As a followup to my previous post, we broadcast the girls' and boys' basketball games tonight and gained 80 viewers. There's the audience! If viewership is one measure of success, then give the people what they want!



tags: ustream, social, media, school, sports, broadcast, video

We successfully broadcast Catlin Gabel's workshop to design the school's next community event(s). I had the uStream working smoothly, the facilitator played his role perfectly, and we included the contributions from virtual participants in the real workshop. In the two weeks before the event, we made at least eight announcements in newsletters, email messages, and online articles that people would be able to attend the workshop online. We have some 3,000 alumni and 500 current families from which to draw a virtual audience.

Only five people showed up, and two were my IT colleagues.

What happened? What is the potential of live web broadcasting in a school?

I have seen uStream used most successfully in an educational setting to live broadcast major speeches and conferences. I recently tuned into a great presentation at Castilleja School. A Stanford professor was explaining how all websites, but social networks in particular, are vehicles of persuasion. I was the only virtual attendee.

Broadcasting educational technology conferences seems popular of late. The audience is large, widely dispersed, and technologically savvy. Still, having been a virtual participant before, the presentation quality is poor enough that it makes difficult to pick up everything that is going on. Our virtual participants on Saturday made the same comment.

I don't feel compelled to live broadcast major events at our school. I would rather record with videocamera and then publish the next day, in higher quality than uStream and as a permanent addition to our site. Just last week, I recorded our Martin Luther King, Jr. community meeting (elementary), published it to a private page for our community, and already it has been viewed 70 times.

Perhaps people are just too busy to attend a live, five-hour online event at a specific time. They can play recorded online video at their convenience. Maybe for this event, we should have eschewed live participation in favor of making a highlight reel of the major points in a recorded video format. Or maybe the gesture of opening the meeting to virtual participants was a sufficiently important to justify the work involved.

Perhaps we were competing for audience against ourselves. If the 100 most interested people actually came to the event to participate in person, how many more did that leave to participate virtually?

Have you seen the new Cisco ads showing telepresence in classrooms? Who really thinks that schools will be able to afford high-end video conferencing of this sort? Grocery stores have far more flat-panel televisions than schools these days, and they sell food.

I would like my next attempt at live broadcast to involve a sports event. Sports have the immediacy of experience that demands a live broadcast, color commentary could be fun and interesting, and the project would involve students. However, we would still be competing against ourselves for audience, the potential audience is relatively small, and a lot of people might feel content to just find out the score the next day. It's worth a try, though, as students studying at home could easily tune in and follow the game.

I could imagine a schoolwide event during which we partnered with one or more schools elsewhere to pursue the same agenda and discuss similar topics. However, I would choose Skype for such a broadcast, so that it would be equally bidirectional.

Have you used uStream in a school with more success? Did you draw an actual audience? Please tell us about it.


tags: ustream, telepresence, cisco, skype, school, virtual, conference, video

We read Dewey's Experience and Education first in our graduate program. I recently had two experiences that reminded me of the necessity to make authentic student experience central in the design of a educational environments.

We introduced fourth grade students to web research with a simple activity. Ask them to find ten discrete facts on the web using Google Search. We modeled good search techniques in class and provided two paper resources. One listed the ten facts to find, and the other described a cyclical method for refining search terms in order to improve results. We talked about authority of websites and how to scan a web page for content. This introductory lesson went really well. Students learned the protocol, proceeded through the activity, and found the facts.

More recently, students applied this knowledge in a plant research project. Each assigned one plant they had seen in the Oregon woods, the students searched for the taxonomic name for the plant, its ideal growing environment, nutritional value, average height, and other facts. Students took much longer to find this information. Many got stuck partway through and needed help."I can't find the scientific name!" "Where can I find 'food value'?"

Why the difference? The second activity was more authentic and experiential. Students were engaging with real information about plants they had found and held and searching for them on the "real" web. These searches had not been tested in advance to compile a worksheet. Rather, students had to understand what a taxonomic name actually is, rather than look for the term "scientific name." They had to be flexible and understand that "nutritional value" or comments on why an animal might eat these plants made up the "food value" they were seeking. Charting their own course through an authentic environment produced far more useful learning than completing a structured, finite activity.

The Haiti earthquake and resulting humanitarian disaster are very present in our minds these weeks. We are exposed to frequent reports from news sources and support our students' efforts to raise money and awareness for Haiti. However, all of this does not compare when one's colleague relates her stories of past trips to Haiti, nervous attempts to contact friends post-quake, and informs the school community that her doctor husband has just left for Haiti with a medical team.

She writes:

It is with those computers that were donated by CG and the Rotary, [my son's] help, albeit small, in setting them up that has allowed some of the connections and relationships with others around the world. The people of Matenwa are still able to communicate and receive email/news, which is amazing. It is so important to them to know others care and are trying to help.

In the long-term, these experiences are without a doubt more "educational," but they are messy, difficult to manage, and complicated to assess. We should show the confidence to accommodate the short-term disorder and uncertainty that accompany kids' struggles with authentic content in order to foment powerful learning.


tags: dewey, haiti, google, teaching, learning, pedagogy, curriculum

What do middle school students need to know about Facebook? On January 13, middle school head Paul Andrichuk and Information Technology staff Daisy Steele and Richard Kassissieh led an afternoon workshop with middle students to encourage critical thought about personal information and the corporate entities behind the popular social network site.

Click on the links in this outline to see examples shared with the students.

What is a social network?

Facebook is the leader of social network sites, but many more exist. If we broaden our view to social media sites, in fact dozens exist. Social network sites represent a significant development, because:

1. Ordinary users contribute most of the content.

2. Companies have little control over site content.

3. They appeal to people's sense of community.

Adoption is widespread. Alexa estimates that 30% of their users worldwide visit Facebook every day.

So much about social networks is new. People and organizations are less able to keep tight control over their website presence. Even giant companies are still figuring it out. Individuals have gained the possibility to use social media to gain unprecedented visibility.

How will the use of social networks change how people communicate? Facebook's CEO thinks that it is changing social norms. Many disagree. How will students use social networks for good? What will Facebook do next? What will succeed Facebook?

The goal of today's workshop is to apply our critical thinking skills to our use of social networks.

Students proceeded into three breakout groups by grade level. They then participated in three sessions led by Paul, Daisy, and Richard. Paul and two upper school students introduced sixth grade students to the process of setting up a new Facebook account. Daisy examined privacy settings with seventh and eighth graders. Richard investigated how Facebook applications access personal information. Below, please find notes from the apps workshop.

 

All About Apps (seventh and eighth grades)

A Facebook application ("app") is a piece of software that adds functionality to your Facebook page. Most are games or information-gathering devices (e.g., polls).

Most apps are built by companies other than Facebook. Installing an app shares your profile information with that other company.

To view your list of installed apps and uninstall one, go to the Applications link in the lower left-hand corner of the Facebook interface and click Edit Applications.

You may recognize status updates generated by applications from their nonstandard icons, the "via" text, and phrases like "Click here to help."

Though I am sure you are a very helpful person, clicking on that link will lead to the installation of a new app.

Note that Farmville will gain access to your profile information, photos, and freinds information, at the very least. Are you okay with this?

During the workshop, students completed a role play activity to learn more about the movement of personal information between a user, Facebook, and Zynga (the maker of Farmville). Download the handout.

After the role play, the group discussed the following questions.

• What information does Zynga now have about you and your friend?


• Did Zynga need this information for the game to work?


• What else might Zynga do with your personal information?


• What would prevent Zynga from doing something unethical with your information?


• What could Facebook do to ensure that application developers keep your information safe?

The presenter then provided the group with more information about Zynga.

Clicking Allow indicates that you agree to the Farmville Terms of Service, which would should read and understand! Just one part of the TOS is fairly illuminating.

Section 4c

You grant to Zynga the unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual fully-paid and royalty-free right and license to host, use, copy, distribute, reproduce, disclose, sell, resell, sublicense, display, perform, transmit, publish, broadcast, modify, make derivative works from, retitle, reformat, translate, archive, store, cache or otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content [emphasis added] to which you have contributed, for any purpose whatsoever, in any and all formats; on or through any and all media, software, formula or medium now known or hereafter known; and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed and to advertise, market and promote same.

Can you trust Zynga with your personal information? Foudner and CEO Mark Pincus speaks in the following video about the measures he took to raise money for the company. The video sheds some light on the character of Zynga, its founder, and its reasons for existence. This may help you make an informed decisions about whether to share your personal information with this company.

Other companies have come under scrutiny for their security practices. RockYou improperly handled and inadvertently exposed 32 million usernames, passwords, and email address. Another company produced a "Secret Crush" application that didn't actually reveal a secret crush but instead installed unwanted advertising on their computer.

We encourage student to think critically about Facebook apps and understand how personal information is handled when you play one of these games.

tags: facebook, social, network, zynga, curriculum, lesson, plan, activity

This year, we are trying a new model for integrating technology instruction into fourth and fifth grades. Our weekly schedule offers two 40 minute periods per class for technology instruction, and classes have access to the adjacent 4/5 computer lab throughout the rest of the day. As a result, students use technology at various times of the day as well as during technology periods.

This year, we have made an effort to more fully integrate the dedicated technology periods with the homeroom academic program. We had a goal: to make as many technology class activities as possible relate to specific homeroom activities. Technology activities could relate in one of three ways:

Parallel with homeroom work
Students complete work for an active homeroom project during technology periods. For example, this week students are conducting research and documenting sources for a project on native plants. During homeroom periods, students have collected and studied native plant specimens found in the woods.

Fifth grade students are working on a Fractured Fairytales project, in which they invent altered versions of classic fairytales. During technology periods, students are writing and formatting text and graphics in Microsoft Word, with the ultimate goal of creating a digital book of their piece.

In Science class, students complete experiments to determine how much water different paper towels can absorb and prepare to report their results back to the towel manufacturers. During the Technology periods, students record their data in Microsoft Excel and prepare graphs to include in their letters.

Extension of homeroom work
At other times, we design a technology component to a project that begins after the homeroom component is complete. While not as tightly integrated with homeroom work, a well-designed extension project may still pursue an authentic learning objective. We must take care that the electronic final product is not superfluous, considering the work already completed during homeroom.

Early in the year, fifth grade students visited three farms as part of their Pitchfork To Plate yearlong theme. After students returned from the visit, they created line art diagrams in Microsoft Word that explained one process they observed on the farms.

Standalone Technology Activities
This is the loosest form of coordination with the homeroom. One might even argue that these activities only support technology-specific curricular goals. I believe that the technology goals of the curriculum should still support aims of the homeroom. If they do not, then we have insufficient coordination across students' learning experiences.

Consider typing practice. While using a typing application is a pure technology activity, the skill of typing is important to gain, so that it does not become an obstacle to writing at a reasonable speed. By fifth grade, students complete a majority of their writing on a computer, so the technology activity is directly aligned with a meaningful homeroom objective. It's been important to keep students focused reaching speed and accuracy benchmarks, since the classroom tie-in (the authentic learning purpose) is less obvious than with other technology class activities.

We have so far this year succeeded in always teaching applications in the context of a homeroom activity, avoiding the temptation to teach them only within the context of technology class.

Joint Planning
We have also experimented with models for coordinating lesson planning between homeroom and technology teachers. At the start of the year, I met with the homeroom teachers to agree on broad curricular goals but taught all of the technology periods myself, in order to establish a strong relationship with the students and get to know the curriculum well. In November, homeroom teachers began to take on some of the teaching responsibilities, in order to ensure strong integration with the homeroom program and help carry the teaching load.

We pursued different approaches to sharing periods in the two grades. In fourth grade, homeroom teachers teach Monday technology periods, and I teach Wednesdays. In fifth grade, homeroom teachers are currently teaching the first half of Fractured Fairytales, and I will take the class back over later this month to work on the layout and publication components of the project.

So far, alternating periods has led to tighter integration and planning, since I am essentially co-teaching the class with the homeroom teachers. Alternating 2-3 week chunks has required less coordination, which leads to looser integration but requires less planning time. We will see later this year which approach was ultimately best overall.

Next Year
It is just about time to give some thought to next year. Will I teach at least half the technology periods, as I have this year? Will we change the technology schedule so that we have fewer dedicated technology periods and integrate more of the technology instruction into the regular work of the homeroom? In our middle and high schools, we have no dedicated technology periods. Technology is wholly integrated with regularly classroom instruction, imperfectly but authentically. Should we move in the same direction in our elementary program, and how quickly?

How do you integrate technology knowledge and skills instruction in your elementary programs?


tags: elementary, technology, curriculum, integration

Oh, how many toys exist to consider.

Kindle! Nook! Reader!
iPhone! Droid! Nexus!
Ning! Twitter! Facebook!
Netbook! Apple tablet! XO tablet!
Smart Board! Active Board! Wiimote!
Google Apps! Chrome!

Education technology blogs appear obsessed with tracking the latest gadgets. Certainly, new product announcements provide a rich source of content for writers. It is easier to reflect on the latest company news and speculate on its effect on education than to consider the core question of education. How does one design rich learning opportunities that will make the greatest difference for students?

Face it: most of the devices above won't make a bit of difference to teaching and learning. Let's stop talking about the devices and start talking about students, teachers, and learning environments. I think Warlick has got it right. So does Larry Cuban. Tom Frizelle, too.

Some of our teachers have also got it right. Suspicious about education technology, they tend to shy away from trainings and conversations about computers in the classroom. It's too bad, because ed tech professionals deserve our reputation for relentless optimism about new technologies. It's up to us to sing a new tune: all about teaching and learning, all the time.

Let's promote with our teachers only the technologies that show real promise and stick with them for at least a period of years. Focus on how a technology integrates with an existing, well-designed learning unit or activity. A little skepticism about new technologies may also help demonstrate our ability to think critically.

Forget the new toys. Let's think deeply about our students, curriculum, and pedagogy.

tags: curriculum, pedagogy, technology, techintegration, iphone, android, kindle, chrome, ning

Taking on treasurer duties for a small nonprofit, I needed to migrate our constituent data out of Excel and into a proper constituent management system. Taking on a mailing list of 500 active constituents and 20 years of gift history, the system needed to be inexpensive, easy to manage, handle both contacts and gift history, and offer some potential for customization. Having evaluated several CMS's, I chose CiviCRM.

I did not necessarily require a web-based system, but the feature set and user reviews of online solutions far surpassed those of desktop-based solutions. By going online, I also gain the benefits of being able to access the data from any location (useful because I squeeze in nonprofit work whenever I can) and share it with fellow fundraisers (we are spread out between the two coasts). One day, we may use CiviCRM's feature of online giving pages that automatically create contact and gift entries in the CMS.

Choosing CiviCRM felt more comfortable than selecting a free, proprietary solution, because I would host the data myself, could add CiviCRM to an existing website, and already understand the basic architecture it would use to integrate with Drupal. I am also comfortable with the community-based model for software development and support that they use. CiviCRM offered the option to store its data in a separate database from Drupal, which I really appreciate in case I need to separately migrate or manage them in the future -- nice and clean.

For the past several years, we have run a separate broadcast email list through Yahoo! Groups. This has not been integrated with our constituent management system, leading to problems when we discuss communication vehicles for each fundraising appeal. CiviCRM should be able to integrate mailing list function into its contact database, so that the two functions are finally merged and we understand which constituents we contact through postal mail, email, or both. This could improve the reach of our fundraising appeals.

So far, the system has run really smoothly, and I think I have mastered the basics pretty quickly. I am using individual contacts for half our constituents and household contacts for the other half, as we don't have all of the necessary information for both individuals in a household. Hopefully, we will gain this over time. It appears that CiviCRM will be able to track gift history for either contact type without a problem, which allows us to proceed for now.

I was able to add 500 contacts to the database using the import feature, but I had to split the import files into batches of 70 records at a time to overcome some import limit. It didn't present like a timeout error but rather redirected me to a /contact page that didn't exist in the site and only imported 70 records.

Next, I will try to organize 20 years of gift history for import, so that I may start running reports to mine our history for giving patterns that might help us better form fundraising strategy. I will need to somehow match hand-entered donor identification information with CiviCRM contact records and better structure the information in Excel before merging.

I am interested in your feedback on this approach.


tags: civicrm, drupal, fundraising, nonprofit

Today, I rolled out a new version of our intranet portal home page to the school. The change was required since our main website gained social community features formerly on this site (blog, forum, directory, carpool map, photo galleries, video publishing, etc.). The site still runs Moodle and a number of custom Perl and PHP scripts, but it no longer runs Drupal or Gallery. I also took the opportunity to make it easier to read. Let me know what you think of the redesign. How do you manage your intranet portal?

The home page still shows different items depending on one's Active Directory group membership.

My view


Typical student view


Previous versions

2008-09


2007-08


2006-07


2004-06


2002-03



tags: intranet, portal, school, moodle

Happy New Year! To commemorate the end of the year, I took a look at this blog's web statistics. A comparison of the number of posts to the number of pageviews is very interesting.





I wrote the most posts but received the least pageviews in 2006. I wrote the second most posts and received the most pageviews in 2008. In 2009, I wrote the fewest posts but received as many pageviews as in 2007, when I wrote twice as often. Without running the graph, one can see that the number of pageviews per post has increased significantly from year to year.

I don't know exactly why this happened, but I can speculate that this blog has been carried along the wave of increased global readership of ed-tech blogs, or perhaps interested readers have simply found me. It is difficult to say for certain.

Before running the stats, I had wondered whether Facebook, Twitter, and Ning had taken all of the steam out of blogs. Does anyone really read blogs anymore? These results suggest that plenty of people at least came and visited, and perhaps even read, more than ever in 2009. On the other hand, did I post to Facebook and Twitter when I could have written more blog posts?

I can explain that I have written less frequently on my blog as I have become more deeply engaged at my school. In 2009, I built a new website for the school and assumed fourth and fifth grade teaching responsibilities. These are good developments that positively affect teaching and learning at my primary place of work. I know that I can support people more effectively through direct, personal contact than through blogging.

Nonetheless, I have picked up my blogging in the last three months and hope to continue this trend into 2010. Please do posts comments to keep up the conversation!

Good luck with your new year!

tags: blogging, twitter, facebook, statistics

Our IT team has been meeting regularly to determine new infrastructure projects for the year. The list includes network access control and wireless access controller systems. Our discussions reveal a common theme: how many of the components of an enterprise computer network should we acquire and maintain, considering their benefits and costs?

Network access control is currently up for consideration. Three years ago, we installed our first network access control system to bring the following benefits to our school.

Limit the campus network to known computers and users
If computers not known to the IT department get on the LAN, they may be infected with viruses or running a spambot or other malicious software. Network access control software ensures that only computers that IT manages can get on the network. They do this through different methods, including client login and MAC address filter.

Offer guests an open wireless network for Internet access
If we limit the campus LAN to known users, then we should provide an open network for parents, vendors, guests, and users' personal wireless devices so that they may still get online. The guest network presents a welcome page (captive portal) to the user that includes terms and conditions. The guest network only provides Internet access, protecting the school's file server, print server, and other network resources. Guests may still access the school's websites.

Track network activity by user
Increasingly, division heads have asked us to identify one student who has bulled another student through the campus network. If users are required to log in to access the campus network, then it becomes easier to trace network activity to a specific user. We have also implemented DHCP reservations so that the IP address on record is a reliable indicator of what computer was used for each network activity. This works well for a computer with only one user and less well in shared facilities. Since client login lasts an entire day (to avoid bugging users with multiple daily login requests), users of shared computers are not required to logi in often enough to positively identify each user.

Check computers for minimum system requirements
Even computers that we manage may become infected or compromised over the course of the year. We would ideally like to keep such computers off the network in order to protect the school's systems and to stop an infected computer from spamming the world. One method is to block computers that do not meet minimum system requirements and then provide the user with links to the necessary software updates.

Current status
We currently run a Cisco Clean Access system to provide network access control and a public wireless network. We also gained the ability to track network activity by user, except for shared computer carts and labs. Despite lots of consultant help, we had great difficulty setting it up properly to perform these two functions. On account of the effort it took to get this far, we never did implement requirements checking beyond a small test group. Now, we are required to either upgrade to a new server software version (at great expense) or move to a different system.

Requiring users to log into client software to access the wireless network has been pretty intrusive. Ideally, this would be integrated with operating system login, but we hear that this is difficult to configure in our current NAC system with Windows and not possible for our Macs. Our users do not much like the additional login window that pops up, especially when it misbehaves, and they cannot access the wireless network.

Lower-cost options
Could RADIUS meet our needs? It's a bit more do-it-yourself than buying a NAC product, it probably would not require user login, and it would not check systems for minumum system requirements. However, it would limit the network to known computers, which would take us part of the way toward our goal.

Setting our target appropriately
How much network sophistication can a school like ours afford to purchase and maintain? In a recent survey we conducted, only one of 26 peer schools was running NAC client software to check computers for minimum system requirements. The cost and effort required may not be worth the promise of reduced workstation maintenance and a safer network. We may have discovered that enterprise-level network access control is really

We will continue our investigation of different combinations of systems that could meet our needs and stay within budget.

tags: cisco, clean, access, network, access, control

Just two months ago, I wrote how I was still using Website Baker successfully for two sites. Well, it's down to one now! I have migrated the Maru-a-Pula website from Website Baker to Drupal. Maru-a-Pula is an amazing school in Botswana that I have worked from the U.S. to assist since teaching there from 1994-96.

Nothing went wrong with Website Baker. The school had just outgrown the basic CMS for its needs. The principal had started to write a news column, and while Website Baker does support news, the Drupal module is much easier to use. We now have several new features the school or I had wanted: RSS feeds sitewide, a blog for any author, actual calendar functionality, and all sorts of future possibilities using modules from the Drupal community.

For the sake of a smooth user transition, I built a new Drupal theme (sub-theme of Zen) to copy almost exactly the old Website Baker theme. The two sites look nearly identical. I have to re-theme the Search form. I have done enough theme work in the last year that I felt very comfortable manipulating template and CSS files to create the desired look.

The site is designed so that local tech staff in Botswana may take over as much administration as they wish. The site has no custom module code whatsoever, and all dynamic content is presented through content types, views and blocks (e.g., main home page photo and three feature columns).

New site


Old site


Contributed Modules
Calendar
CCK
Date
FCKeditor
Filefield
Imagefield
Link
Menu breadcrumb
Pathauto
Simplemenu
Site map
Token
Views

tags: drupal, botswana, school, website, webdesign, development

This week, I sent my first "Facebook warning" to employees, students, and parents. Here's the teacher version.

Dear Colleagues,

Facebook has implemented new privacy settings that make it much easier to broadly share your personal information. If you accept Facebook's recommended privacy settings, Facebook will make your status updates, links, photos, videos, and notes available to the entire Internet (think Google). I recommend that you instead manually adjust your settings. Select Settings -> Privacy Settings from the blue menu bar and review the options in there.

In addition, Facebook will now share your friend list both on the Internet and with third-party Facebook applications. You do not have control over that.

This article explains the change in greater detail.

I encourage you to raise this topic with your students. Let me know if you have further questions.

Richard

Facebook has made significant changes to their privacy policy before. Why did I react strongly to this particular one? So many students, a lot of parents, and a number of teachers use Facebook regularly. Privacy is an important concern for all of these groups but particularly for students. The new features directly affect user privacy, and Facebook's recommended settings reduce user privacy. In the past year, we have gained a more detailed understanding of Facebook use in our school community. We felt it appropriate to help our users keep up with the moving target of Facebook privacy settings.

By finely managing one's privacy and post settings, it's now possible to maintain a fine degree of control over one's posts. However, that control may be illusory, as Facebook seems happy to change the rules on their platform pretty regularly. Who knows where and when they will head next.

tags: facebook, socialnetwork, security, privacy

Second grade teacher Herb shared the following video with guests at grandparents and special friends day. First and second grade students completed an activity in which they drew, wrote, and spoke their thoughts about the elders in their lives.

I'm impressed with the ease that these students demonstrate in front of the microphone. Recording audio may in fact be less distracting than video. You get to observe student work while listening to an oral expression -- two forms of work at the same time. It's also fascinating to see the huge range of student responses to the prompt "elders are ..."

I'm sure that Herb put many hours into the creation of this video. One day, I'll find out how many.

We are pleased to share this video on our website, especially for the grandparents and special friends who were not able to attend.

tags: elders, grandparents, first, second, grade, elementary, video

Fundamentally, an electronic portfolio allows students to publish their exemplary work, reflect on their learning, and invite comment. Some schools (1, 2) roll out full-blown electronic portfolio software that can access files from their learning management system. This may be a great approach if a school has adopted electronic portfolios as a major initiative for the year.

In our school, we have not yet explored the topic of whether we should all move to electronic portfolios. We have paper, in-person based portfolio exhibitions in third through eighth grades, but the high school does not, and faculty meeting time is fully consumed with other discussions about teaching and learning. At the same time, we have groups of students and teachers who want to publish exemplary work either to the Catlin Gabel community, project mentors from outside the school, or college admission offices.

In response to this level of interest, I decided to provide a very lightweight electronic portfolio tool. I used an existing feature in our Drupal website (rather than a new tool) to allow students and teachers to publish exemplary work in multiple media forms, reflect on their learning, and invite comment. Students simply create a blog post but then mark the item for inclusion in their portfolio. They can also make the item publicly viewable if they choose. The "portfolio" home page is really just the student's blog, filtered by one or both of these flags. The way Drupal works, if a user is not logged in, they only see the items marked public.



So far, art seminar students have created public portfolios of their work, principally for the college admission process. Here is a portion of one. In May, all seniors will blog about their individual senior projects. Some may choose to make these posts public for their on-site mentor and others to see.



Techies out there may find the following Drupal module code useful.

function cgs_blog_form_alter(&$form, $form_state, $form_id) {

  if (isset($form['#node']) && ($form['#node']->type == 'blog')) { // apply only to "create blog entry" form

  

    // add a submit function

    $form['#submit'][] = 'cgs_blog_form_submit';



  }

}







function cgs_blog_form_submit($form, &$form_state) {

    

  // load content access functions

  require_once(drupal_get_path('module', 'content_access') .'/content_access.rules.inc');

  

  // load node object

  $node = node_load($form_state['values']['nid']);

  

  // set anonymous user grant array

  $settings['view'][0] = 1;

  

  // change node access permissions for this node

  if ($form_state['values']['field_blog_public'][0]['value'] == 'Make this post public') {

    // add view grant for anonymous users to this node

    content_access_action_grant_node_permissions($node, $settings);

  } else {

    // remove view grant for anonymous users to this node

    content_access_action_revoke_node_permissions($node, $settings);

  }



}

tags: eportfolio, portfolio, mahara, moodle, drupal, blog

The new Google Analytics "Intelligence" feature looks pretty useful, but Analytics is still missing the feature I want the most. I would like to be able to see at a glance the biggest gains and losses among individual page views or categories of pages. Right now, it's very difficult to set up a date comparison of item page views and browse looking for the pages that have experienced the greatest increases and greatest losses. I can't be the only person who would like to see this feature!

tags: google, analytics, intelligence, statistics