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

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• Hits/views are no longer updated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.

When the Firefox and Safari browsers no longer supported the browser based spell check we got busy creating a custom version for you.  The new Digication e-Portfolio Spell Checker is now available in the Rich Text Module and Gallery Module caption editors.

This feature is great for writing programs, teacher education programs, and others that require large amounts of text to be included in the e-Portfolio.

When you have completed writing your text (or anytime your adding or editing text) click on the Spell Checker icon. Any misspelled words will be displayed with a dotted red line underneath so you can easily make your changes before saving and publishing your text.

The spell checker is currently English only but we can add other languages if requested.