What is the continuing role of electronic portfolios?  An article in Campus Technology reviews the issues related to ownership of the content, and what happens when the student graduates.  A student-centered approach seems most logical to me — effective use comes when the student feels ownership of the content and  sees a practical use for its existence (like getting a job).  If they find the portfolio tool useful after graduation it seems short-sighted for the school to terminate the relationship.  If the institution accepts that the student ‘owns’ the content, and that the school simply provides a service — just like facebook or any other such service — then this relationship, and any risks, should be clear.  You have an acceptable use policy, and if users abuse the policy their accounts get shut off.  But this also means accepting some institutionally uncomfortable, or at least potentially uncomfortable, situations.  Welcome to the world of user-centric content!

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In a recent post and at a session at last weekend’s WordCamp NYC Jim Groom questions how much commercialization belongs in the WordPress community.  A post on the WPMU.ORG blog, holds that WordPress’ future is in premium, purchased plug-ins, a point Jim takes great exception to.  He points out that the strength and quality of WordPress is a direct result of the active, sharing community, and if increased commercialization displaced this shared ethos, then WordPress might well suffer.  And while I agree with Jim, I also wonder if this isn’t an inevitable phase in the growth of WordPress and other active open source projects.

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The Google Wave team makes some conference visits, aiming at corporations at Enterprise 2.0and the educational market at Educause. Google seems to have created a cool tool, and is now trying to figure out what it is good for.  It will be interesting to see if it changes much as it comes out in a more general release.

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The program is finished and posted for the WordPress University workshop, scheduled for Thursday April 8, 2010.  It is a really exciting program: Read the rest of this entry »

For the seventh year Educause has conducted a survey on IT trends in higher educational institutions.  This year’s report is out, and a couple of things caught my eye: Read the rest of this entry »

If Google Wave lives up to even half of the hype surrounding its closed beta release it still will be an awesome product.  Some are raising the notion that is could bring a number of web 2.0 concepts together and become a new tool for personal learning systems — and replacing the traditional course management system.  But then again moving things to the Google cloud is not without its concerns, as recent outages highlight.  And it may be that Wave doesn’t live up to its hype — time will tell.

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