Digication Blog

We are excited to announce that the Digication UI has been updated:

Login Page
The layout has been updated. There is now a larger area including a video tutorial that introduces Digication to users as they login.

Personal Dash Board (Home Page)
The overall UI has been updated to be more consistent with the rest of the site. All the existing functionalities have not changed.

Course / Community Tab Interface
We have added a tab interface to all courses and communities:

-Notifications
This is the "landing page" when a user clicks on a course or community. For faculty, it shows a small "Checklist" that allows for quick adding of discussions. For both faculty and students, it also shows a list of discussions that contains unread posts so that they can get to them quickly.

- Discussions
This tab has the same features as the existing discussion topic listing, with some enhancements to the UI.

- Students
This tab shows a list of all the students that are within a class, along with any relevant information about the student.

- Settings
This tab is for faculty only. It contains a number of administration tools for managing the course or community, user access, attendance, and grade book.

We hope you like the new user interface. As always, we look forward to your feedback.

Note: No changes have been made to e-Portfolios.

Digication Announces New Assessment Management System: A Solution for Tracking, Comparing, and Reporting on Student Progress and Performance

Providence, R.I. – August 4, 2008 – Digication™, Inc., a leading provider of e-Portfolios, today announced its release of a new web-based Assessment Management System (AMS) for tracking, comparing, and reporting on student progress and performance in grades K through12 and in schools of higher education. The Digication AMS integrates tightly with the company’s award-winning e-Portfolio system, providing students with an online learning community to easily record, publish, and archive learning outcomes using customizable, media-friendly templates.

Faculty and students at more than 2,000 schools use the Digication e-Portfolio solution. The web-based e-Portfolios enable educators and students to share ideas and achievements, improve communication, and expand the educational experience beyond the classroom. With Digication, teachers can easily archive assessments of classroom progress for future reference. Students can use e-Portfolios as a workspace for learning and to showcase work for all to see.

“In the past, Digication e-Portfolios were commonly thought of as a tool for schools to build learning communities and for students to create interactive resumes,” said Jeffrey Yan, CEO of Digication. “The new assessment management system brings increased benefits by correlating student work to standards and institutional goals via assessment.”

Educators have modeled the Digication AMS from the ground up with a strong focus on assessment for learning through both summative and formative assessment. The system gives faculty and administrators the tools they need to assess a class, department, or institution based on their standards, goals, or objectives. A flexible and unique “workflow builder” enables users to adapt the software to the way learning happens at the school, rather than requiring teachers to change.

Major features of the Digication AMS include:

Flexible Workflows: Tailor assignments, evidence, and assessment requirements based on a specific program or on course processes and specifications. Use the Digication AMS as a stand-alone system or integrated with Digication e-Portfolios.

Rubric Builder: Easily apply rubrics, either by building them from scratch or using existing rubrics from a school-specific library. Rubrics enable users to customize each assessment criterion and the level of achievement for that criterion.

Standards/Goals Manager: Create customized sets of standards, goals and objectives to facilitate mapping of standards to outcomes. Retain and use each set of standards or goals for assessment through a school-wide library.

Formative and Summative Assessment: Facilitate formative assessment (via written feedback) and summative assessment (via rubric) for any piece of student work. Faculty can create assignment workflow that includes peer review or self-reflection as well as faculty review. Use rubrics for all summative assessments, with the ability to correlate student work to standards or institutional learning goals.

Reporting: Customize reporting based on school-wide or departmental requirements for managing, aggregating, and presenting assessment results. Schools and departments can use reports for accreditation, data analysis, and curriculum development.

“This new assessment management system has been under rigorous research and development involving educators from institutions across the U.S. and experts in the field of e-Portfolios,” CEO Jeffrey Yan added. “We believe we’ve developed a solution that will change the way assessments are done, making them easier and more effective. This will ultimately facilitate student learning and achievement while showcasing proficiency.”

The Digication AMS will be made available as an option to all existing “K-12 School & District Edition” and “Higher Ed Campus Edition” customers.

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 grades K through12 to higher education. Students at more than 2,000 schools use Digication e-Portfolios as a workspace for learning and 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. Integrated tightly with the company’s award winning e-Portfolio system is the Assessment Management System. The AMS is a web-based assessment solution for tracking, comparing, and reporting on student progress and performance in grades K through 12 and in schools of higher education. Digication is headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. For more information, visit www.digication.com

We're happy to announce that we'll be providing a number of new enhancements and features shortly before the new school year. Alongside our new Assessment Management System (announcement to come soon), we've updated the look and feel for consistency and help make sure Digication is compatible with all major browsers.

If anyone's interested in a preview of the new layouts, or wants screenshots to update their school-specific documentation, please get in touch with us!

We have decided to discontinue the color chooser found under "My Courses". According to our data, less than 1% of all courses are set up with custom colors. As much as we are sad to see a feature go, in order to not fall into the trap of software feature creep (link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep) (think Microsoft Word...) and maintain our "simple by design" moto, we have decided to retire the color chooser sometime before Fall 2008 as we make our next round of updates.

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.

You can now embed TeacherTube (http://www.teachertube.com/) videos right in your e-Portfolio.
Other embeddable services include BrightCove, Google Video, Photobucket, SchoolTube, TeacherTube and YouTube. If there is another service you would like to see just contact us and let us know.

Digication at CCSSO’s National Conference on Student Assessment 2008
June 16, 2008

The Council of Chief State School Officers is holding their annual conference on student assessment this week in sunny Orlando, Florida. Jeff Yan, CEO of Digication, will join Angela Fischer of the Omaha Public School District, and Courtney Sivewright of the Shawnee Mission School District in a presentation on using e-Portfolios as part of the formative assessment process in the visual arts.

Here's the session information:

Formative Assessment in the Visual Arts using District-wide, e-Portfolios: Experiences from Two Leading School Districts

Omaha (NE) Public School District and Shawnee Mission School District (KS) are among schools leading the nation in the development of district-based, e-Portfolio, formative assessment. The engaging, skills-based process connects the teacher’s lesson plans with district, state, and national standards and uses the web-based collections of digitized, authentic student work as the evidence of achievement. This session features Jeffrey Yan, creator of the Digication e-Portfolio system, and the visionary art supervisors who have applied the comprehensive process in their schools.

Monday, June 16, 2008
10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

http://www.ccsso.org/Projects/national_conference_on_student_assessment/

We appreciate all the feedback you've given us about how we can make our e-Portfolios better. Today, you'll notice that we've changed our editing tools to make them easier, more intuitive, and more flexible.

Here are some of the highlights:

1. Flexible page layouts: Want to customize the layout of your pages instead of being limited to a simple "image and text"? We still offer preformatted page layouts, but now you can modify them or build your own with modules of text, images, and more.

2. New Navigation Editing: Instead of going to a separate area to edit your top and side menus, you can edit them from any page at any time.

3. Better text editing: Our updated text editor is more stable and has added features such as find and replace. We've heard a lot of feedback from those of you trying to paste formatted text from Word - now, you can use the "Paste From Word" button to get better results.

4. Edit and Publish: Tabs along the top of every page let you switch between editing, previewing your changes, and seeing what your published page looks like.

Any customers who would like more information or assistance in updating their documentation and training plans, please feel free to contact us at support@digication.com.

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback on these changes and thank you for using Digication!

We're very excited to announce an update to our popular e-Portfolio solution in the next few weeks. We typically schedule upgrades during the summer to allow our schools to schedule additional training, however these updates were so strongly requested that we decided to release it early.

The increased functionality can be grouped into two areas. The first are a series of user interface updates that make editing different areas of your e-Portfolio more consistent. We've consolidated editing the navigation and the page content into one easy-to-use screen. For the second update, we broke down our pages into more granular objects to allow more flexibility in designing your e-Portfolio. You'll still have all the same options for creating pages and using our flexible templates, but you can further customize the page afterwards if you choose.

We're running through our exhaustive testing now and will be posting more details and screenshots in this blog in the coming days. Any customers who would like more information or assistance in updating their documentation and training plans, please feel free to contact us at support@digication.com.

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback on these changes and thank you for using Digication!

The NorthEast Regional Computing Program is holding their annual conference next week, right here in our neighborhood. If you're attending, please visit us at Booth #309 and at our Tuesday afternoon session.

Here's the session information:

Digication and Rhode Island School of Design - Drawing on Technology: A Blueprint for Adopting E-Portfolios

Tuesday, March 11, 2008
4:15 p.m. - 5:05 p.m.
Room 552 A

Speakers:
John C. Chamberlin, Associate Professor, Art + Design Education, Rhode Island School of Design
Michael J. Vieira, Dean, Division of Business & Info Management, Bristol Community College, Bristol Community College
Jeffrey Yan, Educator & Founder, Digication
Session convener: Beth Du Pont, Director, Academic Technologies, Skidmore College

Although located just 20 minutes apart from each other, Rhode Island School of Design and Bristol Community College are worlds apart. A prestigious art school and a community college are both using Digication’s dynamic e-portfolios to assess student learning and showcase their work.

http://www.educause.edu/NC08/Program/13921?PRODUCT_CODE=NC08/CORP05

Michael Skeldon, a teacher and Academic Dean at the art-focused Beacon Charter School, created a portfolio to lead seniors through their Capstone project. This project is a required element in the State of Rhode Island's Performance-Based Graduation Requirements.

For the project, students create an autobiographical film. They use Digication to post each component of the process, from journal entries exploring potential ideas through several revisions of the screenplay. In addition, students must comment on other students' work at each step of the process. Upon completion of their projects, students must present their films to a panel of judges consisting of artists and other stakeholders from the community as well as faculty and staff from Beacon. The Capstone process culminates in a public film festival at the historic Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket, RI.

Mike's portfolio has detailed information for students, such as the Capstone schedule, syllabus, links to each student's portfolio as well as resources that assist with various phases of the project.

Students create an academic portfolio in the ninth grade and update it throughout their studies at Beacon. In addition, students are working on their own portfolios which include some of their Capstone project process as well as other information about their experience at Beacon Charter.

Links:
Mr. Skeldon's Capstone Course 2007-2008
Beacon Charter School e-Portfolio Directory

Amhrán agus Damhsa ar an Sean-Nós
Catherine Crowe, who teaches at George Brown College, hosts this portfolio, created by Briain O hAirt, which covers the Sean-Nós style of Irish singing as well as the annual Sean-Nós event. Numerous images and videos make it visually appealing as well as informative. It's very comprehensive, with reviews, links to resources, photo galleries and more. Those of you looking to highlight your events or create informative portfolios should look here for inspiration.

We feature our favorite e-Portfolios on the Digication home page and also on our pages of recommended teacher and student e-Portfolios. If you have one you're proud of, send us a link through the contact page!

To counteract falling test scores and high dropout rates, Hope High School was reorganized into three smaller learning communities in 2002. Several teachers from the arts-based Hope Arts have Digication portfolios, including English and Writing Development teacher Megan Thoma, who set up her e-Portfolio "as a tool for the students in my classes, their parents, and anyone interested in the work being done at Hope". She says:

"I like how easy it is to update. When I mentioned that I posted homework every day on my site, my students teased me and suggested I spent hours online. Little do they know, it takes me thirty seconds before I head out the door to go home."

Links:
Megan's e-Portfolio
Hope Arts e-Portfolio

Does your school have a central site where students and teachers can log on?  Wouldn't it be convenient if they didn't have to log into Digication separately?

We're developing single sign on capabilities so your school can integrate more easily with Digication. This would allow members of your school to log in to your school site and click over to Digication without having to log in again.  If you are interested and want more information, contact us.

We will be disabling the ability to hotlink to images (display an image uploaded to Digication on a non-Digication page) due to an abuse of bandwidth. If your school needs to hotlink to images for a specific purpose, please contact us and we will enable it for your domain.

On Wednesday November 14th, Digication will be at the NYSAIS (New York State Association of Independent Schools) Unconference for Managers of Information Technology and Librarians.  The "unconference" will be held at the picturesque Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, NY.

Did you install the new Mac operating system, Leopard? Adobe has acknowledged a bug in Leopard's Flash player.

What does this mean for you? You might have trouble uploading files on Digication (as well as on other websites like Flickr).

What can you do? It's easy - just install the latest version at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/.

In order to get ready for this year's new daylight saving time change, Digication may be unavailable for a maximum of 15 minutes between 6:00am and 6:15am EST on Wednesday, 10/31.

We wish you all a safe and happy Halloween!

We've made a language change throughout our system - we're now referring to Spots as e-Portfolios. Many of you suggested this, and we realized it would be a more transparent way to let you (and everyone new to our product) understand what Digication does.
Error messages, which were sometimes easy to overlook, are now more visible. This will make it easier for you to know if something needs to be fixed when you're filling out a form.

For e-Portfolios, we've built a new, more robust navigation editor. e-Portfolio pages now default to being taggable, to help Digication users amass a richer and more easily searchable directory.

Plus, we've fixed some bugs in the following areas:

- General - signup form
- e-Portfolios - horizontal and vertical gallery layouts
- e-Portfolios - updated uploader to make it faster
- e-Portfolios - portfolios created from template inherit categories
- Courses - course settings form
- Courses - course import layout
- Courses - course creation form
- Calendar - item export
- Calendar - items ordered by time
- Calendar - supports long urls
- General - accidentally typing www.campus.digication.com will no longer cause problems

Thank you for all your help in making Digication a better tool!

We're going to be at Educause in Seattle this October and would love to arrange an informal get-together. Email us through our contact page so we can find out how many of you would be interested.

At Educause, some of our users will be talking about how they use Digication in the sessions "Drawing on Technology: A Blueprint of Adopting e-Portfolios". The presentation will be on Thursday, October 25th from 3:55 pm - 4:45 pm in room 2B.
Here's some more information:
http://www.educause.edu/E07/Program/11073?PRODUCT_CODE=E07/SESS102

Haven't been to Educause? It's the annual conference of a "nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology". For more information, check out http://www.educause.edu.

Hope to see you there!

We are always impressed by the wealth of good work in our directories, and we wanted to give our visitors an easier way to find e-Portfolios that might interest them. Now, school directories can be browsed by category. Schools with admin accounts can easily create categories, such as academic departments, to which portfolios in their directory can be added.

Otis College of Art and Design is already using categories to showcase their productive and abundant community. Check out the Otis directory and click the "By Category" tab to check it out. Otis decided to categorize portfolios under academic departments as well as by the role of their owners (student, staff, faculty or alumni).

Here are some great new e-Portfolios we wanted to share with you. We feature our favorite e-Portfolios on the Digication home page and also on our pages of recommended teacher and student e-Portfolios. If you have one you're proud of, send us a link through the contact page!

Curvin McCabe Visual Arts: 6th Grade Flat Pack Toy Design
Brian Hutcheson, recent alumni of Rhode Island School of Design's Art + Design Education Department, created this portfolio to highlight a fantastic Flat Pack Toy lesson. It's filled with incredible student work and resources for teachers in any discipline to create Flat Pack Toys with their students. The Flat Pack Toy template as well the student creations can be downloaded as pdfs so you can create your own!


Pickerington High School Central Art Department
Pickerington High School
This e-Portfolio helps art students at Pickerington High choose their art classes by offering an interactive syllabus for each class, complete with work samples and detailed descriptions of each lesson. Students can also be inspired by senior portfolios and find out about the school's Art Club.

Artists Abroad
Smithfield High School
Three art teachers take students on an exciting 20-day trip abroad to France, Italy and Greece. Their e-Portfolio includes a detailed schedule, information about the places they're visiting, daily photos, and more.

Bell High Literary Arts Magazine
Bell High School
An art and a writing class at Bell High joined forces to create this multi-media literary magazine. It does a great job highlighting the talents of both classes, including videos, poems, photo collages visualizing poetry, and more.

We'd love to meet our users and anyone interested in Digication. If you're going to be at Educause, drop us a note on the Contact page!

Upcoming Conferences
October: Educause in Seattle, WA
http://www.educause.edu/e07
See some of our users showcase their use of Digication in the session "Drawing on Technology: A Blueprint for Adopting E-Portfolios".

March 2008: NAEA in New Orleans, LA
http://www.naea-reston.org/convention.html

Past Conferences
June: NMC in Indianapolis, IN
http://www.nmc.org/events/2007summerconf/
Digication / OTIS info: http://campus.digication.com/nmc2007

May: AAM in Chicago, IL
http://www.aam-us.org/

February: TCEA in Austin, TX
http://www.tcea2007.org/