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Learning Net är en ny nättiding om "nätbaserat lärande". Bakom tidningen står Nätuniversitetet.

The EdTechUK blog presents an "e-Portfolio roundup" (containing several nice links and reflections)

There’s a frenzy of e-Portfolio related activity in the UK at the moment. I’ve picked out some recent highlights but this list is by no means exhaustive.

One of the conclusions is to

My advice? If you are investigating e-portfolios at the moment, hold on to your money. The only product I’d currently recommend is the excellent Elgg.

It is probably a good idea to hold on to your money (for example by using the SCAM ePortfolio which is free and open Source). Elgg is a nice system but, I would not consider Elgg to be an ePortfolio system. In fact, the Elgg people call it a "Community learning space" which I believe is more suitable. One of the problem in the ePortfolio discussion is (as is pointed out) that there is no commonly agreed definition. There are how ever several ePortfolio definitions in the literature (that are not agreed). They differs in some ways, but are overlapping in other ways. Judging by those, I believe that the portfolio is just one component in an learning environment such as Elgg. The portfolio should be a portfolio and do portfolio things. Not blogg, not community, not calendar etc. Those things should be handled by other component which do those things better - but those components should interact with the portfolio in different ways to form a part of the overall Virtual Learning Environment (PLE as well as MLE other…). That it is possible to store your calendar information in the ePortfolio (which you by the way can do in SCAM ePortfolio), but this is a completely different thing since the calendar is not managed by the portfolio application. We have to isolate functional components within the VLE in a better way in order to be able to adopt a more manageable and flexible architecture for learning and education.

To accomplish this it is necessary to  have good models and frameworks for modularization of the VLE. Including best practise use of standards, system interfaces (such as SOA), metadata etc. This problem space is, for example, currently addressed by JISC in the eLearning framework and elsewhere.

Jens Nylander (Mannen bakom Jens of Sweden) skriver i en debattartikel i Computer Sweden (Nr 21, 2006) om mediebolagens märkliga och obehagliga agerande i frågor som rör fildelning och DRM (Digital Rights Management). En liknande problematik (och debatt) finns även när det gäller digitala läromedel. Vissa former av DRM riskerar att få mycket negativa pedagogiska konsekvenser. Därför är de frågeställningar och farhågor som Jens Nylander reser också viktiga för skola och utbildning.

Läs hela debattartikeln på Computer Sweden: Dina rättigheter hotas

I held a presentation about SCAM ePortfolio at Umeå University today. The presentation was from a technology perspective, focusing on information- and metadata structure in ePortfolios as well as why standards are so important for interoperability and transferability. The objective was to point out that the right choice of technological architecture gives an added pedagogical value that would otherwise be lost - despite providing the wanted functionality. Download the presentation slides [PDF].

I recently found this GIS education material at an organization called GITA. They have just released under a Creative Common licence. It looks quite good and GIS is an interesting tool for education, this material might be of use for anyone who wants to learn more about using GIS or is teaching GIS?

The steadily growing global interest in spatial information and its presentation in the academic, administrative and managerial sector asks for qualified personnel to cope with termGISTGIST: GIST is the abbreviation for Geographic Information Systems Technology. in order to form an overall pleasing and beneficial final GIS product, especially in economically challenging times of competition. This reason was decisive to establish the e-learning course termGITTAGITTA: GITTA is a Swiss e-Learning project about GIS and it is the abbreviation for Geographic Information Technology Training Alliance. For more information about GITTA have a look at www.gitta.info. giving better and more coordinated access to educational material covering comprehensive and in-depth information over spatial distances using up-to-date technology.

I have been fascinated by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) an their huge pedagogical potential ever since we developed a prototype of a Web-based GIS system for use in schools back in 1994-96. This project was run at IML (called MDC at that time) at Umeå university.

Our idea was that pupils should go out in the woods, collecting lichens, comparing them to a “reference surface” and using them as environmental indicators to determine certain environmental pollutions. This method have been used in environmental education for many years and is a good example of how pedagogical methods can be enhanced by the use of technology - hence, by combining advanced technology development and pedagogical method development it is possible to provide ICT tools that add a pedagogical value that would not have been possible otherwise. In our GIS-lichen case, the pedagogical value was:

• adding calculation support to help young children deal with the quite advanced maths involved,
• adding a geographical dimension as it became possible to combine results from several classes and schools in a broad geographic area. Suddenly it was possible to analyse and visualize a class results in a broader perspective, putting it into a geographic context.
• adding the time dimension - instead of ending up in the trash the result was stored in a database for use by others and,
• adding additional GIS layers - it became possible to combine the layer containing pupils (lichen data) data with other GIS data layers, such as roads, industries, weather etc. in other words: endless possibilities for presenting problemsan, alysis, and discussion.

It however never left the prototype stage since the Swedish “Lantmäteriet” (the governmental agency for geographic information) told us the we should not have such ridiculous illusions. Their maps (in fact no GIS at all) would ever be avaliable on the web! This also ment that they would not allow us to use thir maps (which we are financing through taxes by the way). Instead we made up a map of the forrest of Utopia for testing purposes. A couple of years later Lantmäteriet (or Metria which is now their commercial name) had their own (quite limited) system on the web…
Anyway, I wrote an article on this project in 1996. A revised version can be found here. Only in Swedish though.

I have improved my system for categorization with a better taxonomy and finer granularity. The new categories will however only work for entries after February 21, 2006 to begin with.

Vid Institutionen för interaktiva medier och lärande, IML (min hemmainstitution) vid Umeå universitet arbetar man sedan en tid tillbaka med POD-cast som en distributionskanal för bland annat föreläsningsmaterial.

Studenterna på kursen IT och lärande kan hämta allt föreläsningsmaterial som videobaserade podsändningar. Studenterna har också möjlighet att låna en Ipod medan de läser kursen.

Läs hela pressreleasen

IDG har också skrivit en notis

Peter Karlberg bloggade häromdagen om POD-sändningar i en skola i Tumba. Dock bara på planeringsstadiet ännu.

The Swedish schoolnet have installed an adapted version of SCAM ePortfolio. The idea is to let teachers try it out - and if they like it - download it and install it locally. SCAM ePortfolio was developed for the purpose of showing how interoperability and transferability can be achieved through the use of Open Standards and to provide a free, Open Source ePortfolio for use in schools.

Try out the SCAMePortfolio at the Swedish shoolnet (in Swedish)

I have upgraded to Wordpress 2.01. Please notify me if you find anything that doesn’t work as anticipated!

Det Svenska skoldatanätet har installerat en anpassad version av SCAM ePortfolio. Den kallas för e-portföljen och tanken är att lärare (och andra intresserade) skall kunna prova den under en period för att sedan ladda hem och installera den lokalt. SCAM ePortfolio är utvecklad som Öppen Källkod och är helt gratis att ladda hem och använda - och anpssa om man har behov av det!

SCAM är en del av MjukIs-projektet (Mjuk infrastruktur i svensk skola). Därför bygger e-portföljen på s.k. mjuk infrasstruktur: det vill säga öppna standarder för informationsstruktur, beskrivande information (metadata) mm. det gör att e-portföljen kan “prata” och samverka med andra system, samt att det som lagras i e-portföljen kan flyttas till andra system (exempelvis ett annat e-portfoliosystem eller ett s.k. LMS) - givetvis under förutsättning att dessa använder samma öppna standarder.

Till e-portföljen har man kopplat en plats för utbyte och reflektion kring ePortfolio i skolan.

• Här kan du registrera dig och prova e-portföljen
• Här kan du utbyta erfarenheten kring e-portfolio
• Här kan du läsa mer om SCAM-projektet och SCAM ePortfolio
• Här kan du läsa det som jag har skrivit om e-portfolio på frepa.blog
• Här kan du läsa mer om MjukIs-projektet