In the airport about to start the 'short' journey home. So what are the final impressions. Well none of them are going to be commercial or provide an insight into educational developments and opportunities as there are too many other companies happy to feed off that information.
As a country it leaves a very favourable impression. A public transport system that is integrated and works e.g. Manley to Sydney Airport in less than a hour through a combination of ferries and trains at rush hour and always an available seat; lots of people engaged in unpaid work to support the delivery of various services e.g. Manley beach full of volunteer lifeguards who have trained long and hard to be one; a general courteous 'air' in each of the four cities I have visited. The only major drawback is the cost of living there although as I discovered they also pay alot higher day rates.
A thoroughly worthwhile trip even with the 20+ hours flying time each way.
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Report on the Mahara salesperson
This week was the first time I have seen someone selling Mahara in action. Indeed it is the first time I have seen a Mahara site. Well of course I have to recognise the benefits of being able to link into Moodle, which is being used by many institutions in the UK but nobody can claim that it looks great.
Anyway here is the sales pitch. Can you really thrust proprietary software when it is quite possible that compnay's owning that software will be taken over, the implication being that of course that software will disappear, leaving the learning provider high and try. Instead you can have access to open source software which you can be assured will be always be there. No mention what state that software will be in nor how stable it is you can just have the reassurance it will be there.
You can of course if you wish pay a company like the one the salesperson was representing to help implement the software and of course if you need any other services like hosting and support we will of course be happy to oblige albeit at a fee.
Seems that institutions will swopping the so called dependence on a company where there is some guarantees on the security and availability of software with a 'relationship' with another company that will be using software over which there is ultimately little control apart from the fact you know it is 'out there' which apparently better...still struggling to see how.
Anyway here is the sales pitch. Can you really thrust proprietary software when it is quite possible that compnay's owning that software will be taken over, the implication being that of course that software will disappear, leaving the learning provider high and try. Instead you can have access to open source software which you can be assured will be always be there. No mention what state that software will be in nor how stable it is you can just have the reassurance it will be there.
You can of course if you wish pay a company like the one the salesperson was representing to help implement the software and of course if you need any other services like hosting and support we will of course be happy to oblige albeit at a fee.
Seems that institutions will swopping the so called dependence on a company where there is some guarantees on the security and availability of software with a 'relationship' with another company that will be using software over which there is ultimately little control apart from the fact you know it is 'out there' which apparently better...still struggling to see how.
Can you trust your presenter
I am surprised that one of the other main UK e-portfolio providers is not fully represented at this conference, given that they have a major presence in Australia. What they have decided to do instead is to trust some of their users to present their product.
One of these is the University of South Australia. The presentation starts with some understandable concerns about the ability of students to use an e-portfolio. However then the presenter launches into the challenges they faced implementing the e-portfolio. There was too much there; there were initially some technical bugs; the e-portfolio required a fast connection; it makes marking slower because there are lots of pages that need to pop up and the e-portfolio does not look like a professional tool e.g. pebbles and little kids does not tally with ongoing professional development.
Changes were then made to make it better but this seemed to be internal ones by the University rather than any changes to the product.
So what the presenter told the audience that the software was initially difficult to implement and then when it was successfully implemented the University of South Australia ditched the software in favour of open source software.
To then compound the poor presentation, the company now have an out of focus virtual presentation in which no attempt is being made to use multi-media until the end. We are just being given a static lecture.
I do not say any of this with great relish, because in my view it is incumbent on all of us in the e-portfolio business to effectively demonstrate what they offer in order to engineer the important ‘cultural’ change which will encourage more people to use e-portfolios.
One of these is the University of South Australia. The presentation starts with some understandable concerns about the ability of students to use an e-portfolio. However then the presenter launches into the challenges they faced implementing the e-portfolio. There was too much there; there were initially some technical bugs; the e-portfolio required a fast connection; it makes marking slower because there are lots of pages that need to pop up and the e-portfolio does not look like a professional tool e.g. pebbles and little kids does not tally with ongoing professional development.
Changes were then made to make it better but this seemed to be internal ones by the University rather than any changes to the product.
So what the presenter told the audience that the software was initially difficult to implement and then when it was successfully implemented the University of South Australia ditched the software in favour of open source software.
To then compound the poor presentation, the company now have an out of focus virtual presentation in which no attempt is being made to use multi-media until the end. We are just being given a static lecture.
I do not say any of this with great relish, because in my view it is incumbent on all of us in the e-portfolio business to effectively demonstrate what they offer in order to engineer the important ‘cultural’ change which will encourage more people to use e-portfolios.
The challenge of Mahara
I have naively underestimated the power of internal technical teams or prehaps there desire to survive. All the talk here is of Mahara and Moodle. What is the main attraction of this software is that it allows the technical teams within Universities and other institutions to retain control. Of course nobody really buys Mahara, what you do is get hold of the open source software and implement it and therein lies the cost either the internal cost of your technical team or bringing in experts to help you use it.
However you would not believe it from the discussions here. As I previously reported the South Australia University are moving over to Mahara although not quite yet. When the poor lecturer was told that they were switching to Mahara; she was also told that she had to wait for a couple of terms because we have a ‘team working on it.’
What a surprise?
Again to repeat my previous comment that I will support anything that encourages more people to use e-portfolios, however I would urge that a proper evaluation takes place of cost and benefits associated with each portfolio.
Mahara like all open software is freely available that does not mean that it is free. Someone has to maintain the core software and deploy it.
It would be good to know how much that on average it is costing to implement Mahara e-portfolios in particular institutions.
Here is another question if Open Source is so great why are not major corporate bodies, with their eye on the bottom line falling over each other to use it?
However you would not believe it from the discussions here. As I previously reported the South Australia University are moving over to Mahara although not quite yet. When the poor lecturer was told that they were switching to Mahara; she was also told that she had to wait for a couple of terms because we have a ‘team working on it.’
What a surprise?
Again to repeat my previous comment that I will support anything that encourages more people to use e-portfolios, however I would urge that a proper evaluation takes place of cost and benefits associated with each portfolio.
Mahara like all open software is freely available that does not mean that it is free. Someone has to maintain the core software and deploy it.
It would be good to know how much that on average it is costing to implement Mahara e-portfolios in particular institutions.
Here is another question if Open Source is so great why are not major corporate bodies, with their eye on the bottom line falling over each other to use it?
Pedagogy guides technology?
Wednesday was the first day of the e-portfolio conference here in Australia and it is literally standing room only. I cannot really get a proper feel why there is this level of interest, other than e-portfolios are coming, so we better quickly find out what they are about.
It is strange how different words only appear in certain contexts. One of the words like that is pedagogy that only appears in my experience at conferences. We have just had 'blended pedagogy' of all things.
I fully agree that pedagogy should guide technology or to put it another way technology is the servant not the master.
However what I do not get is why those who are so interested in pedagogy, seem to have such an interest in blogs when from a pedagogical perspective they seem to be a pretty inefficient way to gather evidence of competence. Why would you use blogs and wikis as an assessment tool when they are so difficult to manage?
How for example would I use this blog to demonstrate my competence even though I have been incredibly diligent about flagging what is in each blog? Maybe someone out there can help me.
It is strange how different words only appear in certain contexts. One of the words like that is pedagogy that only appears in my experience at conferences. We have just had 'blended pedagogy' of all things.
I fully agree that pedagogy should guide technology or to put it another way technology is the servant not the master.
However what I do not get is why those who are so interested in pedagogy, seem to have such an interest in blogs when from a pedagogical perspective they seem to be a pretty inefficient way to gather evidence of competence. Why would you use blogs and wikis as an assessment tool when they are so difficult to manage?
How for example would I use this blog to demonstrate my competence even though I have been incredibly diligent about flagging what is in each blog? Maybe someone out there can help me.
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