Assessment by ePortfolio

If you’re considering incorporating ePortfolios into your teaching (and if you’re not you should) there’s a good review by Helen Barret available.

Abstract

This paper provides the theoretical background for a study of student learning, engagement and collaboration through the development of electronic portfolios. After covering an overview of the limited research on portfolios in education, definitions, multiple purposes of portfolios, and conflicting theoretical paradigms are discussed. Principles of student motivation and engagement are covered, along with philosophical and assessment issues and the importance of reflection in learning. The relationship between storytelling and reflection is elaborated. Finally, the paper describes several technology tools that engage learners in reflecting, including blogging and digital storytelling.

You can read the full report here.

3 Reasons Why We Have Interactive E-Learning | The Rapid E-Learning Blog

Information Graphic showing the steps of Rapid...
Information Graphic showing the steps of Rapid E-Learning development process (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The most obvious reason why people interact with the elearning course is to navigate from one point to the next. The “next” button is the most common form of interaction. We click it to navigate from one screen to another.

Of course, there are all sorts of others ways to navigate content. It could be an onscreen button, like a gate screen that we click to advance. Or perhaps it’s something like … a slider instead of next buttons to navigate from one screen to the next.

via 3 Reasons Why We Have Interactive E-Learning | The Rapid E-Learning Blog.

Essential Guide to Visual Thinking for E-Learning #yam


Embed from Getty Images

Here are two common challenges when building online training courses: knowing what content needs to be in the course and then having the right visuals to support the learning of that content. One way to overcome these challenges is to increase your visual thinking skills. You’ll learn to focus on the right content and then find the right visuals to support what you’re teaching.

via Essential Guide to Visual Thinking for E-Learning.

5 Tips For Hosting Online Class Discussions | Edudemic

Students of Saint Mary's Hall
Students of Saint Mary’s Hall (Photo credit: Robert of Fairfax)

Class discussions that can occur any time of day and students engaged in that discussion. It took me a while to get my head around ‘online’ discussion and I used the experience of other teachers in my school who’d tried it. I currently use this with my Independent Directed Study students (Japanese language) and will be expanding it to my Year 4 students next year. What to consider? Here’s a few of my thoughts:

via 5 Tips For Hosting Online Class Discussions | Edudemic.

‘Our School Would Be Better Off Without iPads.’ | Edudemic

English: iPads can be a distraction to learning
English: iPads can be a distraction to learning (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We go on and on about iPads, tablets, phablets, and just about every other piece of technology out there. But the discussion is slowly changing. It’s becoming less and less about how to deploy as much technology as possible. Instead, the discussion is shifting (luckily) back over to effectively connecting with students. Check out the recent post by George Couros to see what I’m talking about. It’s easy to see that there is a slow pivot happening in education right now where we’re becoming a little less enamored by shiny new iGadgets and other tech tools. Instead, we want to figure out how to effectively use what we have in order to actually connect with students.

So that’s why it was interesting to see a comment pop up on a recent post here on Edudemic about iPads. In that post, someone who wrote as ‘student 21′ pointed out the problem of deploying iPads in school. They’re not always effectively used. This goes for iPads as much as any other learning resource (electronic or not). It’s all in how the device is used.

via ‘Our School Would Be Better Off Without iPads.’ | Edudemic.

Read the original article for the details.