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I received an e-mail from a professor (Dick Langston) on campus today informing me that their department (Germanic Languages) will be totally revamping the current curriculum. Their plan right now is to have all incoming students create a blog that they will update during their time in the department. When they leave they will then have an e-portfolio all ready to go with their thoughts as well as a nice representation of their work.

This blog entry has three purposes: 1) to write about what will definitely be included and how it will be useful; 2) to examine some possible emerging technology inclusions; and 3) to solicit thoughts from others about their experiences, both with platforms and student blogs as a whole.

Background

Using blogs to solicit student involvement has been gradually coming on over the past couple of years. Today I listened to a great conference discussion about student blogs on David Warlick’s Connect Learning that really summed up the efforts nicely. I highly recommend that anyone thinking about using blogs in student curriculum listen to this. It is a little more than an hour long, but very worth the effort.

Definite Uses

Turning the discussion to our uses, here are some of the definite ideas right now. The list of application is by no means complete, so please feel free to add your own ideas in the comment section!

• Text – Bread and butter of all good information. Essays, Research Projects, Opinions on Articles and so forth
• Images – Activities they are working on in class, Diagrams of grammar explanations (remember, this is foreign language based), Images to augment text contributions, Images from literary texts they are discussing
• Audio – Lectures they have given, Authentic foreign language examples, Student Feedback, Music, Audio blogs
• Video – All the Audio examples with video, Video blogs

Emerging Possibilities

What are some of the emerging technolgies that might be important to look into? Where are we going in the next 5-10 years?

• Skypecasts – I wrote an article several weeks ago about the possibilities here in regard to language acquisition. They could record a skypecast they put on.
• Virtual Gaming Classes – Integrating online multi-player games like Eve-Online, Second Life and World of Warcraft into classroom learning environments (Article).
• Web 2.0 in Classrooms – Examples of web pages/blogs students created for classes you taught.
• RSS Reader Lists – Most students spend hours and hours reading and aggregate it using a RSS feed reader (Article). Put current, or favorite reads on there!
• Del.icio.us – Bookmark lists of favorite sites will provide not only a great bookmarking resource, but a personal touch to what that student is really interested in interdisciplinary.

This is by no means a complete list. These are just a couple of ideas I had off the top of my head. What other ideas have you seen, or do you think would be important to include in a E-Portfolio? What platforms have you used in the past that have been useful to you? Any other thoughts and comments? Please add them below!