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Joshua Yeidel

Visual Studio Magazine Online | Data Driver: Bring On The Open Source Alternatives To S... - 0 views

visualstudiomagazine.com/...weblog.aspx

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 11 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 11 Apr 09
     
    Some alternatives focus on web content management (Nuxeo), others on collaborative application frameworks (MindTouch).
  • Joshua Yeidel on 11 Apr 09
     
    As Alfresco Software Inc. continues to emerge as the leading provider of open source software enterprise collaboration software, rival open source vendors are stepping up their efforts.
Gary Brown

"The Future of ePortfolio" Roundtable | Academic Commons - 0 views

www.academiccommons.org/...future-eportfolio-roundtable

ePortfolios Web 2.0 open source assessment learning

shared by Gary Brown on 08 Jan 09 - Cached
  • Gary Brown on 08 Jan 09
     
    Focusing on ePortfolios in a Web 2.0 context. Open source is a construct--unbundling the code from the services. So that teachers no longer own the content--the content is open and free. Can education itself open up?
Theron DesRosier

SIMILE Project - 0 views

simile.mit.edu

web2.0 semanticweb semantic web mit tools

shared by Theron DesRosier on 16 Dec 08 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 16 Dec 08
     
    SIMILE is focused on developing robust, open source tools that empower users to access, manage, visualize and reuse digital assets. Learn more about the SIMILE project.
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Peggy Collins on 12 Feb 09
     
    Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments SIMILE is focused on developing robust, open source tools that empower users to access, manage, visualize and reuse digital assets. Learn more about the SIMILE project.
  • Theron DesRosier on 12 Feb 09
     
    SIMILE is focused on developing robust, open source tools that empower users to access, manage, visualize and reuse digital assets. Learn more about the SIMILE project.
  • Theron DesRosier on 12 Feb 09
     
    Peg found this but had trouble adding it to our list.
Nils Peterson

Half an Hour: Open Source Assessment - 0 views

halfanhour.blogspot.com/...open-source-assessment.html

Downes learning2.0 outcomes_assessment learning_community end_of_LMS

shared by Nils Peterson on 13 Sep 10 - Cached
  • When posed the question in Winnipeg regarding what I thought the ideal open online course would look like, my eventual response was that it would not look like a course at all, just the assessment.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 13 Sep 10
       
      I remembered this Downes post on the way back from HASTAC. It is some of the roots of our Spectrum I think.
  • The reasoning was this: were students given the opportunity to attempt the assessment, without the requirement that they sit through lectures or otherwise proprietary forms of learning, then they would create their own learning resources.
  • In Holland I encountered a person from an organization that does nothing but test students. This is the sort of thing I long ago predicted (in my 1998 Future of Online Learning) so I wasn't that surprised. But when I pressed the discussion the gulf between different models of assessment became apparent.Designers of learning resources, for example, have only the vaguest of indication of what will be on the test. They have a general idea of the subject area and recommendations for reading resources. Why not list the exact questions, I asked? Because they would just memorize the answers, I was told. I was unsure how this varied from the current system, except for the amount of stuff that must be memorized.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 13 Sep 10
       
      assumes a test as the form of assessment, rather than something more open ended.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • As I think about it, I realize that what we have in assessment is now an exact analogy to what we have in software or learning content. We have proprietary tests or examinations, the content of which is held to be secret by the publishers. You cannot share the contents of these tests (at least, not openly). Only specially licensed institutions can offer the tests. The tests cost money.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 13 Sep 10
       
      See our Where are you on the spectrum, Assessment is locked vs open
  • Without a public examination of the questions, how can we be sure they are reliable? We are forced to rely on 'peer reviews' or similar closed and expert-based evaluation mechanisms.
  • there is the question of who is doing the assessing. Again, the people (or machines) that grade the assessments work in secret. It is expert-based, which creates a resource bottleneck. The criteria they use are not always apparent (and there is no shortage of literature pointing to the randomness of the grading). There is an analogy here with peer-review processes (as compared to recommender system processes)
  • What constitutes achievement in a field? What constitutes, for example, 'being a physicist'?
  • This is a reductive theory of assessment. It is the theory that the assessment of a big thing can be reduced to the assessment of a set of (necessary and sufficient) little things. It is a standards-based theory of assessment. It suggests that we can measure accomplishment by testing for accomplishment of a predefined set of learning objectives.Left to its own devices, though, an open system of assessment is more likely to become non-reductive and non-standards based. Even if we consider the mastery of a subject or field of study to consist of the accomplishment of smaller components, there will be no widespread agreement on what those components are, much less how to measure them or how to test for them.Consequently, instead of very specific forms of evaluation, intended to measure particular competences, a wide variety of assessment methods will be devised. Assessment in such an environment might not even be subject-related. We won't think of, say, a person who has mastered 'physics'. Rather, we might say that they 'know how to use a scanning electron microscope' or 'developed a foundational idea'.
  • We are certainly familiar with the use of recognition, rather than measurement, as a means of evaluating achievement. Ludwig Wittgenstein is 'recognized' as a great philosopher, for example. He didn't pass a series of tests to prove this. Mahatma Gandhi is 'recognized' as a great leader.
  • The concept of the portfolio is drawn from the artistic community and will typically be applied in cases where the accomplishments are creative and content-based. In other disciplines, where the accomplishments resemble more the development of skills rather than of creations, accomplishments will resemble more the completion of tasks, like 'quests' or 'levels' in online games, say.Eventually, over time, a person will accumulate a 'profile' (much as described in 'Resource Profiles').
  • In other cases, the evaluation of achievement will resemble more a reputation system. Through some combination of inputs, from a more or less define community, a person may achieve a composite score called a 'reputation'. This will vary from community to community.
  • Nils Peterson on 13 Sep 10
     
    Fine piece, transformative. "were students given the opportunity to attempt the assessment, without the requirement that they sit through lectures or otherwise proprietary forms of learning, then they would create their own learning resources."
Nils Peterson

How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education | Page 4 | Fast Company - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...who-needs-harvard.html

shared by Nils Peterson on 24 Sep 09 - Cached
  • WGU constantly surveys both graduates and their employers to find out if they are lacking in any competencies so they can continue to fine-tune their programs.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 24 Sep 09
       
      Here is our community providing feedback on the rubric and helping with the norming
  • So far, the open-education movement has been supported, to an astonishing extent, by a single donor: The Hewlett Foundation has made $68 million worth of grants to initiatives at Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Rice, Stanford, and Tufts. Today, such foundation money is slowing, but new sources of financing are emerging. President Barack Obama has directed $100 billion in stimulus money to education at all levels, and he recently appointed a prominent advocate of open education to be undersecretary of education (Martha Kanter, who helped launch the 100-member Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources and the Community College Open Textbook Project)
  • Today, we've gone from scarcity of knowledge to unimaginable abundance. It's only natural that these new, rapidly evolving information technologies would convene new communities of scholars, both inside and outside existing institutions.
Gary Brown

Free Online Courses, at a Very High Price - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...48777

Open education Western Governors competency credentialing

shared by Gary Brown on 14 Oct 09 - Cached
  • At this point in the openness conversation, the example you hear over and over is a little-known university in Utah that took the old model, and, in the words of its president, "blew that up." That is Western Governors University—a nonprofit, accredited online institution that typically charges $2,890 per six-month term—where students advance by showing what they've learned, not how much time they've spent in class. It's called competency-based education. It means you can fast-forward your degree by testing out of stuff you've already mastered. Some see a marriage of open content and competency-based learning as a model for the small-pieces-loosely-joined chain of cheaper, fragmented education. "We view the role of the university of the future as measuring and credentialing learning, not the source of all learning," says Robert W. Mendenhall, the president.
  • Gary Brown on 14 Oct 09
     
    Wiley gets prime time along with challenges to open ed from the "Chronicle of Ancient Education," but blooming in the desert is an emergent species of education. This piece echoes cites Nils' has marked in emerging market nations, but through the Chronicle's lens.
Matthew Tedder

Academic source code dust-up symptom of CS education ills - Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...mptom-of-cs-education-ills.ars

education

shared by Matthew Tedder on 13 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Matthew Tedder on 13 Jun 09
     
    It's about posting one's work on line. I know (from memory) this sort of thing has actually gone to court and been ruled in the student's favor--the student is the owner of his/her own work. But this is a whole new twist..
  • Matthew Tedder on 13 Jun 09
     
    I have two articles to post on this.. The commentary is particularly meaningful in the other one, I think. But both add value. The other one is: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/11/student-challenges-p.html
Joshua Yeidel

Silverlight & WPF Chart - 0 views

visifire.com

assessment visualization silverlight

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 23 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 23 Feb 09
     
    Visifire is a set of open source data visualization components - powered by Microsoft® Silverlight™ & WPF...Visifire can also be embedded in any webpage as a standalone Silverlight App. Visifire is independent of server side technology. It can be used with ASP, ASP.Net, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails or just simple HTML. No radar charts, but for some things, this might be useful.
Joshua Yeidel

Google Fixes IE6 with Chrome Frame - 0 views

www.sitepoint.com/...google-chrome-frame-fixes-ie

browser web_design

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 24 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 24 Sep 09
     
    Chrome Frame is a new open-source product from Google that promises to answer web developer dreams. It's a free plug-in for IE6, IE7 and IE8 that turns Internet Explorer into Google's Chrome browser!
Joshua Yeidel

eXe : eLearning XHTML editor - 0 views

www.exelearning.org/FrontPage

elearning web_design

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 11 May 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 11 May 09
     
    A free, open-source webpage creation and editing tool that can export in IMS Content Package, IMS Common Cartridge, or SCORM formats (or as stand-alone web pages.
Joshua Yeidel

Drupal Moves Into the White House - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views

bits.blogs.nytimes.com/...pal-moves-into-the-white-house

drupal opensource

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 31 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 31 Oct 09
     
    "To some, the White House shift to Drupal from a proprietary software package represented a serious seal of approval for open-source software."
Peggy Collins

Northwestern U Creates Integration Utility To Link Blackboard and Google Apps -- Campus... - 1 views

campustechnology.com/...lackboard-and-google-apps.aspx

shared by Peggy Collins on 04 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Peggy Collins on 04 Nov 09
     
    Users at Northwestern University will be able to log into both Blackboard Learn and Google Apps with a single signon thanks to the efforts of the institution's IT development team. The code created by the team as a Blackboard Building Block and named Bboogle has also been released as open source to let other institutions use or build on the technology at no cost.
Nils Peterson

How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education | Fast Company - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...who-needs-harvard.html

shared by Nils Peterson on 04 Sep 09 - Cached
  • "Colleges have become outrageously expensive, yet there remains a general refusal to acknowledge the implications of new technologies," says Jim Groom, an "instructional technologist" at Virginia's University of Mary Washington and a prominent voice in the blogosphere for blowing up college as we know it. Groom, a chain-smoker with an ever-present five days' growth of beard, coined the term "edupunk" to describe the growing movement toward high-tech do-it-yourself education. "Edupunk," he tells me in the opening notes of his first email, "is about the utter irresponsibility and lethargy of educational institutions and the means by which they are financially cannibalizing their own mission."
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 24 Sep 09
       
      Several people to follow in this article. They are moving from open content up the ladder. I don't see them pointing to open assessment as Downes did a couple years back, but that may make a place for us to play with them
  • Joshua Yeidel on 04 Sep 09
     
    A good overview of how higher ed's core functions are being remixed online. As you might expect from the source, the emphasis is on the positive.
S Spaeth

Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUC... - 1 views

www.educause.edu/...162420

John Seely Brown Learning 2.0 Educause

shared by S Spaeth on 18 Sep 09 - Cached
  • More than one-third of the world’s population is under 20. There are over 30 million people today qualified to enter a university who have no place to go. During the next decade, this 30 million will grow to 100 million. To meet this staggering demand, a major university needs to be created each week.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 18 Sep 09
       
      quote from Sir John Daniel, 1996. The decade he speaks of has past
  • Open source communities have developed a well-established path by which newcomers can “learn the ropes” and become trusted members of the community through a process of legitimate peripheral participation.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 18 Sep 09
       
      He describes an apprentice model, but we might also think about peripheral participation in terms of giving feedback using an educative rubric.
  • Lectures from model teachers are recorded on video and are then physically distributed via DVD to schools that typically lack well-trained instructors (as well as Internet connections). While the lectures are being played on a monitor (which is often powered by a battery, since many participating schools also lack reliable electricity), a “mediator,” who could be a local teacher or simply a bright student, periodically pauses the video and encourages engagement among the students by asking questions or initiating discussions about the material they are watching.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The Faulkes Telescope Project and the Decameron Web are just two of scores of research and scholarly portals that provide access to both educational resources and a community of experts in a given domain. The web offers innumerable opportunities for students to find and join niche communities where they can benefit from the opportunities for distributed cognitive apprenticeship. Finding and joining a community that ignites a student’s passion can set the stage for the student to acquire both deep knowledge about a subject (“learning about”) and the ability to participate in the practice of a field through productive inquiry and peer-based learning (“learning to be”). These communities are harbingers of the emergence of a new form of technology-enhanced learning—Learning 2.0—which goes beyond providing free access to traditional course materials and educational tools and creates a participatory architecture for supporting communities of learners.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 18 Sep 09
       
      Kramer's Plant Biotech group could be one of these. It needs tasks that permit legitimate peripheral participation. One of those could be peer assessment. Another could be social bookmarking. I now see it needs not just an _open_ platform, but an _extensible_ one. Here is where the hub and spoke model may play in.
    • S Spaeth
      S Spaeth on 06 Oct 09
       
      I infer that you are referring to this research group. http://www.officeofresearch.wsu.edu/missions/health/kramer.html I am curious to learn why you selected this lab as an example.
  • open participatory learning ecosystems
Gary Brown

Schmidt - 3 views

www.irrodl.org/...641

accreditation peer review Open education assessment

shared by Gary Brown on 08 Nov 09 - Cached
  • There are a number of assessment methods by which learning can be evaluated (exam, practicum, etc.) for the purpose of recognition and accreditation, and there are a number of different purposes for the accreditation itself (i.e., job, social recognition, membership in a group, etc). As our world moves from an industrial to a knowledge society, new skills are needed. Social web technologies offer opportunities for learning, which build these skills and allow new ways to assess them.
  • This paper makes the case for a peer-based method of assessment and recognition as a feasible option for accreditation purposes. The peer-based method would leverage online communities and tools, for example digital portfolios, digital trails, and aggregations of individual opinions and ratings into a reliable assessment of quality. Recognition by peers can have a similar function as formal accreditation, and pathways to turn peer recognition into formal credits are outlined. The authors conclude by presenting an open education assessment and accreditation scenario, which draws upon the attributes of open source software communities: trust, relevance, scalability, and transparency.
  • Gary Brown on 08 Nov 09
     
    Kinship here, and familiar friends.
Nils Peterson

Two Bits » Modulate This Book - 0 views

twobits.net/modulate

p2pu recursive public Kelty

shared by Nils Peterson on 24 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Free Software is good to think with… How does one re-mix scholarship? One of the central questions of this book is how Free Software and Free Culture think about re-using, re-mixing, modifying and otherwise building on the work of others. It seems obvious that the same question should be asked of scholarship. Indeed the idea that scholarship is cumulative and builds on the work of others is a bit of a platitude even. But how?
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 24 Sep 10
       
      This is Chris Kelty's site for his book Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Learned about the idea "recusive public" at the P2PU event, and from that found Kelty. This quote leads off the page that is inviting readers to "modulate" the book. The page before gives a free download in PDF and HTML and the CC License and invitation to remix, use, etc, and to "Modulate" so I came to see what that term might mean.
  • I think Free Software is “good to think with” in the classic anthropological sense.  Part of the goal of launching Two Bits has been to experiment with “modulations” of the book–and of scholarship more generally–a subject discussed at length in the text. Free Software has provided a template, and a kind of inspiration for people to experiment with new modes of reuse, remixing, modulating and transducing collaboratively created objects.
  • As such, “Modulations” is a project, concurrent with the book, but not necessarily based on it, which is intended to explore the questions raised there, but in other works, with and by other scholars, a network of researchers and projects on free and open source software, on “recursive publics,” on publics and public sphere theory generally, and on new projects and problems confronted by Free Software and its practices…
Matthew Tedder

Gov. Schwarzenegger Releases Free Digital Textbook Initiative Phase 1 Report - 0 views

gov.ca.gov/12996

education textbooks

shared by Matthew Tedder on 15 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Matthew Tedder on 15 Aug 09
     
    Interesting results of California's open source text book initiative.. Other references: http://gov.ca.gov/press-release/12225/ and http://about.ck12.org/
Theron DesRosier

University of the people - 0 views

mashable.com/...education-social-media

education future social eLearning

shared by Theron DesRosier on 27 Jul 09 - Cached
  • One vision for the school of the future comes from the United Nations. Founded this year by the UN’s Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID), the University of the People is a not-for-profit institution that aims to offer higher education opportunities to people who generally couldn’t afford it by leveraging social media technologies and ideas. The school is a one hundred percent online institution, and utilizes open source courseware and peer-to-peer learning to deliver information to students without charging tuition. There are some costs, however. Students must pay an application fee (though the idea is to accept everyone who applies that has a high school diploma and speaks English), and when they’re ready, students must pay to take tests, which they are required to pass in order to continue their education. All fees are set on a sliding scale based on the student’s country of origin, and never exceed $100.
  • Theron DesRosier on 27 Jul 09
     
    "One vision for the school of the future comes from the United Nations. Founded this year by the UN's Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID), the University of the People is a not-for-profit institution that aims to offer higher education opportunities to people who generally couldn't afford it by leveraging social media technologies and ideas. All fees are set on a sliding scale based on the student's country of origin, and never exceed $100. "
Nils Peterson

Change Magazine - The New Guys in Assessment Town - 0 views

www.changemag.org/...full-assessment-town.html

shared by Nils Peterson on 05 May 09 - Cached
  • if one of the institution’s general education goals is critical thinking, the system makes it possible to call up all the courses and programs that assess student performance on that outcome.
  • bringing together student learning outcomes data at the level of the institution, program, course, and throughout student support services so that “the data flows between and among these levels”
  • Like its competitors, eLumen maps outcomes vertically across courses and programs, but its distinctiveness lies in its capacity to capture what goes on in the classroom. Student names are entered into the system, and faculty use a rubric-like template to record assessment results for every student on every goal. The result is a running record for each student available only to the course instructor (and in a some cases to the students themselves, who can go to the system to  get feedback on recent assessments).
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 05 May 09
       
      sounds like harvesting gradebook. assess student work and roll up
    • Joshua Yeidel
      Joshua Yeidel on 05 May 09
       
      This system has some potential for formative use at the per-student leve.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • “I’m a little wary.  It seems as if, in addition to the assessment feedback we are already giving to students, we might soon be asked to add a data-entry step of filling in boxes in a centralized database for all the student learning outcomes. This is worrisome to those of us already struggling under the weight of all that commenting and essay grading.”
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 05 May 09
       
      its either double work, or not being understood that the grading and the assessment can be the same activity. i suspect the former -- grading is being done with different metrics
    • Joshua Yeidel
      Joshua Yeidel on 05 May 09
       
      I am in the unusual position of seeing many papers _after_ they have been graded by a wide variety of teachers. Many of these contain little "assessment feedback" -- many teachers focus on "correcting" the papers and finding some letter or number to assign as a value.
  • “This is where we see many institutions struggling,” Galvin says. “Faculty simply don’t have the time for a deeper involvement in the mechanics of assessment.” Many have never seen a rubric or worked with one, “so generating accurate, objective data for analysis is a challenge.”  
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 05 May 09
       
      Rather than faculty using the community to help with assessment, they are outsourcing to a paid assessor -- this is the result of undertaking this thinking while also remaining in the institution-centric end of the spectrum we developed
  • I asked about faculty pushback. “Not so much,” Galvin says, “not after faculty understand that the process is not intended to evaluate their work.”
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 05 May 09
       
      red flag
  • the annual reports required by this process were producing “heaps of paper” while failing to track trends and developments over time. “It’s like our departments were starting anew every year,” Chaplot says. “We wanted to find a way to house the data that gave us access to what was done in the past,” which meant moving from discrete paper reports to an electronic database.
    • Joshua Yeidel
      Joshua Yeidel on 05 May 09
       
      It's not clear whether the "database" is housing measurements, narratives and reflections, or all of the above.
  • Can eLumen represent student learning in language? No, but it can quantify the number of boxes checked against number of boxes not checked.”
  • developing a national repository of resources, rubrics, outcomes statements, and the like that can be reviewed and downloaded by users
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 05 May 09
       
      in building our repository we could well open-source these tools, no need to lock them up
  • “These solutions cement the idea that assessment is an administrative rather than an educational enterprise, focused largely on accountability. They increasingly remove assessment decision making from the everyday rhythm of teaching and learning and the realm of the faculty.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 06 May 09
       
      Over the wall assessment, see Transformative Assessment rubric for more detail
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