As I continue exploring the Google ePortfolio at my small community college in Honolulu, the component I always return to is the one that has been most successful, the blog as formative assessment.  In our previous ePortfolio system which was set up much like a social network (using software known as Elgg) students enjoyed blogging and reflecting on their experiences and learning.  The same holds true for the Google ePortfolio.  Using the announcements feature in Google Sites my class in has begun blogging about their service learning project - which is to teach English to immigrant children in a local elementary school.  From the beginning I asked them to log their expectation and make a post for each experience. This is something they have quickly latched on to.  Since the the last two terms were tediously spent training faculty and students on how to use google technology, it is great to see what students now in their  third term college can do once they feel comfortable setting up a site to use as an eportfolio.  They are really getting into it and I am able to leave short comments to guide them along.  I do hope to integrate more summative style assessments into their eportfolios  at some point but for now I am content with watching them enjoy the experience and being an active guide in it all.

Just like Gmail and all the other Google Apps, our GApps at hawaii Tokai are officially out of beta.  After a very successful trial term of running Google Apps in our College Prep Department, the entire school has adopted the system.

My first attempts at training videos for google apps have been published on my other blog.  Check them out:

I have now started 80 students on Google Apps.  Most seemed to adopt to gmail without much guidance.  I hope they will start learning how to use the Docs and Sites soon for their eportfolios.  My first video tutorial for docs is out.

See: http://edutechnologyrevolution.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-docs-for-eportfolios-video.html

Today marks a two term project to get Hawaii Tokai certifed as a testing center for the Internet Based IBT.  We did it.  Check out the reflection at here.

A new addition to my educational technology collection of artifacts is the Google ePortfolio at Hawaii Tokai International College.  Read more about the project on my other blog.

Google just gave us 10 gigs of storage free for uploading videos.  Hopefully this will be used for artiacts by faculty.  I hope to get soem footage of myself teaching and put it in thi eportfolio.  As of now, Google asks that only faculy and staff upload videos.  Also this will make it possible to hide videos from the public, an important feature for our school.

It's official.  Our school has finally got Google Apps for Education and in spring we will be piloting the platform for eportfolios.  I have been give admin access to Google Apps at our domain.  So far, it has been super easy to administrate, adding user and groups is a breeze, and I like that you can search all the Google Sites under our domain.  So when there are 100 plus eportfolios, there will be an easy way to find a student.  I will be asking our College Prep faculty to begin their own eportfolios as part of our training workshops.  It is great that our school has gone high-tech.  Hopefully this will increase productivity.

It looks like all the pieces are finally starting to come together.  Moodlerooms, a company we are currently looking into for hosting our Moodle installation, has come up with a way to integrate Moodle and Google Apps for single sign on.  Log in to one and you are logged into the other, making it a breeze to access the full apps suite all under one account.  No more annoying what's the password.  And in Moodle 2.0 due out this summer, there will be a feature that automatically pushes docs uploaded to Moodle to Google Apps.  This will make it easy for student to work in Moodle and then add artifacts to their Google ePortfolio.  Seriously, when this all comes tohgether I will be psyched.  We  can finally get to really building th ecourses and eportfolios without need of worry for backups, updates, and accounts.  Go Moodle, go Google.

One of the major shortcomings for using the announcements as a blog in Google Sites is that there no rss feed.  A workaround I am currently testing involves involves using a service found at http://page2rss.com/ that allows to turn any non-syndicated web page into an rss feed. To this you simply drag a button into your tool bar and then click the button when you want an rss feed from a non-syndicated page.  I will update this post soon to see how it goes.

Update:  The service works as it claims, updating each time a change is made via rss.  Links take you first to a page with advetising and your feed and the link finally lands you ate the website.  Good service but I do not wat any advertising in an educational setup.  Exploring Yahoo pipes as an alternative to convert this into RSS but google really needs to get on this.