New Blog provider

I came across this site recently as a new offering for school blogs http://www.21classes.com. The bit I was really excited about was the class home page. I don’t know of any other free hosted blog systems that do this (though no doubt readers will tell me of some). Here is the list of features:

Class homepage to communicate with students

Independent yet inter-connected blog accounts for students

Central console to manage students accounts with control over accounts and content

Multiple Options for registration process

Review capabilities of student entries

Upload images or insert videos

Make all or selected students’ writings private

Selection of templates or your own CSS editing

Customizable headers

Hosted application – no installation, automatic updates, no hassle

FREE SERVICE with on demand upgrade options

eLearning Guild

 

Derek Wenmoth pointed me to this site recently:

http://www.elearningguild.com

The site styles itself as “a great service for e-Learning designers, developers, and managers”. I joined up as a free member yesterday and started getting useful email this morning.

International Online Conference sponsored by the REAP project – Assessment design for learner responsibility

You are invited to contribute to an innovative Online International Conference exploring the relationship between the theory and practice of assessment and feedback in higher and further education.

The conference is part of the Re-engineering Assessment Practices (REAP) project, a £1m initiative funded by the Scottish Funding Council under its e-Learning Transformation initiative. REAP is a collaboration across the University of Strathclyde, University of Glasgow and Glasgow Caledonian University.  REAP is evaluating the impact of new assessment practices supported by technology at course, faculty and institutional level.

CONFERENCE THEMES
Focusing on assessment FOR learning in tertiary education the conference has three themes to be addressed through keynotes, case studies and structured discussions.

Theme 1: Assessment and the first year experience
Theme 2: Great designs for assessment
Theme 3: Institutional strategies (designs) for assessment

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS INCLUDE:

• Mantz Yorke, Visiting Professor in the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, UK

• David Boud, Professor of Adult Education and Dean of the University Graduate School at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

• Trudy Banta, Professor of Higher Education and Vice Chancellor of Planning and Institutional Improvement at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, USA

HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Submit a short reflective case study of an assessment design or institutional strategy that promotes ‘assessment FOR learning’ at course, faculty or institutional level. These should be submitted by 28th March 2007 OR Submit a set of principles of good assessment and feedback practice or some ‘questions worth asking’ about assessment theory or practice by 28th March 2007 AND/OR Join the discussions online on May 29th-31st 2007.

Registration is free but all participants must register between 10-18th May 2007

More information is available from the
conference site at: www.reap.ac.uk