Telling E-portfolio Stories

Telling E-portfolio Stories: The road to 'stickiness' 5th June 2008
University of Wolverhampton Institute for Learning Enhancement

I attended this event to find out the kind of projects that are using e-portfolios and to assist me with implementing an e-portfolio tool on my project.

The programme for the day can be viewed here

A very busy extremely well organised day packed with e-portfolio stories from HE institutions around the UK.

There were 27 twenty minute presentations about e-portfolio experiences as well as 8 other presentations that were e-portfolio related.

The 27 presentations were arranged into three one hour sessions of three presentations, so each individual could attend only 9 out of the 27.

The organisers have assured me that the material will be posted at the link above soon.

We were given an abstract of each of the 27 presentations which gave a brief outline and in most cases the tools used.

I did a quick count and found that:

14 used PebblePad
5 used Blackboard
3 used WebCT
1 used MS Word
1 was based on using a USB key

There were 3 others that I could not make out what tool was used (from the abstract)

I also made a note of the subject area that the e-portfolio project had been used (where it was clear):

Psychology - PDP
Psychology - ePDP
PGCE
PGCE - Assessment
PGCE - CPD
PGCE - evidence of standards
Graduate Teaching Programme - Professional Development
Occupational Therapy - CPD
Radiotherapy and Oncology - CPD
Midwifery - Evidence of achievement
Social Work - PDP
Social Work - Assessment of Practice
Computing - Career development
Business Information Systems - PDP
Science and Engineering - PDP
Travel Operations Management - all course work
Choreography into Performance - on line artists sketchbook
PDP generally across the university

With a couple of exceptions e-portfolios are being used for the more vocational subjects, particularly when students are on placement and for teaching, health related and PDP activity.

Summary of the key issues/challenges that people faced and the things that help:

1. Make sure the e-portfolio is embedded into the module/course
2. Make sure the system works well before using it. Easy to lose interest very quickly
3. E-portfolio and VLE should be kept separate if possible
4. IT competency of users plays a big part. Training, support, user group etc
5. Create templates for users to refer to and to use
6. How to move past the 'champions' and build staff capability and capacity
7. Important to use blended learning methods (not e-portfolio on its own)
8. Need to give regular feedback and re-enforcement to users of an e-portfolio
9. Link to life after university (exportable)

The benefits of a Wiki compared to Email Collaboration

It can be difficult sometimes to see the benefits of a Wiki.

I subscribe to Stephen Downes email, more information can be found at his website if you are interested:

http://www.downes.ca/

In the latest email there was a reference to the difference between wiki and email collaboration with a link to an image from Wikinomics

The image shows how much simpler it is to use a wiki when collaborating particulalrly when editing documents might be involved

An interactive whiteboard for under £50 using a Wiimote Part 4

In the previous entries to my blog I have explained the following

1. The Wiimote interactive project

2. The paring of the Wiimote to the Bluetooth on my PC

3. How to make the Infra red pen

In this final installment I have made a short video to demonstrate how to set up the interactive whiteboard with a laptop and an LCD projector

Apologies for the poor video quality. I used Camtasia Studio to create the video and then produced it as a Windows Media file. I also produced a Quicktime file which was better quality, but the file size was 2.5 times larger, so I have stayed with the wmv file

Please feel free to contact me if you are keen to have a go yourself

Many thanks to Johnny Chung Lee for creating the software that lets you use the Wiimote like this

An interactive whiteboard for under £50 using a Wiimote Part 3

In the Wiimote part 2 I explained how I had got the Wiimote to pair up with the Bluetooth on the PC to the extent that I could run the interactive whiteboard software.

Last weekend I made an Infra Red Pen.

Here is a video to explain how to do it yourself.

Apologies for the poor quality of the still pictures, I will make an improved one later on

Knowledge is for sharing

Storing files and Moore's Law

Each year for the past few years I have bought a USB Flash memory stick.

I started off with a 512MB memory stick back in January 2005 and it cost me about £15. Likewise a year later in Jan 2006 I went back to the same discounted store and bought a 1GB stick for about £15.

In 2007 a 2GB stick was £15 and low an behold this year 2008 I can get a 4GB stick for £14.86 at the time of writing.

One might be forgiven for thinking that technology is improving at the rate of double a year.

Moore's Law (Gordon Moore Intel co-founder) stated that processor capability or chip density would double every 18 months in an article back in 1965

The link is to a recent article in the Institution of Engineering and Technology Magazine Jan 26th 2008 edition.

A summary of how technology has managed to roughly follow Moore's Law:

1) Up until the late 90s chip manufacturers were able to increase the die size or the area of the chip. However, there came a point when the yield (number of good chips on the die) became poor and unviable.

2) The next stage in the story is that chip manufacturers increased the number of layers in a chip with up to 12 layers planned by 2010. This required innovation in chip (CMOS) manufacturing process.

So back to the USB memory doubling every year, well that might be down to price erosion by volume production coupled with the 18 month doubling in capacity.

They key thing for me though is that I did not buy the 4GB USB drive this year.

The original reason to use a USB memory stick was that I could take files with me wherever I went and work on any PC save my work and take it away with me.

Over the past year I have started to use online (free) memory to save files and pictures using the likes of Google Docs (1000 docs), Windows SkyDrive (1GB) Live (500 photos in any 30 day period), Flickr (200 free photos) YouTube (Videos).

I was a little reluctant to do this initially, but I guessed that particularly with the larger players (Google, Yahoo and Windows) that I am not likely to loose my stuff and I reckoned on backing it up onto an external harddrive at home.

As more and more players offer free memory space then I return to the situation with memory and its cost/price erosion to the point that companies feel they can offer free space in quite large volume. And/or maybe its reached the point where these companies feel that they have to offer to get the punters to sign up. BUT this is probably Hard disk memory not Flash

Following on from this the comparison between Flash memory (USB drives) and Hard drive memory came to mind. I can now get a 500GB external HDD for about £75 (probably cheaper if I search more deeply)

With Flash memory 1GB roughly £4, HDD 1GB at £0.15, there is a significant difference.

However, with the advent of online memory coupled with the external HDD, a new line of products starts to look very attractive

The Asus Eee PC and the Apple MacBook Air. Both of these products use Flash memory instead of a standard hard disk.

Why? When I have just pointed out such a big cost difference between Flash and HDD memory.

Well the HDD is the weak link in the laptop particularly because it is prone to being damaged if subjected to any force

The HDD is also heavy, bulky and juicy. Using Flash instead of standard HDD contributes to a light, thin, economic more reliable and more robust product.

So the idea of an Asus Eee with an 8GB Flash HDD sounds odd, but actually its just right for today. It's light to carry, more reliable and the battery SHOULD last longer.

I would use it to work on line, saving my work on line and every now and then, maybe when I am back at home I back up my on line stuff onto my USB external 500GB HDD.

My reason for writing about this is really a reflection about how I am changing the way I operate the way I use a PC, the internet, and file storage

The fact that I cannot get an 8GB Asus Eee for love nor money is neither here nor there really.

An interactive whiteboard for under £50 using a Wiimote Part 2

A week on from my first post, I have made some progress working in my spare time.

Chris Hall bought the Wiimote from Argos

The Bluetooth USB adaptor from CPC/Farnell also arrived on Wednesday.

My first task was to get the wiimote paired with the bluetooth adaptor

1. Installing the bluetooth sofware:

So far so good no problems with this, just insert the CD and install

2. Getting the bluetooth software to find the Wiimote

Wiimote found by bluetooth

This was also quite straightforward

3. Pairing the Wiimote with the bluetooth software

Bluetooth pairing

This caused a few headaches. There is no security code so you just click 'skip' and it should move to the next step.

However, the key to getting past this stage is to hold down keys 1 and 2 on the Wiimote continuously while clicking the 'skip' key.

This is not immediately apparent as once you have pressed keys 1 and 2 on the Wiimote the 4 blue LEDS remain lit for quite a while, so you think that it is communicating as it should.

4. Wiimote is paired

Wiimote paired

5. The next step is to get the interactive whiteboard software running. Having downloaded it from Johhny Chung's website (see first post) you need to read the 'Read me first'. Here it tells you that you need Microsoft (dot)Net 2.0.

You then need to make sure that the software is loaded from the archive root

Wiimote whiteboard software

6. Click on the Whiteboard exe file and you should get the calibration box. There are some help boxes if you have done something wrong.

7. Click on the calibration button and you get the calibration page

OK...so I have not make the IR pens yet, job for this weekend

BUT...I did bring in an old TV remote control just to check that something happened and hey presto it worked. I could not do anything because the TV remote outputs an IR code so the calibration does not work properly, but the test was good enough for me to move forward.

Can't wait for the next gripping installment eh?

An interactive whiteboard for under £50 using a Wiimote

The Wiimote is quite interesting in that it has an infrared sensor that is more than just a receiver like those on your TV. I have not looked too much into the detail but I have not seen anything like this before

Nintendo augmented the remote with an infrared image sensor on the front designed to locate two IR beacons within the controller's field of view.

These two sources of IR light are tracked by a sensor in the front of the Wiimote housing. By tracking the locations of these two points in the sensors 2D field of view, the system can derive more accurate pointing information.

More information can be found here

We thought we would have a go at making an interactive whiteboard ourselves.

If you're interested here are the steps to hopefully bring success:

1. The video showing how it works

2. How to make an IR pen

3. List of working bluetooth adaptors

4. List of parts from Farnell (Could not find what I wanted at Maplin)

5. A Wiimote from Argos

I'll blog about how we get on in time

If anyone in the UK has made one I'd be interested to know how you got on