video & TV on Smartphones: Market Drivers and Challenges Report 2011-2016" also predicts that the market will increase at a CAGR of 28% with revenues reaching $22.5 billion by 2016.

Visiongain cautions that at present mobile video and TV services are straining the 3G networks and notes that its research suggests that operators will migrate to LTE to solve the bandwidth/capacity issues

How can we integrate ePortfolios with what we know about social learning and interactivity? The boundaries are blurring between eportfolios and social networks. As we consider the potential of lifelong e-portfolios, will they resemble the structured accountability systems that are currently being implemented in many educational institutions? Or are we beginning to see lifelong interactive portfolios emerging as "mash-ups" in the Web 2.0 cloud, using blogs or wikis or Twitter, Facebook or Ning, Flickr or Picasa or YouTube, etc.?