Digication Blog

Digication Partners with Whipplehill to Provide e-Portfolios for Independent Schools:
Partnership Enables Schools to Integrate e-Portfolios with Whipplehill's Solutions


Digication™ Inc., a leading provider of e-Portfolios, today announced that it has partnered with Whipplehill Communications, Inc., the leader in independent school software systems, to provide its customers with e-Portfolios for students and teachers to showcase work, collaborate on projects and prepare for college admissions.

Providence, RI (PRWEB) July 7, 2008 -- Digication™ Inc., a leading provider of e-Portfolios, today announced that it has partnered with Whipplehill Communications, Inc., the leader in independent school software systems, to provide its customers with e-Portfolios for students and teachers to showcase work, collaborate on projects and prepare for college admissions.

WhippleHill has been helping advance and market private and independent schools through content-management software and award-winning Web designs since 1998, serving more than 300 schools in 30 states, Canada, Europe and Asia. Adding Digication's e-Portfolio solution to Whipplehill's market-leading Podium product, will provide schools a rich and easy to use e-Portfolio platform for classroom, project, college-prep and marketing purposes.

The partnership with Digication will enable WhippleHill customers to seamlessly integrate and display student work on their portals using Digication's e-Portfolios. Using a single sign-on to access e-Portfolios, students can upload illustrations, poetry, short stories, papers, photography, PDFs, HTML, video and Flash projects. A channel in Whipplehill's Podium can pull student portfolios to display thumbnail images on the portal, increasing exposure to student work.

"The idea of e-Portfolios has long been discussed by our clients, but so far we've never had the opportunity for such an integrated solution, where portfolios can be made this easily," Travis Warren, president of WhippleHill, said. "The potential rewards reach beyond the work students have produced in class. From what we can tell, more and more colleges are looking for precisely this in their admission decisions."

More than 2,000 schools have deployed the Digication e-Portfolio solution. Its Web-based e-Portfolios allow educators and students to share ideas and achievements, improve communication and expand the educational experience beyond the classroom. With Digication, teachers can easily archive classroom progress for future reference. Students' work can be published to the Web to be shared with other students and family members. Since Digication is easy to use, teachers and students can instantly become engaged in building an e-Portfolio and work towards college acceptance.

"We're excited about the opportunity to partner with a clear leader in independent school software systems," says Jeffrey Yan, CEO of Digication. "To look at the current generation of learners - their culture, their lifestyles, their needs - we know that they are already engaged in many social networks and communities online outside of school. The idea of a community is not foreign to them. e-Portfolios will help build a rich and engaging online community that is based on authentic work and will provide additional motivation, better engagement and hopefully even better work."

About WhippleHill Communications, Inc.:
Since 1998, WhippleHill Communications has been helping advance and market private and independent schools through content-management software and award-winning Web designs, serving more than 300 schools in 30 states, Canada, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit http://www.whipplehill.com/.

About Digication, Inc.:
Designed by educators, for educators, Digication is a leading provider of easy-to-use e-Portfolio solutions for teachers and students at all levels, from K-12 to higher education. Students at more than 1,500 schools use Digication's e-Portfolios to easily, flexibly and professionally showcase their work and achievements across schools and districts. e-Portfolios create new opportunities for learning, reflection, communication, assessment and career advancement. Digication is headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. For more information, visit http://www.digication.com.

Ken Ronkowitz from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, talks about "Free" CMS for K-12. See his blog post: Is there a free CMS for K-12 schools? Ken makes a great distinction between CMS use for online courses, and CMS being used to support and complement a face-to-face class.

He also talks about an important point that open source software for schools such as Moodle and Sakai require, "IT support, probably more support than a commercial product which comes with at least some built-in/paid for support." Many K-12 and Higher Ed. schools do not have the resources for this support or would prefer support be provided externally.

Digication comes up in his discussion since it is providing free software, hosting and support for K-12 and higher ed. schools across the U.S.

Digication was featured on Richard MacManus' popular Read/WriteWeb blog, January 17, 2007. The article, which provides an informative look at how Web 2.0 software for the classroom, now often referred to as E-learning 2.0, is quickly permeating K-12 and higher ed classrooms. Richard provides useful information about Google's tools for educators, Digication's collaborative, community driven learning tools, and some Web 2.0 tools like blogs and podcasts that are being used in the classroom even though they weren't designed specifically for that purpose. Take a look at the Read/WriteWeb blog to read all about it!

We can't get enough of teaching and learning success stories here at Digication. We would like to share an article with you that we found on the Infinite Thinking Machine website (www.infinitethinking.org) recently.

This article introduces a 10th grade Computer Science classroom and a 6th grade Language Arts classroom, both incidentally in the Southeast U.S., Georgia and South Carolina respectively.

Both classrooms have put the community building aspects of Web 2.0 technology like wikis, Skype, and podcasting to work in the classroom with dramatic, positive impact on the educational experience of their students.

Their students are engaged, excited, connected, motivated, and HAVING FUN WHILE LEARNING! And they are not just learning about the subject matter introduced in these courses, but are rather gaining significant skills in other areas including technology, effective communication (not just in their classrooms, but with students in other countries!), creative expression, collaboration - the list goes on and on. Isn't that what school should be all about?

Huge pats on the back to Vicki Davis and Chris Craft, the teachers making this all possible for their students.

This article, IBM to Add Podcasting to Curriculum at University of Arizona, posted on TechNewsWorld this weekend emphasizes the need for today's students (and teachers!) to become well versed in next-generation, collaborative technologies such as blogs, wikis and podcasts.

The article describes the integration of such technologies into the classroom today as a "natural evolution" for business courses. I would of course argue it's a natural evolution for courses in general. Students need to gain these skills as part of their educational experience in order to communicate effectively in the today's work force and certainly the work force of tomorrow.

TheTechTeacher, Brad Neisson, explores Digication as a positive impact on social networking technology for schools.

WoW - Social Networking Solutions - Digication Campus and Spotlight

Take a look at his other posts too as I think many of you that are interested in technology in the classroom will find them very relevant:
http://thetechteacher.libsyn.com/

Will Richardson posted a transcript of Andy Losik’s “E-Mailed Stories that We Liked Dept.” on his blog Weblogg-ed today that speaks to the horror that so many teachers utilizing the web in their classrooms today are facing.

Schools are shutting down access to “Web Logs/Personal web pages” which includes access to Web 2.0 websites such as del.icio.us and web journals such as blogs and wikis.

Although Losik after some frantic emails to his School District was able to obtain access again many teachers are not so lucky. In Rhode Island, where we are located, teachers and students are blocked from any site where users can contribute information. Because of the negative press associated with sites like MySpace and Friendster teachers and students are no longer able to view the most current information relevant to their classes online and teachers are left without useful tools for sharing information with their students and their parents online. In many cases teachers can’t even access their email – so any communication with their students beyond the classroom is effectively cut-off.

How are teachers going to be able to equip their students with necessary technology skills if they can not utilize the same tools within the classroom that people normally use on a day-to-day basis whether as part of their job or their social life? How are students going to learn what is appropriate use of the web for researching topics for an assignment, publishing information for an audience beyond their classroom, and distributing media files if they are not able to do so as pat of their educational experience?

I think so many students are running into trouble in with the type of content they post in some of today’s popular social networking sites because they have not had the opportunity to use that type of technology as part of their academic life – they have had no guidance in how to utilize such technology safely or for a purpose other than talking about who is dating who and posting pictures from last weekend’s party.

Students thrive on the opportunity to be creative and share what’s on their mind when they know that someone is listening – and in large part that is what is so exciting for students about Web 2.0 technology. This motivates us to keep building better learning tools.

There’s a great post over at Technology & Learning's TechLearning Blog http://www.techlearning.com/blog/main/.

Jeff Utecht discusses the popularity of Myspace and YouTube among students associating it with their ability to create and manage their own content. Take a look at this link. One of my big pushes as an educator is to motivate my students to create excellent work and to also share and publish that work with a greater community, whether that community is a group of peers within a classroom, the entire class, the department, the school, or even the world.

I have always found it important that students are creating work not just for me to see in order to get feedback but for them to also have the opportunity to hear from other people and learn from the greater community.

My students take a lot of pride in the work that they create knowing that they will be publishing it to a bigger audience and that the work has value to others beyond the class.