Concept map

An example of a concept map that evidences on of its main features...

for the learning purpose the process of building it is more important that the product in it self.
This concept map tries to organize some ideas,authors and principles related to Cultural-Historical Activity Theory. I know that it is very difficult to understand all the connections that link the concepts but the process of construction this map was truly enlightfull and clarifying for me and my research group.

About blogs as an assessment tool

Trying to reflect on it:

Most valuable information learned:
Teachers can use meaningful and personal webtools to promote learning and it innovative approach doesn't need to be dissociated for assessment. For many time, teachers (even the most innovative professionals) tended to engage students in very 'high-techn' projects. But when it turns to evaluation, the innovative practices tended to be more difficult to find. Social representation of school grades and national standardized-tests seams to keep evaluation and assessment as a 'resisting-change'-part of todays' educational reality. Maybe it can start to change now, even in slow motion. (We will see)

Applying the lesson-learned:
Faculties have been use learning management systems for quite some time for organizing online students work and although this LMS truly works effectively, managning all the resources and the information in one easy-to-use environment, it keeps inside all the learning process and all the learning outcomes developed by the students that after the courses ended are only available for the institution.
Next semestre a blended approach will be used:online discussion will be kept in LMS but personal reflections and assignments can we developed on a blog, a wiki, any personally-selected system.

More information/practice needed:
I truly need to learn who to grade and assess products developed in blogs and/or wikis.

Big concern: but how to do evaluate a blog?

Reading Wang and Fang (2005) experience and also following the examples bring out by Davi, Frydenger and Gulati (2007) make emerge one big concern that has followed me for quite some time now.
“How can we, on heart, evaluate with reliability in this new assessment approaches and tools? How do I assess a blog? How can we give a grade to something so personal and so self-referred?”
Research papers normally talk about post analyses associated with questionnaires (likert’s scales) but they are not transparent enough about how that post analyses happen and how are those students answers in the questionnaires used to give grades.
I truly believe in all the benefits, in all the advantages that blogs (an other Web 2.0 tools) can bring to the learning process and to student competences. I see blogs (an other Web 2.0 tools) to be very powerful not only for the present but even more for the future. But I have serious difficulties to see how a teacher/instructor can clearly define collectively applicable aims and metrics for such personal product.
[I have great hopes that this course can help me settle down these disturbing questions]

Blogs: organizing promises and pitfulls of its use for learning purposes

In order to sistematize some of the advantages and disadvantages related to blogs use in education and training contexts, a graphic representation of it.

Take some time an explore Bubbl.us

Advantages wins disavantages but this don't mean that blogs will be an apropriate tool to use in every educational situation.
Also their is some features on weblogs that some times are blogs' advantages but that can also became big disadvantages, so the inicials 2 categories (positive and negative) were transformed into 3 categories.

Millions of futures

A very interesting idea... must see all questions!
http://www.millionfutures.org.uk/

Because we all need to keep learning: starting an e-assessment course

O conceito de realidade aumentada

O futuro mostra que não muito distante do dia de hoje poderemos aprender sobre o mundo directamente no mundo e não fechado numa sala de aula.
"Augmented reality"

Important: truly listen

O testemunho de uma professora que não consegue falar, ensina-nos a todos a ser melhores professores:

"I became a different kind of teacher than I had ever been—I became a teacher who actively listened," she wrote in a recent essay for the university's alumni newsletter. "I had in the past often confused listening with waiting for my students to stop talking so that I might resume the very important business of performing," she added. "I learned that if I listened carefully, thoughtfully, generously, and nonjudgmentally, my students would delight me with the complexity of their thinking, the depth of their insight, the delicious wickedness of their humor, and with their compassion, their wisdom, and their honesty." (ler mais)