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March 31, 2006
Epsilen - a new ePortfolio, course management system
I just read about Epsilen, a new web-based Learning Portal with several tools for public ePortfolio, course management, social networking, learning assessment, peer review, and collaboration.
According to an article in The Dartmouth, “Through Epsilen, creator Dr. Ali Jafari, professor of computing and information technology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, hopes to take Blackboard and similar programs into the future through a setup inspired by Facebook.com.”
The press release from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis reports that with an Epsilen account,
• Students can create ePortfolios with resumes that can be shared with prospective employers or graduate schools.
• University faculty members can share their learning objects and collaborate with others researchers on a global Epsilen network and prepare their dossier.
• Students and faculty alike can intelligently find others with similar hobbies, career, and research interests in order to collaborate in various online Epsilen groups.
I have just requested an account and am looking forward to testing this service. According to the Epsilen Web site, from January – December 2006, any student, faculty, or staff within a post secondary educational institution in the United States can register free.
Posted by mlindema at 08:26 AM | Comments (1)
Kankakee Community College has switched to Angel
Kankakee Community College has switched from WebCT to Angel Learning, according to a press release. That makes two higher education institutions in Illinois, the other being Parkland College, that are using Angel as their Course Management System.
Angel will be presented on April 5th 2006 at the Course Management System Days for Illinois Higher Education, an event co-sponsored by Illinois Community Colleges Online and the Illinois Online Network. This event provides an opportunity to review course management systems (Moodle, Angel, Desire2Learn, and Sakai) and see how institutions have implemented or migrated to various systems.
Posted by mlindema at 07:52 AM | Comments (1)
March 23, 2006
Web-based file transfer services for students and instructors
Recently a student in an MVCR course was having difficulty sending her final project to her instructor. The project consisted of several video and flash files and was quite large (almost 200 MB). She was hoping to be able to attach the files to a message in the course discussion board, but Moodle (MVCR’s course management system) is configured to allow attachments smaller 2 MB. The attachments were also too large to send via Gmail, or her other email accounts., which usually have a 5 to 10 MB limit.
When she called me for help, I recommended using a web-based file transfer service.
These services are cross platform, easy to use, and free. The sender simply fills out a form, indicating the file to be uploaded and the email of the recipient(s). The recipient receives an email with a link, which when clicked, allows the file to be downloaded. While these services are very easy to use, it does take a long time to upload and download the files. For example, it took me about 10 minutes to upload a 1 GB file.
The student I was helping created a single zip file of her video and flash files and used YouSendIt to send the zip file to her instructor and her classmates.
Here are three free services you might want to try.
YouSendIt
http://www.yousendit.com/
No registration required; 1 GB limit
SendThisFile
http://www.sendthisfile.com/?rc=transferfile
Registration required; no limit for file size
Dropload
http://www.dropload.com/
Registration required; 100 MB limit
Posted by mlindema at 07:37 AM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2006
Terry Morris of Harper College is 2006 Greenhouse Award Winner
Congratulations to Terry Morris, Assistant Professor Computer Information Systems at Harper College and Master Online Teacher Certificate awardee.
She was presented with the 2006 Blackboard Greenhouse Exemplary Course Award (Online Course Category) for her CIS218/WEB240 E-Commerce Development online course.
The Greenhouse awards recognize academic institutions for exemplary use of Blackboard technology solutions to foster educational innovations.
Posted by mlindema at 08:00 PM
Rock Valley College to Offer Thousands of New Online Courses
In response to online training course demand, Rock Valley College has partnered with The eLearning Center to offer thousands of courses from some of the world’s top online providers.
See http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/4294/
Posted by mlindema at 07:53 PM | Comments (0)