Recording and Recognition - systems to record your learning

You've done a MOOC, you've studied a topic online and blogged about it, you've done a tree-climbing course, you've studied a topic on Khan Academy....
How do you bring these all together in one place to demonstrate what you have done?
I have seen some teacher candidates for posts at my school create their own portfolios - usually showing websites they have developed for teaching or a photo and document collection of learning in action. These are unverified accounts - a personal brochure for obtaining another job.
I have seen systems such as RebelMouse which aggregate digital content into one location, enabling ones online "work" to be exhibited in one place. This particular site has some social features as well and seems to pick up material from people who have re-tweeted you.
But these are unverified and do not link well or automatically with the traditional paper-trail of school and university diplomas, degrees and certificates.
Pathbrite seems to offer itself as an online portfolio system, allowing employer searches, with some verification of certification. Apart from a birthday portfolio, the intuitively designed site allows you to set portfolios for different audiences:

Not all is active - noted that Twitter and Blogger were not available when I tried it, but it was simple to add YouTube and other media onto your page.
You act as your own curator and so need to have access to the certificates you want to refer to as well as the links to all your media.
It seems a sophisticated certification tool and one to play with for #oped12.
Robert Scoble interviewed Heather Hiles, CEO of Pathbrite, who does an excellent job of explaining the features; Scoble calls the site the "quantified self of life-long learning":

IB Changes - notes from the IB Heads World Conference

Communications is not one of the International Baccalaureate Organisation's (IBO) strong points. Surprising this, given its status in the world.**
So, in response to requests for information about where the IBO is going, I publish the notes that I made for staff at school.
It is worth reading the IBO's philosophy at the outset since this is the driving force for the changes afoot. There has been a change here, a change that has been working its way in for some time. At one time the IBO could have been regarded as a service organisation, providing an internationally recognised diploma (DP) for universal university entrance. Indeed, early pioneers of the IB diploma would describe this exactly in this way - including my father, one of the first IB diploma teachers. Over the years, and particularly since the influences of the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and the Middle Years Programme (MYP), a much more crusading approach has been taken. I recall previous IB World Heads Conferences where hugely expansionist ideas were rehearsed by the IBO and resolutely rejected by the Heads present.
So it is significant that I heard, for the first time, definite statements about the PYP and MYP influencing the DP. Some people might say "about time" but I would urge a much more cautious approach - do not affect the value of the IB diploma nor the investment that schools have in it.
The IBO have split off assessment and curriculum into two departments, and it is clear that these are early days in this split. You will notice a couple of slides on a continuum of validity and reliability and the quote from Alec Peterson which was used by Carolyn Adams to introduce the idea. She used this in answer to complaints about the reliability of internal assessment moderation and marking. I do believe that there are other ways of looking at this, but that will have to wait for another post.
Carolyn Adams explained the ideas behind e-marking, the IBO's answer to improving quality and answering the critics of expansion. This seems an excellent approach although I still worry about the quality of examiners that the IBO find.
The changes as I noted them (please beware - I might have got some things wrong!) are listed on the final slides - and the presentation finishes with me imploring my teachers to get involved. It is a sad state of affairs that such a small proportion of IB teachers around the world take part in the curriculum reviews.

IB Changes October2011

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**The IBO's HeadNet, supposedly the online area for Heads, contains ancient information - minutes from 2010 and very little else. A new IB communications person has been employed - let us hope s/he can drag this organisation into this century.

Erik in Abundance

It has been really instructive learning about how Erik Duval teaches.
This week's MOOC #change11 subject, Learning in a Time of Abundance, has allowed us to see into a practitioner's teaching environment (classroom, lecture hall, virtual space, not sure what to call it). Duval has organised teaching (note that I am using this term even though what he has really organised is his students learning approaches) to minimize the direct teaching for memorising current knowledge and leverage the abundance of information. As stated in his presentation at the beginning of the week, Connectedness, Openness and Always-on gives us the environment for this leverage.
Yesterday's COOLCast on JeffLebow.net added another part of the story. Here we were able to learn about Duval's motivation - that his life is really a MOOC, and he said that this week has been a little bit less massive than he expected it to be.
Abundance in the title means also the abundance of content. The availability and abundance of content is such a different experience that Duval says he can concentrate more on what meaningful activities can be built around it.
What tools does Duval use to sip from the firehose of online information? Duval has simple principles, is a strict keeper of time, he has down time which he really respects (family, for example). Secondly, he books in time with his students when he does not do other things. He does a lot of Twitter to be pointed to material, following a # tag for a few days until it does not interest him anymore. He uses RSS and e-mail as good filters.

The other Duval resource was his presentation "Learning with Open Eyes - The Role of Learning Analytics" given as an opening keynote at de OnderWijsDagen in Utrecht on the 8th of November 2011. This was given in Dutch but I think that you can get a lot out of the Slideshare presentation:

Learning with Open Eyes The Role of Learning Analytics

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This is a key area and I now see why Duval answered the question on Assessment in such a way (see my post on his Monday presentation) - Learning Analytics is what he was talking about as self-tracking data.

OER week more about university structure than OERs

"A key Question for the discussions will be: What is the role of OER in supporting not only informal learning but also change in educational systems?".

Rory McGreal's presentation on the #change11 MOOC session on Tuesday was more orientated towards how universities should structure themselves so as to deal with openness than Open Educational Resources in informal learning. He was describing this in terms of his work as Canadian UNESCO/Commonwealth of Learning Chair in OER and I got a couple of useful points out of the presentation and discussion.

Clearly, if universities are to accredit learning then they must ensure that the standards which are set are met. The back chat on the session revealed some disquiet about the testing focus (and the likely backwash effect on learning as well as an undue pressure to have the university support so as to improve your results).

However, it seemed inevitable that a university should ensure the "standard" of the end product by such an approach.

Of interest also was the recognition of prior learning, another essential component for open approaches at university level. This was not just at the level of doing so for granting credit but also to recognise it as part of the package of results.

McGreal used the following diagram (credited to Judith Murray) to describe the adaptation to open approaches at university level - thanks for this since it clarified it succinctly.

OER and university structure - fm Rory McGreal

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Fairness in Assessment

Steve Wheeler's slideshow on Assessment in the Digital Age questions fairness.
In my first post for Purpos/ed I ended up describing the effect of assessment on an individual student - saying that assessment is used by students to gauge their self-worth.
Steve addresses this with a powerful example on a question asked of his teacher by an eight year old boy - how many of us have been through this experience? I would judge that many have.

Assessment in the Digital Age: Fair Measures?

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What is the purpose of assessment in schools?

This posting is for Purpos/ed - What is the purpose of assessment in 500 words....

I would like the answer to be "to improve student learning". But there is not one purpose of assessment but very many.

Assessment is used nationally to categorise learners so that they can have access to further learning,  or to rate the quality of the learner's institution. At this level it is definitely summative and the process is complex and not very transparent, so it is difficult to judge whether either of these two purposes are being carried out effectively.

Assessment is used by parents to try to judge both their child and the school. Parents are often more interested in comparing their child with others of the same age range than the individual progress that the child has made. It is summative, can be formative, and should be ipsative.

Assessment is used by teachers to gauge individual and class prior learning and eventual learning. It should be diagnostic, ipsative and formative. It will also be summative at appropriate times.

Assessment is used by schools to gauge how learners are learning and possibly how teachers are teaching. It is summative on the whole.

Assessment is used by learners to gauge their self-worth. Therefore it matters and will affect the learner’s attitude towards subsequent learning. It is invariably summative even though teachers believe the assessment information to be diagnostic, ipsative and formative.