blogging from the boat…
May 22nd, 2008 by Cristina Costa
it’s a journey into knowing.
I am at the digifolio seminar and blogging from the boat! connection: slooooooooooooooooow.
I wanted to twit live but there is no wireless and I’am not a mo-blogger YET .-(. BUt I am learning and micro-reflecting on the go. I jotted down some key ideas during today’s presentations, which I am now transcribing on to here.
I need you to help me develop them. Your comments are therefore invaluable. I want and need to ’pick’ your brain while I show you what’s going on in mine too.
Keynote speakers said teachers think that if they could turn off cell phones completely in schools the problems would be solved, and then he asked: would it be solved?
hmmm…. I immediatelly thought: is it really a problem? and if so, to whom?
I liked one of the keynote speaker’s remarks: To forbid our youngsters to use mobiles in schools is like having forbidden the older generations to use encyclopedias when they were in school. Cool thought, I wrote. That was for me the highlight of the 1st keynote. ,-)
On Maths eportfolios:
The speaker concludes students liked it better than regular assessment strategies. It was a fairer assessment, they said, because teachers were evaluating what they knew, not what they didn’t know. Listen to the kids, I say! It’s not about looking at failure, it is about emphasizing their strong areas and working with them on their weak ones.
They also reported they liked eportfolios because they were sharing it with others. Cool or what?
Then I got bored!!!!!!!!!!! Because someone was reading their presentation. I wrote” A prof. who reads and gives me data in percentage is not able to keep me focused for long. Maybe 2 minutes…maybe even less.
Another presenter starts by saying she is very interested in the results. I think to myself: I would like to focus more on the process. That is what I aspire people I work with will do too. The path we have to walk is far more important than the destination we have to reach.
Next presentation focuses on eportfolios and PLEs. My first note: I like it already 
.
.They say: with web 2.0 tools, like netvibes, etc students can keep their digifolios even after they leave Uni. (And I am here thinking: just what I believe in….THANK YOU, it will make my presentation easier, although I think it might seem to be too ”out of the box” to some of the seminar delegates…according to what I have seen so far. They will think I am a nut case…well, I guess I am. Even the color and layout of my slides stnad out when compared with theirs…so academic and so structured. Mine looks like this. Colourful. Happy. Active. Pictorical. As learning should be, I would assume…
Last presentation is about eportfolio tool developed for Moodle by Portuguese Institut. I think I like it. I need to check it in more detail though. You can do it here: http://eportefolio.ese.ipsantarem/pt/repe_en
Will blog more tomorrow.
Can’t wait for your comments. Loads of them! 
Sounds like a lot of presentations – is this the best way of learning in a connected world
Mobile phones are the lingua franca of the net generation. Banning them from schools solves some problems such as ‘happy slapping’, cheeting and invasion of privacy, but creates others such as loss of the ability to communicate or access information in a way that is culturally relevant.
During a session I went to organised by FutureLab two years ago, one of the speakers said to the audience ‘please don’t turn your mobile phones off – simply switch them to silent’. Then he gave us a number to text our questions to during his talk. The questions appeared anonymously on the screen behind him and he addressed them as he spoke. How cool is that?
Cristina, there was a typo in the link. The correct one is here:
http://eportefolio.ese.ipsantarem.pt/repe_en
Steve – I like the idea of using phones as a back channel – anyone any idea how to do this easily – perhaps with Twitter?
what about with twemes? http://twemes.com/
But then it means you need to have your phone connected to the Internet. I wonder how they automatically got the SMSs to display on the screen. I would be interested in it. I would also be interested in being able to display them automatically on the web like twemes does.
Will blog later more about the digifolio experience. We definitely rocked the boat and it was a lot of fun and meaningful networking despite the huge amount of short presentations. We were really part of the boat community metaphor. Not having anywhere else to go (with water surrounding us from all sides), we did make the best of it. After the natural selection of people grouping with other people they thought more interesting, we were ready to learn about each other: we socialized, talked, shared info about other projects, made plans for future get-togethers. The Portuguese also laughed a lot, danced, sang…till the next day.
I liked the boat adventure! IT wasn’t really a voyage to knowldege, but it was a voyage into knowing a little bit more, and that was definitely fun! But I am a little tired now!
Thanks Pekka. My typing is full of typos…especially when on a Boat (can I used that as an Excuse?)
Still need to check that eportfolio tool. Have you? Is it any good?