We were originally scheduled for maintenance tonight, between 12p and 1A EST, this has been delayed. Our service provider had some difficulties this morning, resulting in approximately 6 minutes of downtime around 10:30A EST this morning. Since we work hard to minimize downtime, the minor maintenance has been put off. We will post another entry when it’s rescheduled.

Every e-Portfolio in our system gets a unique URL, chosen by the user. This has some huge advantages, such as a single short address that can be given out. It also has a disadvantage as our user base grows – it can be more difficult to find an unused address.

We’ve received a few requests over the last month for quicker feedback on whether an address is available, so here it is. In a few days, when you enter a URL, the page will immediately update and let you know if that URL is taken.

That’s right! Now you can embed Vimeo videos in your Digication e-Portfolio!

Vimeo provides a versatile video player, the best quality video on the web today and even supports HD videos. With these benefits you might want to give Vimeo a try before uploading your next movie file to YouTube.

To take advantage of this new feature, just add a Video Module to your e-Portfolio. Edit the module and select the Media from Web tab and paste in the Embed code listed in Vimeo next to the video.

Note: You can also embed Vimeo videos if you are using the Rich Text Module or Gallery Module – following the same directions above for Inserting Media or Editing/Adding Images and Videos.

Vimeo Screenshot

To learn more about Vimeo visit their website: http://www.vimeo.com

The Faculty Center at Stony Brook University has invited Digication to present at the 2009 Summer Colloquium focusing on Innovations in Education. This is an exciting time to be involved in teaching and learning with all the new and innovative approaches and technologies. What better way to grow in our profession than by discussing our mutual experiences? There’s still time to register for this free event.

Digication’s co-founder and CEO, Jeff Yan, will be giving the following presentation at 1:00 PM on Wednesday, May 27 in the Javits Lecture Center, room 223.:

Digication e-Portfolios and Assessment Management System

In this session, Digication co-founder and CEO, Jeffrey Yan, will provide an indepth demonstration of the Digication e-Portfolio and Assessment Management System. Digication e-Portfolios provide faculty and students with a flexible, easy to use tools for creating media rich e-Portfolios that are shared within a central directory that can be viewed by other members of the learning community and beyond. TheDigication Assessment Management System, which integrates tightly with Digication e-Portfolios supports institutional tracking for comparing and reporting on student progress and performance giving faculty and administrators the ability to easily assess a class, department, or institution based on standards, goals, or objectives. Join us in this session to learn about Digication’s unique pedagogical mission in the development of this technology and see first hand how institutions are putting it to work to support learning, assessment, and career advancement.

Hope to see you there!

We’re in the final stages of testing a new feature within the Digication Assessment Management System that we’re calling e-Portfolio Snapshots.

• Snapshots do not appear in the directory
• The only way to access a snapshot is via the Assessment system
• Hits/views are no longer updated
• Snapshots cannot be changed by anyone, including school administrators
• Comments and tags will be locked. If they were visible when the e-Portfolio was submitted, they’ll be included in the snapshot.
• Cached external content, such as Twitter or the upcoming RSS feeds will be archived
• Non-cached external content, such as YouTube videos, may change. A warning will soon be shown under the content to warn the viewer of this.
• Email to a friend, subscribe, and export functions are disabled
• Snapshots will remain even if the e-Portfolio is moved or deleted
• The submitter can choose which pages within an e-Portfolio to archive. Only the selected pages will be included.
• If a submitter archives a page on the left, but doesn’t choose the parent link at top, then the link will be included automatically to allow for navigation

If you’re using the assessment features at your school, you’ve probably seen the ‘Submit Evidence’ screen. This allows a user to store information that contributes to an assignment or shows progress towards a goal/standard. We currently support entering rich text, uploading of files, and linking to an e-Portfolio.

The e-Portfolio feature has been enormously popular, as it allows a student to both demonstrate their work and store it for grading. This is, however, just a link to the e-Portfolio as it looks now, not how it looked when the user submitted it. Schools have expressed an interest in using the e-Portfolios as a repository of information towards their accreditation reviews. For this to work, the e-Portfolios need to remain the same.

Once this feature is available, all e-Portfolio evidence will point to an archive of the work. It will always reflect the e-Portfolio as it looked when submitted.

Several things to note:

For our existing Assessment users, we will automatically snapshot all your existing e-Portfolio evidence. The submission date will not change, but the snapshot will be of the e-Portfolio state when we launched, not when it submitted.

We plan to launch this feature early next week. If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact us.