In particular, can we achieve any "economy of scale" by combining efforts, or getting some support from the programme? 

Well, while it is a rather unimaginative linear development from the multi-touch display research, it still looks like a great product: the new Microsoft Surface. If you were thinking of buying more electronic whiteboards, don't bother.

Personally, I think a multi-touch table to sit around and prod at is much more interesting, pedagogically speaking, than a thing on the wall to point at.

Note the very interesting bit of dragging media between the table surface and a phone placed on top of it - the blending of virtual and physical looks seamless. Still, it is a demo - we won't see this arrive until Winter according to the website.

This is a very useful and informative post describing the use of individual progress reports instead of graded assignments.

Here is a crucial point:

I believe that the act of assigning a grade is a very conclusive and definitive one. It means that whatever has been accomplished has been deemed to have certain value and that it is time to move on. I did not want my students to see their research as fragmented into a number of separate entries, punctuated by my rubrics and marks. I want them to see their work as one continuous flow, not a series of entries.

This is part of the problem I see in a lot of portfolio implementations: the portfolio simply collects discrete graded 'units' rather than reflect an evolving state of awareness and capability. Portfolios themselves can end up as simply being another type of assignment; getting out of the episodic grading habit requires some serious effort and creativity.

Ultimately when teaching (and, admittedly, I havent done any for a few years now) the assessment strategy is the absolutely critical determining factor; no other innovations will 'stick' if they are out of step with the assessment strategy, and often this is the most conservative part of institutional policy.

I don't know if this individual progress reporting, supported by the self-evaluation sheets, is the answer, but it certainly looks like its going in the right direction.

I think an important challenge is how we deal with the macro goals: the evaluation of progress towards longer term professional capability, and how we relate that to formal accreditation. I think portfolios have a big part to play here, but only if they contain evidence of progressively more sophisticated authentic practice, rather just than a big pile of graded assignments to be averaged.

There is also an issue of value here too; academics spend a lot of their time designing, collating, marking and distributing assessments. Is this a good use of a scarce resource? Would it be more effective to delegate structured assessment to students, and spend the staff time on individual progress meetings instead?

Via OLDaily

Now this is a nice UI element; Facebook has a content control based on a mixing desk metaphor:

Via OUseful Info

Now, the fun really begins when you compare something like Yahoo Pipes to the repatching feature of Reason . I guess I was hinting at this with my "processing" elements in the mashups stencil I designed a while back. Each processing module creates an input to the mixing desk, which then modifies the 'dashboard'.

I think I can feel a prototype coming on...

Here a quick cross-link to my column on PLEs for EduSite.

Kim Cameron reports that Internet2 are adding CardSpace support for Shibboleth. This is significant as CardSpace enables a consistent approach to providing personal credentials at the user interface level, whether the actual mechanism for handling identities is system-specific, federated or distributed.

I can see two clear benefits from this move:

Firstly, for users it offers a consistent experience to logging in for services. Whether this involves offering an OpenID identity or an identity managed by a Shibboleth Identity Provider. This is potentially very useful: sometimes you need to be "you", and sometimes you need to be "a staff member of x".

Second, CardSpace offers a way of overcoming the potential Phishing problems of Shibboleth; the CardSpace interface replaces the potentially vulnerable (and, as federations grow, confusing) Where Are You From? (WAYF) service.

However, I'm assuming here that Shibboleth SAML assertions will be made available as Managed Cards within a users personal CardSpace; the text of the announcement isn't very clear on this point. However - if (and I assume this isn't the case) the intent is the opposite - to make CardSpace cards usable by federations, but not vice-versa - then the value proposition will be considerably less.

One of the purposes of this blog is to let people in my wider [network/group/collective/circus] know what I'm working on, something I've let slip away lately. So here's a quick summary of what I'm up to.

the XCRI project is an effort to emerge a specification for sharing information about learning opportunities (e.g. courses) using simple aggregation techniques. I've contributed to the specification wiki and some prototype applications. XCRI is being factored into plans to modernise the processes of finding and applying for courses at 14-19 and HE level in the UK.

the FeedForward project is a new project where we'll be putting into practice ideas from the PLE work and elsewhere (e.g. Stephen Downes' RSSWritr) into an application that integrates the use of formal repositories with general web resources using the same workflows of aggregating and publishing. The intention is to bring some otherwise difficult to use services into the same category of use as popular newsfeeds and blogging tools. Its still very early days, and we haven't kicked off the project yet.

I'm still involved in doing IMS specifications, particularly Enterprise and Tools Interoperability, though not as much as previously.

I've been working a lot on helping identify areas for strategic funding by JISC, such as helping with the recent Capital Call. The "technology supported learning environments" (PLE by any other name) was something I put a fair bit of effort into. Hopefully the projects funded there (see under "Strand C: TSLE") will do some great work.

I'm doing a fair bit of academic writing and presenting. I'll be at Ed-Media in Vancouver next month, which I'm looking forward to. This is where I try and keep up with the PLE debate among other things.

The Ten Competence project is a major EU-funded project on learning networks for competence development. I'm currently doing some work for this project on an architecture for incorporating Widgets into learning designs.

I'm on the steering group for EMERGE.

I have a continuing relationship with MELCOE, and have contributed recently to the RAMP project.

As usual I do some partnership work, with organisations such as BECTa, relating to standards in e-learning.

Though the above seems a poor reflection of my actual work, which some days seems to largely involve filling in forms, writing reports, and going to meetings. But then isn't that everyone's experience?

I'm not really sure about this discussion of groups versus networks, but I'm even less sure about the introduction of collectives. I think also there is a lack of clarity around the difference - very large, I'd say - between a network operating within a single managed service (such as an Elgg installation) and a network formed by people blogging and tagging things of mutual relevance.

As much for my own reference as anything else, here's an attempt at cybernetic modelling of the differences:

I'm a massive fan of graphics collective eBoy; their poster for FooBar is fantastic as ever, and shows various Web 2.0 brands in a frantic urban jungle.

I guess I'm a bit Old Skool, but while a lot of people today are getting excited by 3D and virtual worlds I find eBoy's isometric art far more compelling than Second Life or other 'realistic' 3D worlds. Weird, eh?

PS: I'm on leave, so all blog posts are going to be a little informal and random for a while. Normal service will be resumed in just over a week's time!