Release of study, “Creating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational [tag-ice]Networking[/tag-ice]” The report, available now for media only at http://files.nsba.org/creatingandconnecting.pdf , is embargoed until Tuesday, August 14, at 12:01 a.m.

Key findings:

* 96 percent of students with online access use social networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging, and visiting online communities such as [tag-ice]Facebook[/tag-ice], [tag-tec]MySpace[/tag-tec], and Webkinz. Further, students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education.

* Nearly 60 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college planning, learning outside of school, and careers and 50 percent of online students say they talk specifically about schoolwork.

* Students report spending almost as much time using social network services and Web sites as they spend watching television. Among teens who use social networking sites, that amounts to about 9 hours a week online, compared to 10 hours a week watching television.

* 96 percent of school districts say that at least some of their teachers assign homework requiring Internet use.

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Ziele der vorliegenden Studie sind zum einen die Erstellung einer Status-Quo-Analyse über die – zur Zeit – noch sehr bunte und uneinheitliche E-Portfolio-Landschaft Europas im Hochschulsektor, zum anderen die Entwicklung einer Wissens- und Entscheidungsbasis zur Implementierung von E-Portfolio-Projekten. Nach einer Beschreibung der Ziele und des Vorgehens in der Studie werden zunächst wissenschaftliche Traditionen und lerntheoretische Ansätze vorgestellt, in denen der E-Portfolio-Ansatz seine Wurzeln hat, sowie Schlüsselbegriffe erläutert. Anschließend werden unterschiedliche Szenarien des E-Portfolio-Einsatzes im Verlauf einer akademischen Bildungsbiografie beschrieben und die institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen der heutigen Hochschule vorgestellt (E-Learning-Strategie, E-Bologna etc.).In einer ausführlichen Analyse werden E-Portfolio-Tools mit Blick auf ihre Brauchbarkeit und Qualitäten hinsichtlich wichtiger E-Portfolio-Funktionalitäten wie auch ausgewählte Zielgruppen (E-Portfolio-AnfängerInnen) und Szenarien an Hochschulen beschrieben und bewertet. Aufbauend auf die Darstellung von internationalen Fallbeispielen und deren unterschiedlichen Zugänge zu E-Portfolio (mit Beispielen aus den USA, Großbritannien und den Niederlanden) werden abschließend strategische, didaktische, technologische, institutionelle und bildungspolitische Herausforderungen zusammengefasst.

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e-learning 2.0: All You Need To Know: “One of the strongest, but least hyped, uses of web 2.0 technologies over the past couple of years has been e-learning. [...]Although not designed specifically for use in education, these tools are helping to make e-learning far more personal, social, and flexible.

One of the usual suspects that are mentioned in this context is ELGG that coined itself an ePortfolio (t d f) and social-network application – getting its value not only from integrating several aspects of Web 2.0 applications like blogs, wikis, links, rss etc but particularily by applying flexible access rights to user generated content. ELGG and others are presented as the prototypical grassroots application.

In a comprehensive follow-up quite a many web-apps are mentioned that make it far easier for nowadays students to getting their job done. From simple Office replacements like Google’s Apps to Facebook as an integrating social network monster. Please refer to that listing over at Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students

Well, that’s the cure or the challenge!

There is more than just this part (=grassroots) of the equation. There are those big institutions that invested in VLEs not long ago just in order to realize that that’s more the pain than the cure of learning in the digital age. What we as factline are going to do is help those institutions to embrace a more open perspective on learning by supporting those that are actually in charge of the process: the students and the teachers. We not only provide the the tools but also can guarantee that the institution can accept their visions. And fortunately those institutions are starting to realize that they need to trust their employees and their students.

Being an ePortfolio-provider for institutions that provide ePortfolios to their students represents a slightly different approach. Def. no grassroots movement rather a top-down approach. So what does that mean for deploying and maintaining ePortfolios as personal learning environments (PLE).

So what does all that mean for an institutional ePortfolio provider like factline:
- funny thing: we are approached to support grassroots ambitions
- students – only naturally – ask us to provide a continuing life for their digital identity after graduation
- how can we secure the interests and didactical needs for an institution and its teachers
- how can we secure the interests of the students
- how can we provide access to all those webservices (t d f) around
- how can we provide integrations with the VLE in place
- how can we compete with global competition
- how can we differentiate and provide better service to both students and institutions alike
- how can we actively participate in the discussions that evolve the entire ePortfolio topic: in terms of technical standards and in terms of organizational and pedagogical needs.

As you might imagine we’ve done a lot already to ask some of those questions and there is more to do to answer the remainder.

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expertenforum.at | NEWS: “Einladung zur Vortrags- und Diskussionsveranstaltung ‘Marktforschung im Web 2.0′”

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Serge Ravet is raising a lot of relevant topics that are densely coupled with the notion of ePortfolios. Those are:
- identy
- innovation
- data-mining for (as an example) automatic extraction of CVs

And above all he starts out to sketch an architecture for an ePortfolio enable environment that consists of three components:
- the ePortfolio
- the ePortfolio Management System (organisational)
- the ePortfolio System (individual)

What I like especially is that he brings in the notion of social capital (comp. Francis Fukuyama’s notion of sociability) as something you could create and showcase with the help of ePortfolios. Haven’t read anything about that networking aspect before.

Further the question is raised if we should use special tools (ePortfolio authoring systems) or just tools that provide the proper import/export mechanisms. I cut a chart out of his paper that represents that ecosystem

This debate somehow reminds me of the lively discussions about Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) Tools and whether you as a knowledge worker should own them or if it is even thinkable that an organization provides them. If we look how modern tools that support more innovative approaches to sharing knowledge and supporting innovation are implemented in firms then I’d say it is a long way for the vision of personal ePortfolios. Although we might be in a different situation that might better make it reasonable for institutions to support the personal approach.

Deeply connected to that strategic debate is the question of what standards should be supported by ePortfolio systems. The broad perspective that is presented here refers to open standards (OpenID (t d f), HR-XML (t d f), FOAF (t d f), ATOM (t d f), SIOC (t d f), … ) that are successfully implemented on the greater web. If you are in favor of more institutionalized closed shops (ePortfolio ecosystems) you might vote for IMS.

Every post that deals with ePortfolio (t d f)s will start/close with such a ceterum censeo, at least as long as I don’t change my mind:
“ePortfolios are digital representations of a person and thus need to be an integral part of a person’s digital life. Thus ePortfolios need to be either aggregators of data or citizens in bigger digital environments”

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