Return
to 2003 Gallery Walk list
2003 Gallery Walk Projects Title:
The
r-smart group MosaicTM Organization:
The
r-smart group Web
site:
http://theospi.org/portfolio/login.jsp
OR http://www.rsmart.com
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Contact: |
Randall
Eden � randall.eden@rsmart.com
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What
purpose does your assessment tool serve? |
The
Mosaic� electronic portfolio is an open-source, Java-based
electronic portfolio system designed for use mainly in secondary and
higher education. The
flexible design of Mosaic� can be adapted to a variety of different
purposes and audiences elsewhere as well. It can be hosted at or
accessed by a school, district or institution as an adjunct to
traditional methods of assessment, evaluation and professional
development tracking. Robust
yet easy to use, the Mosaic� electronic portfolio was designed to
empower individuals, or their teachers in earlier grades, to create
purposeful records of accomplishment and collections of work that
illustrate progress and achievement over time.
The key focus of the Mosaic� electronic portfolio is the
individual: the
application helps users assume an active and central role in their own
learning, development and management of information.
By using the Mosaic� electronic portfolio, individuals can
manage their personal information on multiple levels throughout their
academic careers and beyond using the principles of collection,
reflection, selection and connection. Mosaic�
guides users in the collection and organization of the formative or
summative evidence that chronicles how institutional, community or
personal standards, goals, outcomes or competencies that have been
addressed by the user. Using a series of templates that can be customized by the
institution, the system invites users to upload documents, multimedia
or other files, create hyperlinks to relevant URLs or respond to
pre-defined surveys or inventories. As these are being entered into
Mosaic�, the system can be arranged to guide users to reflect upon
particular pieces of evidence or the processes by which they were
created. Where
appropriate, this collective record can be used to reinforce the value
of an individual�s �academic currency� as measured by more
traditional means. Because
frequent guidance from others is crucial to personal, academic and
professional development, Mosaic� has a built-in feedback loop by
which portfolio owners may create shared views of their personal
information for others. These
shared views contain only those elements of a portfolio that the
individual desires to share.
Peers, faculty, mentors, advisors, counselors or supervisors
can then offer feedback in response to these �mini-portfolios� in
real time. In
an era of shrinking budgets and service cuts, Mosaic� provides
schools and districts with a common sense solution to track progress
toward standards mastery for a variety of purposes.
If you are not familiar with the concept, open source software
is initially developed by a single organization, but is then made
available in source code format at little or no cost to any
organization that wishes to use it.
Widely used open source software will have some central
authority to which error fixes and improvements can be submitted for
review and distribution. Research
supports the idea that open source software is more error free than
proprietary software due to the large number of people reviewing and
offering improvements to the code.
Users of open source software also cite other benefits to open
source such as freedom from a single commercial vendor controlling the
product and protection from a single source of support going out of
business, as reasons for �going open source.�
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Please
indicate which category best describes your tool: |
a.
_____ Tools that allow users to ask questions of data (tools
for collecting and disaggregating data, including surveys,
self-reported data and standardized data) b.
____ Tools for observation (including teacher observation and
observation of student behavior or performance) c.
_X__ Tools for reviewing student products (including electronic
or digital portfolios) |
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Who
is the audience for this assessment tool? |
K-12:
Students, peers, teachers, building level administrators,
district level administrators Colleges/Universities:
Students, faculty, faculty developers,
faculty/career/professional advisors, deans, provosts
Other:
Accreditation organizations |
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What
technology is used? |
Operating
System:
RedHat Linux 7.3 (fully patched). Database:
Oracle 8i/9i; MySQL. JDK
Version: Java(TM) 2
Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build
1.4.1-b21). Web
Server:
Tomcat (standalone only)/Apache 1.3 fully patched through
up2date. (Production). Servlet
Engine:
Jakarta-Tomcat version 4.1.18; connecter used is the mod_jk.so
version comparable to the servlet engine version. Hardware:
At least 800 MHz Intel processor, 256 MB RAM and 100MB free
hard drive space for install. Allocated
space for upload storage is variable. Network:
No special requirements. |
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Approximately
how many people are currently using this system? |
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What
professional development (for students or assessors) is required to
use the tool? |
As
the only commercial provider of an open source ePortfolio solution,
the r-smart group is proud to offer a wide array of optional
implementation, customization, on-demand development, hosting,
training and support services to K-12 schools and districts. As with any technology-based initiative, some level
of staff development is required to implement Mosaic�. The r-smart group makes available several best
practice-based workshops that address the goals for system
implementation identified by the school or district.
Examples of structured training experiences include the use of
Mosaic� for purposes of authentic assessment, self-assessment,
re-certification, school accreditation, guidance and counseling,
college entrance and job placement; each session is generally a day in
duration. |
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To
use the tool effectively, what else should the school have in place? |
Staff
development participants should be familiar with their state standards
frameworks, certification requirements, or site goals established at
the beginning of the current accreditation cycle.
Additionally, participants will maximize the benefit of Mosaic�
for portfolio users by being familiar with the basic requirements of
rubric creation and application prior to the sessions.
Familiarity with the use of hyperlink creation, the uploading
of files in a web environment and the use of email are also required. From
a technical perspective, stakeholders should have a familiarity with
the open source movement in software development.
System administrators should be familiar with the installation
and configuration applications in environments with open source
components. |
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If
you haven't already addressed it, how does your tool help students or
teachers demonstrate that they are meeting standards? |
Mosaic� helps
districts, schools, teachers and students demonstrate mastery of state
standards or other pre-defined goals by providing a customizable, easy
to use copy of the relevant framework to which formative or summative
evidence is referenced by portfolio owners.
If desired, Mosaic� may be structured to provide easy to use
locations for recording reflections or other annotations that relate
directly to each artifact. As
the body of evidence grows, various portions may be shared with peers,
teachers or other assessors who provide feedback to the portfolio
owner for a variety of purposes. |
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What
questions would you like participants to address? |
o
School accreditation? o
Evaluation of certified candidates for your school or district? o
Guidance and counseling? o
Job placement and college entrance? o
Initial teacher certification or recertification? o
Other?
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