Lifestreams

From Horizon.au

(Redirected from Life Portfolios) NOTE: This wiki is the archive for the 2008 and 2009 Horizon Project: Australia-New Zealand Edition projects. Please refer to the current Project Wiki for the latest information.
Jump to: navigation, search


2008 Horizon.au Short List

2008 Horizon.au Short List pdf.gif

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

Critical Challenges

Key Trends

Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years

More and more of the products of our work and recreational lives are digital in nature and often stored in a variety of online locations; we blog, post pictures to Flickr or Picasa, comment on others’ contributions, and report our status on Facebook and Twitter. Keeping track of the work we have done and where it resides is an increasingly difficult task, and the various pieces are rarely combined into a contextually-related timeline. Taken together, those pieces represent our lifestream data, or the online record of our daily activities made up of blog posts, photos, social network updates, and the like.

Tools are available now that will aggregate a variety of lifestream data into a coherent flow: Swurl, Tumblr, Onaswarm, Jaiku, Lifestreams, and Strands are just a few. The tools collect contributions by gathering feed data from the various locations where activity takes place and displaying it on one page, allowing friends and others to follow the flow of information in almost real time. Educational uses of this concept are unclear. Unlike an e-portfolio, which is generally defined as a collection of one’s work in an easily sharable electronic format, a life portfolio is much more like a multimedia diary. While lifestream data might be used in learning situations, questions arise around privacy and control of content. The emergence of social tools like those mentioned above may shed some light on these issues and contribute to the development of tools to create, share and manage life portfolios.

Relevance for Teaching, Learning & Creative Expression

  • Lifestream data could enable more holistic assessment, as work would be seen in the context of a student’s overall development.
  • Scholars and researchers could use lifestream data to build credibility in their field, showcase their best work, and evaluate potential collaborators.
  • It should be noted that tools for aggregating lifestream data have been available for well over a year; at the current time, however, ideas around the use or applicability of lifestream data for academic purposes were not found in the literature, and if they exist, are assumed to be very much in the earliest conceptual stages.

Examples

Numerous personal examples of lifestream data exist; however, we were unable to find any with direct educational application.

For Further Reading

How to Lifestream with WordPress
http://www.builderau.com.au/blogs/codemonkeybusiness/viewblogpost.htm?p=339271049
(Brendon Chase, Builder.au, 22 August 2008.) Written for a moderately technical audience, this article describes how to create a lifestreaming system using WordPress, a popular blogging tool.

Lifestreaming: a ReadWriteWeb Primer
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/lifestreaming_primer.php
(Richard McManus, ReadWriteWeb, 14 January 2008.) This article describes several lifestreaming applications.

Strands: Friendlier than FriendFeed (Or Everyone’s Lifestream Just Got More Valuable)
http://siliconflorist.com/2008/05/29/strands-friendlier-than-friendfeed-or-everyones-lifestream-just-got-more-valuable/
(Rick Turoczy, Silicon Florist, 29 May 2008.) This blog post describes lifestreaming and reviews a tool called Strands that is designed to pull together all of one’s online activities.


Sandbox Discussion (July-August 2008)

More and more of the products of our work and recreational lives are digital in nature and often stored somewhere online. Keeping track of the work we have done and where it “lives” is an increasingly difficult task. One possible solution is the life portfolio, a collection of digital artifacts created across one’s lifespan and selectively shared based on the preferences of the creator. Life portfolios bring with them questions and issues like privacy, control of content, where content is stored, and what kind of interface or portal is used to access it. The emergence of social tools may shed some light on these issues and contribute to the development of tools to create, share and manage life portfolios.


Why is this topic relevant to teaching, learning or creative expression?

  • As the amount of content, footprints, and tracks we make in electronic space grows not only in volume and spaces where they occur, automated tools for tracking, archiving what we do and create can become the basis of more than just a school or work portfolio, but everything we do. Intelligent filtering will be able to create different views for different people. Two aspects emerge (and parallel some reasons for blogging)- the outward "face" we present by publishing, but also the internal value we have for ourselves in being able to chronicle and query what we have done [AL]
  • Encourages keeping a digital record of personal output that can be stored and repurposed as required; students can be expected to have to repurpose this digital content on multiple occasions throughout their life
  • Promotes an advanced level of digital literacy
  • Encourages students to make decisions about what should be part of this life portfolio – appropriateness, should all/some of the content be public or private; and WHERE should this information be kept? In multiple spaces, institution sponsored spaces, or in a single personal learning environment?
  • It will be expected that job applicants will have electronic data as a personal record, and know how to manipulate that data for various purposes
  • Like mobile phones we will one day wonder how we got on without them (PM)
  • Portfolios in general promote students reflecting on practice.
  • Engineering students are able to track ideas and design development. Also allows development of their skills of visualisation and project management/ organisation. All things necessary for successful engineers.
  • University of Technology Sydney: currently using ePortfolios via Sakai. Stuart Nettleton at UTS Engineering working on their current use and planned expansion into the Engineering degree. (SA)

Stuart.Nettleton@eng.uts.edu.au

  • Qld Universtity of Technology: 60Sox.org.au has been designed to help creative people get work. 60Sox is an online portfolio site designed to address the skills shortages in the Digital Content Industries in Australia and New Zealand. Members are able to freely publish work across a range of 8 broad categories (such as animation, music, film, design, visual art and photography) and allocate different creative commons or copyright licensing to each item.Encouraging 'constructive criticism' between network members creates on central repository of all things creative and industry experts across each category (the 2bobmob) provide commercial feedback on 6 curated items each month. 60Sox.org.au (SA)


Please list links to local or international projects that are experimenting with or implementing this technology.

The Australian ePortfolio Project (AeP), funded by the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, is a research project being undertaken by four Australian universities: • Queensland University of Technology • The University of Melbourne • The University of New England • University of Wollongong The project team also draws on a range of international connections to strive to position Australia on the international ePortfolio scene and to help inform the development of relevant strategic policy. Goals of the project - The project seeks to investigate ePortfolio practice in the higher education sector in Australia, in order to provide strategic and practical guidance about the use of ePortfolios in academic institutions.

This project is responsible for establishing a national standards-based approach to the use of e-portfolio technologies for learners to manage evidence of their learning. E-portfolios – Managing Learner Information is part of the national training system’s e-learning strategy, the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au). A key aim of this activity is to ensure portability and accessibility of learner collected evidence of learning.

  • E -portfolios – Managing Learner Information blog (courtesy of Allison Miller)

http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/e-portfoliosblog The interest in e-portfolios in the Vocational Education and Training sector is building momentum, with a number of 2008 Innovations Projects (www.flexiblelearning.net.au/innovations) either using or having identified their desire to use an e-portfolio as a part of their project. To help support these 'early adopters' and others interested in e-portfolios an E-portfolios Blog has been established. Containing information about e-portfolio case studies, stories from the field, and up to date information about the E-portfolios Business Activity, this blog will allow people an opportunity to 'discuss' their e-portfolio journey, as well as provide information about e-portfolio in the VET sector, which is currently quite limited for Australia.

  • Developing e-portfolios in VET: Policy issues and interoperability – April 2007(courtesy of Allison Miller)

http://e-standards.flexiblelearning.net.au/news.htm#a5 The E-standards for Training project has released a report on e-portfolio systems in the VET system. This report specifically focuses on e-portfolios to support transitions between training, other forms of learning, and employment. The study shows the potential for e-portfolios to provide a systematic, electronic method for learners to record and control access to evidence of their learning.

  • Draft recommendations from the 2008 Australian National e-Portfolios Symposium – June 2008(courtesy of Allison Miller)

http://www.educationau.edu.au/jahia/Jahia/home/pid/637 http://www.educationau.edu.au/jahia/webdav/site/myjahiasite/shared/papers/ePortfolio_draft_rec_report.pdf education.au conducted a National Symposium on E-portfolios on 11 June 2008 to identify, discuss and report on issues associated with the development, implementation, interoperability and use of e-portfolios in an Australian context. Aim: To identify and discuss issues associated with the development, implementation, interoperability and use of e-portfolios across all education and training sectors in Australia.


Please provide links to any local or international reports, papers, or articles that either help define the topic, or that provide detailed information about it.


Please add any other information that may be helpful to the staff as they write up this topic.

  • http://www.blinksandbuttons.net/buttons_en.html Buttons - "blind camera" Buttons takes on this notion of the camera as a networked object. It is a camera that will capture a moment at the press of a button. However, unlike a conventional analog or digital camera, this one doesn't have any optical parts. It allows you to capture your moment but in doing so, it effectively seperates it from the subject. Instead, as you will memorize the moment, the camera memorizes only the time and starts to continuously search on the net for other photos that have been taken in the very same moment. Essentially, it is a camera that - using a mobile communication device - takes other's photos.
  • MS OneNote is a potential resource.
Retrieved from "http://horizon.nmc.org/australia/Lifestreams"
Personal tools
horizon.au archive
project partners