For the 2008-09 school year I have studied issues surrounding information access, information managment and ethical use of information.

I have continued to teach and update the KCELT workshop Information Management Tools, which I designed to give Kirkwood staff and faculty some basic tools and ideas for streamlining the information that they use on a daily basis, thereby decreasing time spent looking for things they need, and decreasing information overload as well.

I began studying copyright issues in education, especially for faculty and libraries providing electronic access to information for students. Because, I discovered, this is a college policy and support issue more than a technology issue, I have left this work for others to follow up. However it is still an interest of mine and I hope that the college soon decides to make steps towards making it easier for faculty to provide access for students to electronic information and do it legally.

I am the Kirkwood representative for a group called Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER), a project by the League for Innovation along with some other school partners created for the purpose of developing use of open textbooks in community college courses. I think this line of inquiry is interesting and holds a lot of potential for Kirkwood. Using open textbooks not only allows faculty to customize the texts they assign to students, in many cases textbooks are either free or very low cost to students. I would like to talk with anyone at Kirkwood who shares my interest in this topic, as I think this is the perfect time to move forward on letting faculty, administration, bookstore staff, and IT, know about these resources.

My most recent line of research has been in electronic portfolios. Electronic portfolios can be used in many different ways, and I intend to present information, possibly a KCELT class, about the best practices for using electronic portfolios for student work during the next school year. For more information on eportfolios, check out these interesting sites and articles:

• WSU Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology
• SFSU Gallery of portfolios
• Article by Helen Barrett, "Using Electronic Portfolios for Formative/Classroom-based Assessment"

If you have any questions or research interests you think the Tech Scouts should investigate, please let us know!