The ePortoflio Australia conference was recently held in Perth. The organizers of this event have prepared an eBook of all conference presentations and papers which is available from the following webpage (scroll ½ way down page) This 150p PDF presents a cross-section of students and academics using ePortfolios. A very hand resource! http://eportfoliosaustralia.wordpress.com/conference-eac2011/eac2011-program/

Pebblepad mobile allows you to:
View the last 50 assets you created
View any assets tagged with ‘mobile’
Add new thoughts to your asset store
Upload images from your image library
Upload images from the IPhone’s camera
Post both thoughts and images directly to a PebblePad blog
(Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.)

There are four ways you can use mobile devices with your PebblePad account:

• PebblePDA the program designed to operate on Windows Mobile PDA’s and Smartphones. This is designed to work with Windows Mobile 2003 or above.
• Pebble SendR the java-based file upload tool compatible with most mobile devices. This is a simple java application which you download and run on your phone. Once installed you can select any file on your phone and upload it directly to your PebblePad account
• Pebble Mobile to access a very simple version of PebblePad via the browser on any mobile device
  All installations of PebblePad include a version of Pebble Mobile. To access your mobile version of PebblePad simply point your mobile browser at your normal PebblePad URL and add ‘/mobile’ at the end
• PebblePad iPhoneto access PebblePad from your Apple IPhone or iPod Touch (2nd generation) running firmware version 3 or higher which allows basic access to your PebblePad account.find out more from PebblePad: http://www.pebblepad.co.uk/mobile.asp

 

CSU graduates, Corinne Hills, Rebecca Randall and Joanne Beazley, will present their experiences with PebblePad at the World Library and Information Congress next month.

It’s great to hear of so many CSU staff and student successes in relation to PebblePad in the last few months. We’ve had papers in the PebblePad Case Studies and Perspectives by both staff and students (look for Jenni Munday, Jacquie Tinkler, Libby Clark & Greg Hardham, Trisha Poole & last but by no means least, Sandra Stewart), and at the ePortfolios Australia conference later this year (Sandra, once again). 

Now  Corrinne Hills, Rebecca Randall and Joanne Beazley will present their paper, ePortfolios a plan for success: Australian new graduate experiences, at the World Library and Information Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden next month. It’s is a great paper, concentrating on their personal experiences with PebblePad and the opportunities it has offered them as new graduates in terms of career planning, professional development, and applications for employment.

We can talk about ‘warm feelings’, being ‘inspired’ and all that as much as we like, but really, as cliched as it sounds, there’s just something special about hearing people talk about becoming empowered to take control of their own learning and development – whether as a student or a new graduate…or even as an experienced professional. So many of us (including me) have used university as a means to party on, do some essays late at night and at the last minute and pull together some ‘letters’ that will give us a bit of ‘paper’ that tells us we’re somehow more qualified than we were before.

But what if there were more…what if we all took control of our learning, took responsibility for it, managed it so that we gained every last drop of value from it that we could. I love this comment from Rebecca:

‘Receiving my Masters degree was a personal highlight. My ePortfolio has enabled me to get the most out of all this study’

Now a tool hasn’t done that…I can put the same tool in front of student A and they will snub it, while student B will grab it with both hands, persevere through any misunderstandings, and thrive through their enhanced planning, reflection and presentation. It was Rebecca’s willingness to explore the tool that enabled her to do that. It’s her own motivation to make the most of an experience, to get in there and self-manage her own learning to meet her needs. And as a result, her ePortfolio is ’hitting the mark every time’. And for Corinne, it’s ’making her a better professional and is allowing her to demonstrate skills and knowledge more easily and more evidently’.

I  know the feeling. I’m currently using PebblePad to manage my own learning and development, and I’ve not been a student since 2008 when I completed my Masters. The motivation? Wanting to take control of where my career was heading, wanting to self-manage what I was doing, and make better decisions about how I spent my time. I think we all need to do this. Our careers, whether as a student or as a professional, aren’t things that are ‘done to us’. They are things we mold for ourselves.

So please, read Corrinne, Rebecca and Jo’s paper. Think about the benefits taking control of your learning can have for you. Explore PebblePad in a space where you aren’t anxious about an assessment deadline. Or, if you are very tech savvy, pull together your own web applications. Whatever works for you. But explore, and see where it takes you.

I’d love to hear about the journey.

In the flurry of posts tonight, I thought I’d add one final one in before I sign out…

In 2010, we’ve created quite a few support options for you when it comes to learning PebblePad. Our website includes general info on PebblePad as well as a range of one-page worksheets that you can select from, depending what tools you’re using.  We’ve also created a student forum where you can ask questions of your peers, and we’re lucky enough to have some fantastic students who are acting as mentors to others on the forum while they are learning the ropes. We’ve also provided some great workshops on using PebblePad for your career development, and given support to academics, who are then in a better position to pass on support to yourselves. But we know we have a long way to go.

We’re planning quite a few things during second semester to raise awareness of PebblePad and improve student support. But really, we need to ask you what you need. What has worked well for you so far, and what else would you need if you were in the absolute ideal world where you were fully supported to use PebblePad easily, usefully and confidently.

Take this poll and, if there’s something else that you want, or if you would like to add a comment, just use the comment function on this post. Looking forward to hearing from you.

I know I’ve posted about Sandra before, but really, I find her so inspiring. It’s just so great to see students who struggle initially with understanding what PebblePad is all about really move forward and become leaders in personal learning. And that’s what Sandra is becoming.

Just last month, she had her case study published as part of the PebbleBash conference papers. She was the only Australian student who had a paper published – quite an achievement! You can read about her story here…along with those of other students. Interesting reads!

Now, to take things one step further, she’s just had another case study accepted at the ePortfolios Australia conference held in Melbourne on 3-4 November. Her paper is called ‘Encountering ePortfolios: A mature aged student’s perspective’. She’ll be talking about the benefits of using PebblePad outside of traditional assessment items. That is, for managing your own learning and development.

Now, this is the kind of thing I really like to see…it’s one thing to use PebblePad to demonstrate your learning and to develop conversations with your lecturers and careers advisors, but it’s another leap forward to use it to extend those connections into all those informal learning opportunities that make up the rest of your world.

I’m starting to hear about more and more students who are following the same path…catching on to how they can use personal learning tools such as PebblePad to really empower themselves by become more self-aware in terms of who they are as emerging (or re-emerging) professionals and taking control of their learning. And after all, that’s what it’s all about. 

Big, big,

Blogs are fantasic for reflecting on a wide range of topics, but if you want to track a specific project, you can't beat an activity log.

I must say, it took me a while to get onto activity logs. I’m now a complete convert, and they are one of my most used tools in PebblePad. Think blogs, then reverse the order, add in a formula that adds up how much time you’ve spent overall on the activities, add email reminders when you need to follow up on something and some start and end dates and you’ll get the picture.

So how do I use them? I use them for my larger projects – things that I”m working on for a month or more, especially when I want to track how I spend my time (because I need to be accountable for it to others, because I want to prove that the job was larger than the amount of time I was given, or because I want to track my progress during the project and how much time I’m spending on activities – a great self check).

From the PebblePad help files:

You can send any normal record from your PebblePad record store to your activity record except for files; webfolios; blogs and CVs. You can create multiple activity logs for different purposes such as appraisal and any standards you are working towards.

The activity log enables you to decide how many hours are required to complete an activity and as you add items to an activity log it will display the number of hours you are required to complete the task in hand. As you add items to the log you will also see how many hours you have completed so you can easily gauge how you are progressing.

Step 3 in creating an activity log – by adding the time you’re meant to be spending on the project, and the start and finish dates, you can easily gauge your progess every time you add an activity to it and check your log.

As this is an optional tool, you need to enable it before you can start creating logs. To do that, click on the tools menu and select my settings. Then click on the preferences tab on the right of the screen. In the list of options you will see activity log asset type. Click the on button to switch the activity log on. Click on the green tick to save the changes. You’ll probably be prompted to logout of PebblePad so the changes appear.

As for other assets, just go to the create menu and then select activity log, which should now appear. It’s the same as creating a blog, but you have an extra step (see the pic on the left) which lets you record how much time you want to spend on the project, and when you want to start and finish it.

Now, how to populate it…well, you know how in a blog you can post a simple thought directly into the blog, or you can create a separate thought record in PebblePad and then send it to your blog? Well, it’s the same in activity logs. You first create the activity, or thought, or action plan or meeting or whatever you have been doing, and then in the final step, you send it to your activity log.  Easy. Your records still exist separately from your activity log, which means you can ‘re-use’ them in multiple ways.

As a student, I think this is a great tool for recording work experience related to my professional area, or related to specific skills that I’m trying to develop. It’s also great for recording what I’m doing on my practicums or for doing a ‘self-check’ on how efficient I’m being in completing assessments. 

Do you really need to record everything? Absolutely not. There’s lots of small tasks that I never add in – or I’ll just add one activity and do a ‘guesstimate’ of how much time I’ve spent cumulatively on them all. I just don’t have the patience (and I’m not anal enough) to write it all down. But even recording the big stuff is enough to give me insight into how I’m working.

And, of course, you can send things from your mobile and update them later. If you haven’t done this before, try it. Just go to https://eportfolio.csu.edu.au/pebblepad/mobile/ If you have an iPhone even better…here’s a tipsheet on how to get started.

Lots of questions about PebblePad and emails over the past week, so hopefully this will explain a few things…

Your email address is critical for your efficient use of PebblePad – it’s how you get notifications of your grades and feedback, when someone has shared something with you, and it’s also how you receive reminders to complete or reflect on activities. So how do you know that PebblePad has the right email address?

If you are a staff member, your CSU email address is automatically registered in PebblePad, as this ‘institutional’ email is also stored in the CSU database that tells PebblePad who can have access to it. This also means that when you search for a staff member in the ‘my community’ list, you’ll see their email address next to their name.

Students are a bit trickier. CSU no longer provides students with an institutional email address, and your personal email address isn’t listed in the database. So when you first log into PebblePad as a student, you’ll be prompted to type in your email address. If you do, this then becomes your institutional email within PebblePad.

So what happens to that email address? Firstly, it gets stored in your ‘About Me’ contact details. You can find this under the ‘Tools’ menu. Note that when you look at the contact details, you’ll need to click on the second little ‘circle’ to get to the ‘institutional’ email address.

Click on the second 'circle' to see your current institutional email address. This is where all your email notifications from PebblePad will be sent.

This institutional email address is where all your notifications go, so if you don’t add in an email address when you log in, you won’t receive notifications. You can check / change the institutional email address at any time by going into the ‘About Me’ section.

The second thing that happens to the email address is that it now gets stored with your name in the ‘My Community’ area. This means that when someone looks up your name, they’ll also see your email address. You’ll find if you do a search in ‘My Community’ that there are still lots of students that don’t have an email next to their name. That’s mostly because they haven’t logged into PebblePad for the first time yet and so haven’t added their email.

But what if I don’t want everyone to know my email address?

Now a couple of people have recently asked about privacy issues involved in this. We agree…there are privacy issues in making your email address available to all CSU staff and students. The reason PebblePad needs it to be there is that the only details PebblePad uses are first name, last name and email address. So if we have two John Smiths at CSU…you get the picture. However, remember that CSU’s code of conduct clearly states that:

7.1 The use of any CSU computer or communications facility to make, send or store fraudulent, unlawful, harassing or abusive calls or messages is prohibited.

and…

7.6 An employee, student or other authorised user who receives any threatening, intimidating or harassing telephone call or electronic message should report the incident to the Executive Director, Information Technology (or nominee) in the first instance.

7.7 An employee, student or other authorised user who becomes aware of a breach of this policy should report the matter to the Executive Director, Information Technology (or nominee) in the first instance.

As a CSU system, these rules also apply to PebblePad. So if any situation does arise where a student or staff member is misusing your email address gained through PebblePad, it’s essential that you report this immediately.

Learning PebblePad is an exploratory process. You start with a little bit, based on what you need to do at the time, then you just keep exploring more and more of the functionality as you need to do more…or just start to get the ‘bug’. Yep, for many, it’s addictive.

Here’s the first experiences of one of our first PebblePad users, Sandra Stewart. Sandra is a mature age student studying in the Faculty of Education. But like everyone else, she’s more than just that… she runs a wildlife refuge, expands her veterinary nursing skills through a TAFE course, and a whole range of other stuff to boot. She’s been bringing it all together in PebblePad, sharing her work with people both within and external to CSU, and learning a lot more about herself along the way. Here’s the first of two video interviews with her which we recorded earlier this month. The other is on her growing understanding of reflection, and I’ll put that one up soon, along with some mp3 interviews.

Sandra is also great in that she supports others who are just getting started in PebblePad through the PebblePad forum. I’m hoping that soon we’ll be able to recognise students who are doing this, and encourage others to do the same, through a mentoring program. Stay tuned, and if have been using PebblePad for a while and are interested in being a mentor and finding out what it might involve, please let me know at chunter@csu.edu.au.

A few people have been asking this lately…so I thought I’d create a screencast to show you how to get it done.

Normally, to add an image to a webfolio page, you’d need to either:

• create a link to the video; or
• place it in the sidebar, above the navigation.

The first one means extra clicks for your reader, while the second means that your video is quite small. One of our (very clever!!) students last year, though, discovered a third alternative…using the html code to embed the video into the webfolio page itself. Now with a html editor, this would be easy, but of course, PebblePad uses Flash, which has huge advantages, but does mean we’re more limited in some functionality within the text editor. Until we find these ‘loopholes’ that let us get what we want. You won’t find this in the online help, and it’s a little messy (some code hangs over in your webfolio page), but for many, it’s certainly much better than the other alternatives.

I’ve quickly made up a screencast of how you go about it…would appreciate comments on whether you find this useful or not, and if it is, I’ll keep adding other screencasts in this way.

http://www.screencast.com/users/carole1801/folders/Jing/media/08026043-a1dc-4264-9fb6-f5f34a1e9704

Ever been on a work placement or somewhere away from the computer and had a great idea that you need to write down, before you lose it? A notepad to carry around with you works great…but if you’re starting to get into PebblePad for recording your ideas, you might want to try out the mobile application.

Useful for those quick thoughts that can’t wait until you’re at your computer…

To access your mobile version of PebblePad simply point your mobile browser to http://eportfolio.csu.edu.au/pebblepad/mobile and you’ll be able to log in, as usual.

Clicking on ‘create an asset’ just creates a simple asset with only title and description fields. If you want to create an asset with all the usual features, just select the asset type (e.g. create a thought).

You can create most assets, including activities, abilities, achievements, action plans, experiences, meetings and thoughts…enough to get to the core of what you need to record, and come back later to expand on it if you need to.

When you save it, you can also post it to one of your PebblePad blogs (these appear in a drop down list). You can also view assets. Just remember to log out when you’re finished.

Anyone using PebblePad mobile? Finding it useful?