E-Portfolios for Learning

Labels: Google Apps, K–12, schools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 1:41 AM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:38 PM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios, schools, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 1:08 PM 0 Comments

I am in my 40’s, and I never was too accomplished with the computer but can get by at work and home. However, I’ve noticed I am becoming increasingly ignorant on all these new apps (twitter, skype, linkedin, facebook, myspace, etc…) at a much faster pace than before. I feel this would help my career to be up on these new technologies as well...

PS. I know I’m a relatively private person, and maybe it’s my age but I don’t get this pre-occupation with young people putting their lives (pictures, video, personal business) out there for everyone to read? And who has the time to read it anyway!

* Group name: What is Web 2.0?
* Group home page: http://groups.google.com/group/what-is-web-2-0
* Group email address what-is-web-2-0@googlegroups.com

I have some of your same concerns about privacy... I have accounts on most of the social networks, but I don't use them as much as my daughter. I asked her your question (who reads it?) and her answer... "my friends!" The problem is, in our generation, most of our friends are not using these tools, so it doesn't seem to work as well for us as it does for young people who adopted these tools in high school or college.

Labels: resources, training, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:33 PM 1 Comments

Labels: portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 1:27 AM 0 Comments

We are starting a “21st Century Learning Academy” in our district with our upcoming 6th graders next year and we are going to require our 6th graders and staff to create digital portfolios of their work. We have experimented with Google Sites/Apps already this year as we used it to create our school’s portfolio... As we worked on this portfolio, we learned how easily we could use this as a tool for 6th graders to showcase and reflect on their work.

Labels: 21st-Century-Learning, Google Apps, K–12, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 6:58 PM 1 Comments

Reflective learning is essential for lifelong learning and many net generation students do not engage in the process since it does not align with their preferred learning style (Grant, Kinnersley, Metcalf, Pill, Houston, 2006).The combination of multimedia and technology motivates students to creatively produce digital stories that stimulate reflective learning. Digital stories present a personal and reflective narrative using a range of media, especially photographs and video. In addition, students can feel empowered and develop multiple literacies that are essential for lifelong learning...

Why don't students spend time to reflect on the things they are learning? Our initial research suggests that Net Generation students dislike using written text, but their engagement increases when they use digital storytelling. Digital storytelling is an innovative approach to reflective learning in which pictures and sound are collected and assembled to form a multimedia story.

Overall, we appear to have successfully engaged our undergraduate medical students in reflective learning by using a range of new technologies and also by the use of mobile phones. Blogs were used as a personal learning space that combined both media storage with a creative space. Images were obtained from a variety of media sharing sites. Most mobile phones have a camera function and the “always to hand” nature of mobile camera phones encourages spontaneous image capture at times of surprise during an experience, the “disorientating dilemma” that Mezirow (1991) regards as being an essential component of transformative reflective learning.

Conclusion

Digital storytelling offers a practical teaching approach that combines multimedia and technology for reflective learning. Our work in undergraduate supports the use of this approach to engage Net generation students in reflective learning but it also appears to stimulate deep reflection. You can read more about our work and see examples at www.ireflect.org.

Labels: research, storytelling, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 5:18 PM 3 Comments

• Randy Bass and Bret Eynon: Still Moving From Teaching to Learning (in the Wired Campus blog) referencing the January 2009 issue of Academic Commons. I find the comments even more illuminating, providing provocative comments from some more traditional academics.
• Electronic Portfolios: a Path to the Future of Learning (in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Marh 18, 2009) also by Randy Bass and Bret Eynon. This blog entry provides a short summary of several success stories about e-portfolios, summarizing four fundamental features:

• First, ePortfolios can integrate student learning in an expanded range of media, literacies, and viable intellectual work.
  
• Second, ePortfolios enable students to link together diverse parts of their learning including the formal and informal curriculum.
  
• Third, ePortfolios engage students with their learning.
  
• Fourth, ePortfolios offer colleges a meaningful mechanism for accessing and organizing the evidence of student learning. In many ways, ePortoflios are not primarily about technology but a commitment to a set of principles about education.
  

• Standards to Take ePortfolios Outside the Institution and into the Future, a conversation with Phil Ice about ePortfolio standards in Campus Technology, where he focuses on the use of the new Adobe Acrobat 9 to keep ePortfolio data accessible over time (something I discussed in the 90s... but now I think ePortfolios published in compliance with WWW technical standards would be just as accessible in the foreseeable future).
  
• ePortfolio: There's No 'There' There, a Viewpoint by Trent Batson in Campus Technology about how "ePortfolios mean differing things to different people."
  

  For some, an ePortfolio is an open education approach to learning. For others, it's the technologies that support open education. For others, it's the learning artifacts students create and structure. For still others, it's a way to assess student progress toward learning goals. And, finally, for others, ePortfolios are a way to record a person's professional achievements over time.

  Again, the Comments are even more interesting.
• Google Apps Eportfolio Online Rubric and Assessment Form providing an Evaluation Rubric for ePortfolio (I think this focuses on K-12).

Labels: portfolios, publications

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 6:36 PM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios, training

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:37 AM 0 Comments

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:23 AM 0 Comments

1. What connections were discussed in your group?
The balance between the assessment/summative types of portfolios for students (DU) and the learning/formative types of portfolios for faculty (Hawaii). Sharing my diagram seemed to fit well after our discussion of the other two programs and of the Oregon program. I loved what the team wrote, about the assumptions about learning... And how the piece focused the conceptual framework of the team.

2. Which of these connections is/are most meaningful to your project and why?
I really like the emphasis on learning and its relationship to portfolios. After my depressing conversation last night, I am wondering how to counteract the apparent "failure" of ePortfolios (as product) with the promise or the potential of the process approach to portfolios. I found the comparison of the two programs to be interesting... the outcomes-based program with the supportive process-based program.

3. What else did you learn in your conversation this morning that you want to be sure to share with your colleagues.
I found the focus on faculty portfolios as "engaged educator participants" to be a valuable contribution to my thinking about how to engage faculty in the process of building an ePortfolio for their own professional development. The Hawaii project provides an interesting model to engage faculty in process portfolios, in the hopes that they will adopt the process with their own students.

Labels: portfolios, research, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:44 AM 0 Comments

I'm heading a small group of teachers wishing to implement electronic student portfolios for about 100 students. We're looking at various options and wondered what your experiences are. We'd need something accessible from home and school (Web based?) and scaleable to approximately 2,200 students. We are not a 1:1, but may be eventually (really, shouldn't everybody?). Any guidance, lessons learned, limitations, etc... are much appreciated.

Labels: portfolios, training, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 1:50 PM 0 Comments

A lot of it is about the ability to express yourself. So if you look at your MySpace Profile, you have your music that you're listening to, you have the colors, you have the background, you have the videos. So, I look at your Profile, if you have one, and I can get to know you pretty quickly. It's almost as if you invited me over to a dinner party and you had certain music playing, and you had certain kinds of furniture, and you invited a certain group of friends, I would get to know you very quickly. So, I think it's an online representation of who you are, which is really fascinating, and it's a great way to stay in touch with people, and it's a great discovery mechanism. And there's no other place and no other way to really do that.

Tom Anderson (the other co-founder) added: I think a lot of it has to do with timing, too; that we came out right at the right time when digital cameras were on the rise, and people wanted to come in. People weren't exactly ready for something like MySpace a year or two earlier, so timing really helped us in being there to give people what they wanted.

Labels: engagement, portfolios, social networks

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:07 AM 0 Comments

Labels: publications, reflection, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 3:29 PM 0 Comments

Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolios

Labels: assessment, blogs, portfolios, publications, reflection

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:06 AM 1 Comments

Labels: learning, video

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 4:46 PM 2 Comments

• ePortfolios West Coast Summit - February 24-25, 2009 in San Francisco, California. Description: We have invited notable speakers from the United Kingdom, Canada, and across the United States. There will also be opportunities for you to engage in dialogues about ePortfolios, no matter what your experience may be--thinking about it, just getting started, or implementing at a large scale. We have identified 3 main themes for the day: Teaching and Learning with ePortfolios (electronic portfolios), Workforce/ Professional Development, and Assessment/Accountability. This day-long event designed to bring together K- 20 and workforce organizations who use or who are interested in using ePortfolios. Attendees will have opportunities to hear students, faculty, employers, and experts address issues of teaching, learning, assessment, bridging to careers, and ePortfolio tools. We would like to share successes, lessons learned, challenges and strategies for the future use of electronic portfolios. You will find the complete program, a link to the online registration, and other information about the conference at the following website: http://conference.csuprojects.org/eportfolios
  
  
• ePortfolio 2009, London, England, June 22-24, 2009. Conference website: http://www.epforum.eu/ Deadline for submissions: February 28, 2009.
  
  
• Web 2.0 Tools for Classroom-Based Assessment and Interactive Student ePortfolios, June 27, 2008. Hands-on Workshop at National Educational Computing Conference, Washington, D.C., conducted by Dr. Helen Barrett
  This session will provide participants with access to Web 2.0 tools (including the major GoogleApps: GoogleDocs and Google Sites) available for free on the Internet to facilitate assessment FOR learning (classroom-based assessment) with electronic portfolios, focusing on K-12 schools. A special emphasis of this workshop will be to focus on creating ePortfolios that demonstrate the new ISTE NETS-S and the 8th grade technology competency. Register through NECC.
  

Labels: conferences, training

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 7:50 PM 0 Comments

• "Throw your hard drive away, Google's Gdrive arriving in 2009" TGDaily, January 19, 2009.
• "Google plans to make PCs history" The Observer, Guardian (UK), January 25, 2009.
• "Google's Rumored GDrive May 'Kill' the PC" Fox News.com, January 25, 2009.
• "Inklings of online storage: Google Web Drive" CNET News, January 21, 2009.
  

Labels: archive, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:36 PM 0 Comments

Labels: memories

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:07 AM 1 Comments

Labels: storytelling, training

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:46 PM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios, storytelling

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 1:27 PM 0 Comments

Labels: tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:00 AM 4 Comments

The Portfolio Enigma in a Time of Ephemera - an article in Campus Technology by Trent Batson - an interesting quote from the online comments to this article: "What's interesting in this debate is that most institutions are looking at e-portfolio software solutions that cost thousands of dollars and ignoring the fact that there is a much simpler way of puttimg an e-portfolio together that is portable and also allows the student to update,add,subtract, and modify content in the portfolio for each viewer. And the student maintains control of the content long after they have left the institution."

"The Future of ePortfolio" Roundtable - an article by Bret Eynon (LaGuardia Community College) published in Academic Commons, a transcript of a round table held at the ePortfolio Conference in April 2008. I was part of that roundtable.

Making Common Cause: Electronic Portfolios, Learning, and the Power of Community - an article by Kathleen Blake Yancey also published in Academic Commons (from the new book, Electronic Portfolios 2.0: Emergent Research on Implementation and Impact, edited by Darren Cambridge, Barbara Cambridge, and Kathleen Blake Yancey, contributors from diverse institutions of higher education in sites across two continents share their research on electronic portfolios through the National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research -- NCEPR)

Labels: portfolios, publications

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:25 PM 0 Comments

This webinar will focus on using Web 2.0 tools, freely available on the Internet, to create student-centered electronic portfolios. Learn how the use of a portfolio can be a powerful tool to support both learning and assessment, making learning visible across the curriculum. We will look at how to use blogs, wikis and online productivity tools to create interactive portfolios.

Labels: portfolios, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:01 PM 0 Comments

the capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves and for managing emotions effectively in others and ourselves.

Labels: portfolios, reflection

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:24 AM 1 Comments

Labels: blogs, portfolios, reflection

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 1:08 PM 2 Comments

Middle and high school students from across the country used Google Docs to write about the issues and concerns they want our next president to address.

• Engage students and teachers in authentic activities using technology (bottom-up)
  
• Engage administrators in supporting the implementation of portfolios (top-down)
• Adopt "safe" Web 2.0 tools to support the learning process in K-12 schools
• Read the book Transformative Assessment by Popham (ASCD, 2008)
  

Labels: training, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 4:46 AM 0 Comments

Labels: Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:28 PM 0 Comments

Tonight I saw a new technology that could revolutionize small computers: (also on 10/17 WTC podcast) e-paper -- a screen made of plastic the size of a piece of paper, flexible and lightweight. Couple that technology with a keyboard on the screen (as I am currently typing on my iPhone), and you have a vision for new netbooks: flat, small, very portable. It could also reduce the use of paper (we've heard that before!). Called "e-reader" from Plastic Logic. (see the CNN video)

I also saw a special pen and clip (the brains) that holds paper; write with the pen on the slip of paper which gets recorded on the clip. When done, unclip the paper and connect the clip to a computer with the built-in USB connector and upload the image of what was written! Another version converted the handwritten text into computer text. I imagined a lot of ways to use this technology for collecting work samples from young students in schools without scanning!

Lots of new ideas to think about. Back to listening to podcasts!

Sent from my iPhone

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:15 AM 0 Comments

Labels: conferences, ep2008

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 3:17 AM 0 Comments

Labels: computer hardware, conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:50 AM 1 Comments

The Dutch Committee on Labour Market Participation has formulated a series of recommendations for getting more people into work in the Netherlands and improving the operation of the labour market. The Committee’s most significant conclusion is that the Dutch labour market is about to undergo drastic change:

1. over the course of the coming decades, there will be more work to do but fewer people to do it;
2. globalisation will increase the requirements regarding the level of knowledge and adaptability of the labour force. The Netherlands needs everybody – quickly! – and everybody must be constantly employable.

Among the recommandations, the fifth one is related to the ePortfolio as a mean to improve employability:

5. Improve employability. In order to increase employability, we make a number of recommendations for employers/employees, the education sector, and the benefits agencies.

• Digital e-portfolio. Every member of the labour force will be entitled to a digital e-portfolio, i.e. an electronic inventory of their competencies, diplomas, experience, and accreditation of prior learning (APL). This will give people a better understanding of their position on the labour market and their career prospects, and of any need they have for further training.
• Periodical talent analysis. Talent analysis and APL procedures must be introduced on a large scale, with maximum use being made of the e-portfolio. The right to a periodical analysis of one’s competencies and the right to APL assessment must be included in collective labour agreements, with mandatory arrangements for a “best-effort” obligation on the part of employees to undertake training.

Labels: international, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 7:17 AM 0 Comments

Labels: conferences, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 1:16 AM 1 Comments

Using GoogleDocs to Create Interactive Student ePortfolios –- 1 day in Keene, NH on Thursday, November 20
This workshop will show participants how to use GoogleDocs, available for free on the Internet, to facilitate classroom-based assessment in electronic portfolios. A special emphasis of this workshop will be to focus on creating ePortfolios that meet the requirements of the New Hampshire Educational Technology Plan.

Using Google Apps Education Edition to Create/Manage Interactive Student ePortfolios –- 2 days in Manchester, NH on Tuesday-Wednesday, November 18-19
This workshop will show participants how to use GoogleApps, available for free on the Internet, to facilitate classroom-based assessment in electronic portfolios. These tools include GoogleDocs, Gmail, GoogleTalk, Google Calendar and Google Sites (Google’'s version of a wiki). A special emphasis of this workshop will be to focus on creating ePortfolios that meet the requirements of the New Hampshire Educational Technology Plan.

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:31 AM 5 Comments

This paper briefly summarizes the implementation of a university-wide electronic portfolio requirement. We begin with a systemic view of the ePortfolio Program and narrow our focus to a view of ePortfolio integration into two different classes. The rationale behind the Clemson University ePortfolio Program is to build a mechanism through which core competencies are demonstrated and evaluated. The target classes are a general education English class focusing on 20th and 21st century literature and a professional development seminar in computer science. Both classes allow students to select their topics and present their work to the class using a variety of media types, and both include a form of peer evaluation. These classes confirm that when students’ choice is built into the assignments we are pleasantly surprised by the outcomes. In addition, an extensive variety of artifacts are generated from each course that can be used to demonstrate the general education competencies, provide authentic evidence of learning, and generate a career portfolio. In our examples, we will describe the planning, implementation, and dissemination processes necessary to integrate the ePortfolio Program into university courses.

Labels: research

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:16 PM 0 Comments

Labels: computer hardware, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 3:17 PM 0 Comments

We are no longer accepting new sign-ups for Page Creator because we have shifted our focus to developing Google Sites, which offers many of the capabilities of Page Creator along with new features like site-level navigation, site-level headers, control over who can see and edit your site, and rich embeddings like calendars, videos, and Google docs.

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 7:18 PM 0 Comments

Perhaps you will recall your short time in New Zealand last year at the conference in Wellington and then your visit to Bucklands Beach Intermediate School in Auckland.

Well I thought I would make contact with you and share some of the developments we have in place since our first meeting.

You may recall I was very interested to look at e-portfolio developments as I have had a long involvement and interest in the ‘paper’ type portfolios. You will recall the ‘learning to Learn’ model I had put together.

Since we met last April, I think it was, I had a sabbatical from my work here and spent a little time in the UK trying to get my head around the ePortfolio ideas and to see how we could best move forward. I was somewhat disappointed with what I found I must confess. Maybe I was not looking in the right areas. I saw a number of good systems but I did not see them often being used to enhance learning. What the students were producing seems to be a waste of good learning time. What I did see also was more at the University level, in what I would refer to as the CV type Portfolio, and not so much at the primary or middle school level. The structures seemed very limiting.

So we have pushed on and developed our own way of doing things as is usual. I wanted an ePortfolio that was going to support learning and to provide evidence of that learning. I wanted it to be able to show the process as well as the product. I wanted it to allow for the ‘Voice’ to come through.. (See I did listen and was strongly influenced by your session in Wellington!) This was a key part of our developments.

The idea of the digital story was in a way the catalyst that enabled me to see how these techniques could be used to allow student voice to come through with respect to the student’s learning. I wanted to be able to hear their thoughts and reflections. This simple digital story technique is now being used extensively here for goal setting and reflection and for telling the ‘learning journey.’

We still have a long way to go. I am excited about what we have achieved in a little over one year. We started with a smallish ‘seeding group’ of students after you visited last year and now we are looking to imbed the ideas school wide. It will take another year before that process is completed I believe.

I thought seeing as you were the one who enabled me to see the real difference between paper portfolios and the way an ePortfolio could be used to allow the ‘voice’ to come through I would share a couple of examples with you.

Our portfolios are contained within a learning management system we are currently using called knowledgenet. I am not so happy with it but at present it serves our purpose. This is a commercial package used by quite a number of schools in NZ. I would like to move away from this in the future and am looking at ‘free’ sites that give the flexibility we now have with knowledgenet. Many of the free sites we have found seem to be very restrictive. By using Knowledgenet (KN) we know that the students are ‘safe’ in that their work, all their personal details, are in a passworded environment. Parents like this. I am sure this will change in the future as we all become more comfortable with the net. What we also do however is to use many other sites, blogs, wikis, podcasts, weeblies, teacher tube etc to give us free hosting for work with a simple link out of KN. We run a different set of protocols here which the students work to where there should be no particular identifying details. There are many strengths in this apart from the free hosting. With the addition of a ClustR map the students get feedback from around the world which is tremendously empowering. Some have had a great number of ‘hits’ on their work. They come to school in the morning excited to see if they have have new people looking at the work on the web. So we are keen to keep things out in the open to the extent our community feels comfortable with. (As I heard recently no one teaches children how not to cross the road safely! An important part of schooling now is net safety. This enables us to teach this in an authentic situation)

So I have set up a password for you so you can access a couple of our student’s ePortfolios. These are 13 year old students who have been working with us on their ePortfolios for a little over a year. You can see archived material there from last year as well as this year’s developments. You will see we are using a number of free web tools to help like glogster and voice thread etc. Where we are now is looking to develop our structure a little more and to ensure it is in place to support the learning.

You will note the section on key competencies. These are part of our new curriculum. I have been looking to find a simple way to show the students are capable in these areas. The template we have set up is designed to clearly provide evidence, that the student is competent in the particular competency. So a simple link to the evidence is what we are looking to do along with the reflection. This avoids the necessity for teachers ot be having to write lengthy evaluative comments. The students can simply provide the evidence themselves.

So if you have time have a trawl through a number of the areas you will see what we have been working on. We have goal setting, reflections, parent voice comments, and plenty of examples of process through to product. You can track the learning journey in many instances. I could suggest you look at a couple of the science fair blogs – particularly Cheyennes where she has video evaluation and reflection in the work. There is also Cheyennes literacy work on the diary of Anne Frank. (Archived from last year) This had hundreds of ‘hits’ Also she heard, via the school, from the Anne Frank Society who had found this work and were so impressed they sent a bundle of books to the school. Again very empowering.

As you can see I am pretty excited about what we have achieved in the 12 months since your visit and our start. I am off to Sweden in a week to talk about a number of things to do with vision and learning as I have done many times before and will be including some of this work on ePorfolios in my presentations.

Thanks for your initial inspiration. As I said I wanted to share some of the enthusiasm with you. You can read my paper, ‘ePortfolios, a Personal Space for Learning’ on www.ian.fox.co.nz. You will see your influence there strongly!

You may also be interested to know that next week we are holding a student conference. This is a conference run by students for students. The conference title is - ‘i-learn, e-learn, we-learn@bbi student voice conference.’ We have two keynote sessions being run by students and then 16 different workshop sessions also run by students. The students will be able to attend two different workshops. This is designed to allow ‘student voice’ with respect to their learning to be shared and to show some of the exciting developments to others in the wider schooling community. The conference is something I have wanted to do for some years so we have decided to get into it this year as I will be ‘retiring’ from my position here at the end of the school year. Jess and Cheyenne whose portfolios you have the link to will be presenting one of the keynote sessions on ‘Student Voice through ePortfolios.’ So that should be exciting also – well I hope it will be!

Regards

Ian Fox QSM, Principal
Bucklands Beach Intermediate School
247 Bucklands Beach Road
Bucklands Beach, Auckland, New Zealand

A quick response as we are working through listening to the students who are preparing for next week’s conference. I will try to get some of it taped so we can get a copy to you somehow. It is all very exciting and the students are so motivated. We have special badges made for the delegates and ‘T’ shirts and caps for the presenters. There is a morning tea scheduled and we will be having student buskers in the playground. So hopefully it will all be a load of fun even though there will be an important message we are wanting to get across...

We would be interested to keep in touch re your developments with Google. We will keep exploring options here also as I am determined to keep moving forward in a direction that supports learning, that provides evidence of learning, that allows for process as well as product, that allows for student voice, that allows for flexibility and creativity on the part of the learner.

Labels: learning, portfolios, storytelling

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 1:54 PM 1 Comments

Labels: Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:56 AM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:55 AM 2 Comments

Labels: tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:10 PM 2 Comments

Labels: computer hardware, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:11 AM 1 Comments

• Welcome To Google Apps
• Google Apps eMail
• Google Calendar
• Google Talk
• GoogleDocs
  
• Google Sites
  
• The Start Page

Labels: training

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:36 AM 1 Comments

Labels: conferences, NECC08

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 1:04 PM 0 Comments

In Portfolios in the Writing Classroom, Catherine Lucas identified three that are as relevant for digital portfolios as for print. First, she notes that portfolios can be "weakened by effect," asking "Can . . . [a] spirit of exploration remain central to the use of portfolios as they become more commonplace?" Second is the "failure of research": "The danger here is that those who cling to the illusion that only what can be measured or counted is worth doing will find the effects of portfolios . . . not only resistant to measurement but initially resistant even to definition." Given the scale that digital technology makes possible, her last caution, co-option by large-scale assessment, is perhaps the most prescient. She notes that if we are not careful, portfolios will become merely a new vehicle used to perform the old task, with the result that portfolios will become standardized-with common assignments and restrictive learning conditions. Should this happen, Lucas says, portfolios "will be just as likely as other standardized tests to limit learning by restricting curriculum to what is most easily and economically measured."

"If portfolios are going to be used, whether at the state level in Vermont or California, or at the national level by the National Board, as a form of high stakes assessment, why will portfolios be more resistant to perversion than all other forms of assessment have been? And if one of the requirements in these cases is that you develop a sufficiently objective scoring system so you can fairly compare people with one another, will your scoring system end up objectifying what's in the portfolio to the point where the portfolio will be nothing but a very, very cumbersome multiple choice test?" (p. 35)

Labels: assessment, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:28 AM 0 Comments

WITH THE PROLIFERATION OF EPORTFOLIOS and their organizational uses in higher education, it is important for educators and other relevant stakeholders to understand the student perspective. The way students view and use ePortfolios are revealing elements to aid educators in the successful integration of ePortfolio systems. This research describes the development of the Electronic Portfolio Student Perspective Instrument (EPSPI) and initial validation (N = 204) efforts in the context of an ePortfolio initiative in a College of Education. The EPSPI incorporates four domains from a student perspective: employment, visibility, assessment, and learning; and connects those domains with four relevant stakeholders: students, administrators, faculty, and employers. Descriptive analyses, exploratory factor analysis, and a qualitative analysis using grounded theory were used. Results indicate that student perspectives towards ePortfolios are with three distinct, internally consistent underlying constructs: learning, assessment, and visibility. Qualitative analysis revealed four interrelated themes from a student perspective: system characteristics, support structure, purpose, and personal impact.

In recent years, different professional and academic settings have been increasingly utilizing ePortfolios to serve multiple purposes from recruitment to evaluation. This paper analyzes ePortfolios created by graduate students at a Canadian university. Demonstrated is how students’ constructions can, and should, be more than a simple compilation of artifacts. Examined is an online learning environment whereby we shared knowledge, supported one another in knowledge construction, developed collective expertise, and engaged in progressive discourse. In our analysis of the portfolios, we focused on reflection and deepening understanding of learning. We discussed students’ use of metaphors and hypertexts as means of making cognitive connections. We found that when students understood technological tools and how to use them to substantiate their thinking processes and to engage the readers/ viewers, their ePortfolios were richer and more complex in their illustrations of learning. With more experience and further analysis of exemplars of existing portfolios, students became more nuanced in their organization of their ePortfolios, reflecting the messages they conveyed. Metaphors and hypertexts became useful vehicles to move away from linearity and chronology to new organizational modes that better illustrated students’ cognitive processes. In such a community of inquiry, developed within an online learning space, the instructor and peers had an important role in enhancing reflection through scaffolding. We conclude the paper with a call to explore the interactions between viewer/reader and the materials presented in portfolios as part of learning occasions.

Labels: portfolios, publications

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:26 PM 0 Comments

Labels: NECC08, portfolios, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:28 AM 0 Comments

Labels: NECC08, portfolios, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 3:02 PM 2 Comments

This ECAR research bulletin details the arguments emerging in the blogosphere and elsewhere both for and against the learning management system. It examines whether the LMS is destined to continue as the primary means of organizing the online learning experience for university students. The bulletin is a companion to an earlier ECAR research bulletin that examines the factors leading to the selection of the open source learning management system at the Open University in the United Kingdom.

Labels: research, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:26 PM 0 Comments

Labels: storytelling, training

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 4:20 PM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:18 PM 6 Comments

Labels: memories, training

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:24 PM 0 Comments

Labels: assessment, portfolios, reflection, training, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:04 PM 1 Comments

"A second research project, in collaboration with Dr. Elsa Marziali, Schippers Chair of Social Work at Baycrest, is producing multimedia biographies for pilot cohorts of persons with early-stage or mid-stage Alzheimer’s disease. We collaborate with the AD individual, the caregiver, and other family members in collecting a life history through media such as music, photos, interviews, and narrated videos (Cohene et al. 2004, 2006). Early findings suggest that the biographies serve to reinforce a positive self-identity and bring joy and some calming to the AD individual. The biographies also provide benefits to family members such as better remembering how their loved one once was and being better able to accept the disease. A grant from the U.S. Alzheimer’s Association (2004-7) is funding the development and evaluation of 10-12 multimedia biographies. We are including several individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) as part of this study."

Labels: memories, storytelling

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 6:27 PM 0 Comments

I attend WSU and am a grad student. I use Sharepoint to host my ePortfolio and I think it covers all the needed functions. It is dynamic and very useful.
Here is a link to my ePortfolio if you'd like to see an example:
https://mysite.wsu.edu/personal/mkushin/e-portfolio/default.aspx

Also, I've created some instructional material for creating ePortfolios in MS Sharepoint. Feel free to check them out and share with anyone who could use them!
https://mysite.wsu.edu/personal/mkushin/com420/LR/SitePages/ePortfolio_instructions.aspx?PageView=Shared

Hope to hear from you,
Matt Kushin
http://interrobangblog.blogspot.com/

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 3:15 PM 0 Comments

Labels: training, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 7:09 PM 1 Comments

Labels: blogs, reflection

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:45 AM 0 Comments

Labels: blogs, tools, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 4:48 AM 0 Comments

• What is Google Docs?
• Create an account for yourself and your students
• Create and share your docs
• Edit your docs
• Organize your docs

Labels: tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 3:59 AM 0 Comments

• WSU ePortfolio contest 2007-08 - Contest Gallery
• A brief history of SharePoint at WSU
• Out of the Classroom & Into the Boardroom, a white paper written by the team at Washington State University and published by Microsoft
• Case Studies of Electronic Portfolios for Learning
• Goal for a Learning Portfolio: Solve a problem
• Blog as a reflection and learning resource

Labels: learning, portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 7:53 AM 0 Comments

Right now at WSU, one of the things we're developing in collaboration with Microsoft is a "harvesting" gradebook. So as an instructor in an environment like this, my gradebook for you as a student has links to all the different things that are required of you in order for me to credit you for completing the work in my class. But you may have worked up one of the assignments in Flickr, another in Google Groups, another in Picasa, and another in a wiki. Maybe you've also made some significant contributions to Wikipedia. So, I need a gradebook where I have the link you've provided me, rather than a copy of the work, and the gradebook should be capable of pulling in all of these various sources.

Labels: assessment, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:00 AM 2 Comments

Labels: tools, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 5:58 PM 1 Comments

• Scott Berkun, Berkun Consulting on Innovation and Creativity, Problems and Solutions
  
• Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody on "cognitive surplus" and the participatory web
• Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Foundation on Opening the Mobile Web
• An interview with Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape and now with Ning, a social network building site

Labels: Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:33 AM 1 Comments

The first one is that the Internet really is becoming the platform, a global platform for everything, everything connected, and the nature of that platform is this amazing tool for harnessing collective intelligence. It's not just about participation. It's about literally we are building a platform to make the world smarter, to make businesses smarter, to make ourselves smarter. This is an amazing revolution in human augmentation. We're at a turning point akin to literacy, or the formation of cities. This is a huge change in the way the world works.

Labels: learning, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 7:09 PM 0 Comments

Labels: tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 6:33 AM 1 Comments

• ElephantDrive - 1 GB free space, Email: YES - URI: NO
  
• DropBoks - 1 GB free space, Email: NO - URI: NO
• 4shared.com - 5 GB free space, Email: YES - URI: YES (very nice interface, but free account expires with 30 days of non-use)
  
• bluestring.com from AOL (more of a digital storytelling service, saving specific file types -- audio, video, images -- but not PDFs)
  
• openomy - 1 GB free space, Email: NO - URI: YES
  
• allmydata.com - 1 GB free space, Email: YES - URI: YES (one of my favorites, so far)
  
• hp upline - unable to set up account
  
• mozy home free - 2 GB free space, Email: NO - URI: NO (not a file sharing service, only a back-up/file syncronization service; requires client software download)
• getdropbox - 2 GB free space, Email: YES - URI: YES (still in beta, not giving out passwords or downloading software, yet) - The video demo on their website looks impressive.
• scribd - unlimited free space, Email: YES - URI: YES (this site calls itself the YouTube for Office/PDF files, but only stores these specific types of documents, not audio or video files)
• idrive - 2 GB free space, Email: ? - URI: ? (Windows only client software download required)
• divshare.com - 5 GB free space, Email: YES - URI: YES (another of my favorites)
  

Labels: archive, digital preservation, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 4:39 PM 4 Comments

Labels: conferences, reflection, research

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:47 AM 0 Comments

• My digital clone - A digital representation / extension of my self – my eSelf
• My work companion - A tool blended into my learning / working environment
• My butler - A service provider to one’s self
• My dashboard - An informative display of the state of my skills and knowledge
• My planner - A tool to plan my learning
• My IPR management assistant - A tool to value and exploit my personal assets

• Working Portfolio (Digital Identity?): the Collection, the Digital Archive, the Repository of Artifacts, Personal Information, a Reflective Journal (eDOL). This concept is really the ePortfolio as Process.
• Presentation Portfolio(s): The “Story” or Narrative that is told by the portfolio developer with Multiple Views (public/private), Varied Audiences (with varied permissions), for Varied Purposes. This concept is really the ePortfolio as Product.
  

If modern education consists in developing one's identity, then digital education must become one of the priorities of education, along with physical or moral education.... But the challenge to tackle from now on is not the simple use of ePortfolio any more, but digital identity education. We now all have a digital identity, even if we are not aware of it.

Labels: archive, ePMontreal08, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:33 PM 0 Comments

• ePortfolio 2.0: using Web 2.0 for Authentic Assessment at the Eifel ePortfolio & Digital Identity conference in Montreal, Quebec, Canada; May 5, 2008; 9:30am–3:30pm (a "bring your own laptop" workshop)
  
• Web 2.0 Tools for Classroom-Based Assessment and Interactive Student ePortfolios at the National Educational Computing Conference in San Antonio, Texas; June 29, 2008; 8:30am–3:30pm (a "bring your own laptop" hands-on workshop)

Labels: conferences, ePMontreal08, NECC08, training, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:04 AM 0 Comments

eDOL has evolved into two interrelated components – an eJournal and a series of ePortfolios... eJournals provide students with a rich, personalized learning object repository from which to draw content for the development of their ePortfolios.

It is the tie between the journals and the portfolios, which distinguishes our work, and we have been drawn to four key observations:

• the journals, together with the portfolios, honor both the process and the product, providing evidence of what it means to become a teacher,
• there is value in learning to digitally document evidence learning. Pedagogical documentation is more than collecting photographs from schools; it is the thoughtful collecting, editing, and selecting of images to support reflection,
  
• our students have found value in eDOL as a unifying project to build coherence as they move through the various components of our program, and
  
• eDOL has given the students a sense that they are finishing their university experience “with a place to start.”
  

Labels: portfolios, reflection, research

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 4:39 PM 0 Comments

Labels: archive, digital preservation, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:43 PM 0 Comments

• Drop Box - (YouTube video) (in private beta)
  
• Desktop on Demand - (YouTube video)
  
• AOL's XDrive - (BlipTV video) (1 GB free)
  
• Carbonite - (YouTube video) (not a free site - $50/year for "unlimited" backup storage)
• Roxio's BackonTrack - (YouTube video) (a product that you buy)
• Windows Live Sky Drive - (MSN video) (5 GB free)

Labels: archive, digital preservation, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:46 AM 2 Comments

• Six Free Online Storage Services
• The Best Free Online File Storage
• Yahoo Group: Online Storage and Sharing
• Free Online File Storage
• 2008 Online Storage Services Report (the most current comparison)
  

• Box.net (I've had an account for more than a year, but haven't really used the service.) 1 GB free storage, maximum file size 10 MB (would not accept the MP3 file of my 12 minute 11.4 MB presentation) without an account upgrade. I had to edit the file down to less than 10 MB. Even then, it hung up in the middle of uploading the 9.9 MB MP3 file, and I was never able to add it to my account. Requires an upgraded account to create a permanent URI.
  Email: YES - URI: NO
  
• Omnidrive (When I tried to sign up for an account, I received the following message: We have currently reached server capacity and there are no more accounts available during the beta period. We expect to launch Omnidrive 1.0 during April, 2008.) That's too bad. Based on the features and description, it looks the most promising. 1 GB free storage
  Email: ? - URI: ? (website says YES to both)
  
• MediaMax (I read bad reviews, so I signed up with some reservations.) 25 GB free storage. I was able to upload files, either individually or as a batch. I uploaded an MP3 file, but it was too large to be downloaded without an account upgrade. It accepted the smaller file. After I transferred the files into a Hosted Folder, it showed the URL to link to each file. Files can also be shared by email. This was the most trouble-free and intuitive of the sites that I tried.
  Email: YES - URI: YES
  
• esnips.com - A very easy site to set up. I was able to upload my PDF files, but it rejected the MP3 file that I created, with the statement "Publish failed Suspected copyright infringement - upload denied." That won't work if students want to upload audio samples that they create. 5 GB free storage
  Email: YES - URI: NO
  
• Adrive - Very easy to set up and upload both PDF and MP3 files. No file size limit. A single click shares the file, and the list of shared files includes the URI. However, clicking on the link goes to a web page that downloads the file. 50 GB free storage
  Email: YES - URI: NO
  

Labels: archive, digital preservation, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:36 PM 14 Comments

focused on the goal of enhancing student reflection and learning with the key objective being to determine whether a structured reflective tool can enhance students’ ability to engage in the reflective cycle at a deeper level.

The originality of this work rests in the importance of establishing an eJournal to accompany the ePortfolio. Based on our findings in this action research study, we challenge and add to the existing ePortfolio literature around such issues as ePortfolio project design, process vs. product, the use of templates, social software, and documentation.

Labels: conferences, research

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:26 PM 0 Comments

Labels: archive, digital preservation, learning

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:53 PM 1 Comments

MOSEP will experiment with electronic learning and more specifically the use of electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) as a means of supporting both the adolescents and the teaching and counselling staff that work with them during this transition phase. We hope to prove the efficiency of this ePortfolio method, based on a learner-centered model allowing a greater degree of personalisation of learning, in motivating and empowering the adolescents enabling them to acquire the skills needed to succeed in today's knowledge economy.

Labels: 21st-Century-Learning, portfolios, publications, research

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:46 PM 1 Comments

• I did a presentation on Lifelong ePortfolios, as well as a round table on digital storytelling
• I met educators from Germany working on software for PCs and cell phones, so that students could collect data with their mobile phones and transfer it to their desktop computers (MOLES and mini-MOLES)
• I attended the Special Interest Groups on both Assessment/eFolios and Digital Storytelling, and connected with educators from around the world who are interested in both of these topics. I also learned that UNLV graduate students are doing their ePortfolios using GooglePages!
  
• I attended the keynote address on the last day that focused on the One Laptop Per Child, and attended the follow-up conversation with the speaker, Dr. Antonio Battro (from Argentina), the Chief Education Officer. I am anxious for my OLPC to arrive so that I can play with it and see how it could be used for online portfolios. If it works, I am interested in providing some professional development for teachers.
  
• I learned about an organization, Teachers without Borders, which is headquartered in Seattle. I am anxious to contact them, to see if there are opportunities for volunteering and contributing to this worthwhile cause.

Labels: conferences, research

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:33 AM 1 Comments

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:46 AM 0 Comments

• Google launches online personal health records project (Computerworld)
• Google to Store Patients' Health Records (Associated Press)
• Google to kick-start medical records program with Cleveland Clinic (CNET News)

...the company became interested in entering the personal health records (PHR) business when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and countless paper-based medical records were lost in the aftermath of the storm.

Labels: digital preservation

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:33 AM 0 Comments

• "Google Plans Service to Store Users' Data" (Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2007) - includes a good comparison of different virtual storage services available:
• "Google GDrive coming soon?" (from downloadsquad blog, November 27, 2007, including a history of the GDrive developments) - Apparently the project has been called Platypus or simply "My Stuff" although that name is the name of the new open source ePortfolio system created by the Open University in the U.K.
  

Labels: digital preservation, portfolios, Web2.0

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:29 PM 1 Comments

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:11 AM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:51 PM 0 Comments

• I = ease of use
• J = sustainable business plan
• K = advanced features
• L = robust integrated technology architecture
• M = lifelong support
• N = standards and transportability, and
• O = X (undetermined factors)

• Simplicity: "How do you strip an idea to its core..."
  
• Unexpectedness: "How do you capture people's attention... and hold it?"
• Concreteness: "How do you help people understand your idea and remember it much later?"
• Credibility: "How do you get people to believe your idea?"
• Emotional: "How do you get people to care about your idea?"
• Stories: "How do you get people to act on your idea?"

Labels: portfolios, publications

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 5:38 AM 0 Comments

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:08 PM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:35 AM 1 Comments

Labels: computer hardware

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 5:49 PM 2 Comments

Labels: assessment, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 3:31 PM 1 Comments

Labels: conferences, tools, training

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:35 PM 0 Comments

Labels: assessment, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:04 AM 0 Comments

• Individual & Institutional

• Authoring Tools - These are tools that can be used to author portfolios (offline), but require web server space to publish online. Portfolios created with these tools can also be published on CD-R or DVD-R. No Interactivity. [Mozilla Composer; Dreamweaver, FrontPage or any web authoring tool; Apple's iWeb; Powerpoint & Lecshare Pro; Adobe Acrobat; MovieMaker2, iMovie, or any video editing tool]
  
  
• Static Web Services - These are static web services that an individual or institution may use to create and publish a presentation portfolio - little or no interactivity* (Web 1.0) [GeoCities; eFolio Minnesota; Tripod; Digication; KEEP Toolkit; GooglePages]
  
  
• Interactive Web Services - These are dynamic web services that an individual or institution may use to create and publish a presentation portfolio AND allows interactivity* (Web 2.0) [WordPress (blog); WikiSpaces; PB Wiki; GoogleDocs - Document and Presentation; ZOHO Writer; EduSpaces (Elgg)]
  

• Institutional

• Software - Server Required - These are systems that an institution would install on their own server to provide space for hosting portfolios. Interactivity* but NO data management system** [Userland's Manila; Blackboard (old: Content System and new: Vista/CE); Open Source tools: Elgg, Mahara, Moofolio, OSPI, MyStuff (U.K.); open source Content Management Systems: Plone, Drupal; Microsoft SharePoint]
  
  
• Hosted Services - These are systems that an institution adopts (no server required) that host portfolios. Usually supports interactivity* but limited (or unknown) data management** or reporting systems. [MyEport (Maricopa); Think.com (K12 school accounts only); nuVentive's iWebfolio; ePortaro; Pupil Pages (K12); Epsilen; My eCoach]
  
  
• Assessment Systems - Hosted Services - These are hosted systems that an institution would adopt (no server required) that will allow hosting portfolios, facilitates interactivity, and includes a data management** and reporting system for assessment [TaskStream; College LiveText; Chalk & Wire; FolioTek; nuVentive's TracDat]
  

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:48 AM 9 Comments

Labels: conferences, resources

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 4:21 PM 0 Comments

• PBWiki - A more developed wiki with the capability of exporting specific pages to PDF, Word or an online presentation. Read my detailed reflections on this 33rd reconstruction of my portfolio in my Online Portfolio Adventure. The screen is a little cluttered with all of the commands at the bottom, but the formatting is more flexible. With a limit of 10MB to store files, this version might be more limiting for schools or individuals who do not have other online storage space, whereas WikiSpaces allows 2GB.
  
• Carbonmade - an online portfolio for the creative arts community, not really appropriate for education because of the limited number of projects (5 in the free version) and limited space for description/captions/reflection. I really couldn't reconstruct my portfolio with this tool.
  

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:12 AM 0 Comments

• Who are you (your name)
• What are you doing now?
• What are your goals?

Labels: portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 6:01 AM 1 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:02 PM 2 Comments

• Klahowya (U.S.) (last updated 2005)
• OSPI (UMN-rSmart, U.S.) (partnership with U.S. universities, part of SAKAI)
• Mahara (New Zealand) (under development, version 0.9 alpha1 just released)
  
• Elgg (CurveRider, Ltd., U.K.) (received development capital in August 2007)
  
• MyStuff (Open University, U.K.) (to be fully functional February 2008)
• Moofolio (SPDC, New Hampshire) (new version about to be released, to be fully implemented fall 2008)
• Open source content management systems that have been adapted to use as ePortfolio systems: Drupal and Plone
  

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:08 PM 1 Comments

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:00 PM 3 Comments

• creativity and innovation
• communication and collaboration
• research and information fluency
• critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making
• digital citizenship
• technology operations and concepts

Labels: 21st-Century-Learning, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:26 PM 2 Comments

You raise a valid concern. When you publish a web site in Google Pages, I'm not sure if you can require a password. That is one of the questions that I will have to ask them. That is, of course, the appeal of some of the other customized e-portfolio systems... Using GoogleDocs, you don't have to publish your Document or Presentation for the whole world to see. You can just send it to another online user as a link. It just depends on your purpose, whether you want a portfolio that is open to the public, or whether you want to share it with specific people.

Labels: portfolios, tools, training

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:35 AM 1 Comments

• GoogleDocs Presentation
• Google Page Creator

Labels: portfolios, tools, training

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:01 AM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 1:19 PM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:30 PM 4 Comments

Labels: storytelling

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:33 AM 2 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 1:13 AM 0 Comments

We are planning to implement a pilot eportfolio program this fall in our high school (about 100 students out of a population of 1700). At the current time we are not using the Web 2.0 technologies that I read about on your blog because there is district fear of the "social networking" issues that might arise and Google docs, for example, is blocked on our network. We worked with a handful of 9th grade students using iWeb last year, but we only have one maclab, and frankly, since students do not have their own laptops, iWeb seemed complicated. So, what we do have is a site license for Contribute and are planning to use that. The thing we are struggling with now is managing the assessment piece and figuring out how to mentor the students. If we go all the way with this, we will have 1700 a lot of students to manage, and that piece seems daunting, but we are excited and I have a group of incredibly talented and dedicated colleagues to work with. Any examples of schools doing this, or any thoughts you might have would be deeply appreciated!

1. What kind of assessment are you talking about? Formative or summative? Formative assessment is sometimes called "Assessment FOR Learning" and is used to provide feedback for the students on their work so that they know how and where to improve. Summative assessment is sometimes called "Assessment OF Learning" and is used to "score" or assign a rating to student work (based on a rubric), and aggregate those scores, either for grading purposes or for external audiences. The tool requirements for each purpose are different.
2. Where will the students' portfolios be posted and what kind of interactivity is built into the hosting system? In either type of assessment, you will need to be able to interact with the work, either to give students feedback (qualitative data), or to collect and record quantitative data (scores). The first function is really a commenting function (such as you will find in a blog or wiki). The latter is really a data management function that you will find in a database or spreadsheet or gradebook.
3. What is your primary metaphor for your implementation of e-portfolio: checklist of skills or story of learning?
4. Is your intention to create a student-centered portfolio or an institution-centered portfolio?
5. Do your teachers currently implement paper-based portfolios? Or are you starting both innovations simultaneously (portfolio process and using technology for portfolios)?

I'm trying to implement a eportfolio system in my 9th grade English classes as well as my Latin classes. I have been searching and learning, but I could spend days and weeks here and I would like to begin before the end of the first semester! Therefore, would you be able to recommend a site for me that I could use for a single teacher with about 130 students? Most eportfolio systems I found during my research were for building-wide systems. It would be a safe guess to say that I will be the only teacher using eportfolios. But, if my preliminary work is successful, the district may catch on faster. I spent a little time with pbwiki and a blog, but I am concerned with security and the school's babysitter blocking the sites. So, would you have one (or more) sites for eportfolios that could be financially feasible for a single teacher with about 130 kids?

Commentary: The most secure tools are the commercial tools, such as TaskStream, which involves a per-student fee; or some of the open source tools, which require a server. The real challenge with using the most creative Web 2.0 tools in schools is that they are blocked by many school networks. It makes the recommendations more challenging. The best Web 2.0 options are often blocked! Unless a district installs their own solution, or purchases a service, an individual teacher has difficulty trying to implement an ePortfolio system.

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:01 AM 3 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:44 PM 1 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:38 PM 2 Comments

Labels: portfolios, training

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 7:34 AM 0 Comments

Labels: tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:43 AM 0 Comments

I have recently started to implement the use of electronic portfolios using Microsoft Word with hyperlinks to digital media. Much of the work linked has been converted to PDF files and all works well until we try to burn collections to CD. Once a collection is on a CD and we click on a hyperlinked file, we get the "Cannot open specified file" message and the link is still referencing the original storage drive. Can you tell me how to avoid this?

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:06 AM 0 Comments

Labels: storytelling, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:07 PM 0 Comments

Throughout SAU 16, the cumulative student digital portfolio for grades K-12 is a collection of both educational experiences and artifacts selected by the student with the guidance of his/her teachers. These artifacts and the accompanying student reflections show the student’s learning process and chronicle growth within the curriculum and across his/her school career. Through both the process of their creation and the documents they incorporate, digital portfolios provide ongoing evidence of their personal learning, achievements and literacy skills for the 21st Century, across all subject areas. Additionally, digital portfolios foster the child's concept of self, commitment to personal growth, and promote life-long learning to keep them competitive in a global society.

Labels: portfolios, schools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:03 AM 0 Comments

Labels: schools, storytelling

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:16 AM 0 Comments

Labels: archive, digital preservation

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 3:31 PM 0 Comments

Labels: ADE, conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:28 PM 0 Comments

In order to see change across the system, there needs to be a shift in thinking about investment from hardware towards relationships and networks. In the last ten years we have seen a staggering change in the amount of hardware in schools, but it has not had a significant impact on teaching and learning styles. So what does this mean for schools? It means that they need to really listen and respond to their users. Schools often fail to start in the right place – with the interests and enthusiasms of their students. They also need to recognise the new digital divide – one of access to knowledge rather than hardware – and start to redress some of the existing imbalances. Finally they need to develop strategies to bridge formal and informal learning, home and school. They should find ways that go with the grain of what young people are doing, in order to foster new skills and build on what we know works.

Labels: publications, research

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 6:08 PM 1 Comments

E-portfolios benefit learning most effectively when considered as part of a system, rather than as a discrete entity.

Labels: portfolios, research

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:44 PM 0 Comments

Recently there’s been a rather vigorous discussion in my part of the blogosphere about what we’ve been calling the “Inverted LMS”
http://mikecaulfield.com/2007/07/06/isa-hasa-and-the-inverted-lms/

The idea is pretty simple – let students blog in wordpress or another blog (as in your portfolio examples) and let them tag specific entries with a “portfolio” tag. Then use an RSS aggregator to pull those entries into the institutional blog, where they can be categorized organized and saved for institutional assessment.

A friend at Univ. Mary Washington has been looking into this arrangement for making multiple classes out of single student blogs (although not for eportfolio, yet)[Tech details here]

The LMS is “inverted” because rather than creating spaces for classes and filling them with students, he starts with the student as the atomic unit, and through category tagging and aggregators build the class piece – class or course is an attribute of something a student says, rather than the box in which they say it…

The neat thing about this is that the students can truly own their own reflective space, and only cede a portion of it as a portfolio. This encourages the student to see the portfolio piece as just a part of a larger ongoing process of reflection and story-telling. And it allows them to do it in a space they own – one that stands outside arbitrary divisions of class, subject and school vs. work vs. personal interests.

Anyway, I’d be glad to hear your thoughts on it. As you can see, one of my main concerns intersects with yours – that we make this process student-centered, not assessment centered, and that we develop this as a habit in them, not as an assignment.

On a theory level, I have been heavily influenced by Donald Schon’s view of the reflective practitioner, and have been making my way through Dewey’s work. I am particularly interested in the “learning to be” part of education, helping new students to understand the way a practitioner thinks in their discipline.

At heart, I am interested in the development of systems to connect people and allow them to express themselves. I am particularly interested in distributed systems loosely coupled together that, as you put it, “allow a thousand flowers to bloom.” I see a lot of potential for technologies like RSS and open ID to aggregate and distribute people's identities. I think that one of the largest issues surrounding distributed systems is control and safety; how do we let users control their own identity in a truly distributed system? My own research at Claremont has shown that students deeply care about having the ability to limit access, but also have an imperative to establish themselves by making their work better known. Experience with my own families’ blogs and early attempts at photo sharing have really highlighted this issue for me.

Ultimately, I'm trending towards the view that the system we will end up with will use RSS to expose content, tags to organize it, and open ID to selectively share content with certain people. The organizing systems would be crucial, and probably needs to be open source for broader adoption (and easily copied or imitated by commercial companies, whose competition and adoption would be crucial).

Labels: archive, assessment, portfolios, reflection

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:04 AM 1 Comments

Labels: tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:09 AM 0 Comments

Labels: 21st-Century-Learning, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 6:28 PM 0 Comments

In this article, I have outlined my vision for digital stories of development, or Online Personal Learning Environments which may eventually replace what we currently call “electronic portfolios” in education. Based on the concept of “lifetime personal web space,” this online archive of a life’s collection of artifacts and memorabilia, both personal and professional, has the potential to change the current paradigm of electronic portfolios, mostly institution-bound, and focus instead on the individual or the family as the center for creating the digital archive, which can be used in a variety of contexts across the lifespan, from schools to universities to the workplace. Finally, this archive can be used to develop personal histories and reflective narratives to preserve our stories for future generations. A possible scenario is followed by the challenges faced when developing this service for widespread dissemination.

Labels: archive, digital preservation, portfolios, publications

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:21 AM 0 Comments

Labels: conferences, storytelling

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:02 PM 1 Comments

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:02 PM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:07 PM 1 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 6:08 PM 1 Comments

Labels: 21st-Century-Learning, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:55 AM 0 Comments

I've recently become interested in the durability of ePortfolios -- as I describe in this piece here (ePortfolios, Durability, and the Black Binder Test). I was wondering if you've heard of any attempts to decouple the interface and presentation of ePortfolios from the storage of the artifacts (and optionally the reflections) -- say through using Amazon S3 or some other 3rd party space that could be truly owned by the student or faculty member regardless of where they wind up. Is anyone moving in this direction?

Labels: digital preservation, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:24 AM 0 Comments

Labels: tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:17 PM 0 Comments

• GarageBand's Podcast track -- works well, if you export PowerPoint to individual JPEGS (changing format to square image), import them one-by-one onto the Podcast track. The quality of video is marginal.
  
• iMovie -- works very well, but not efficient -- you also have to export PowerPoint to individual JPEGS, and then adjust length of each slide to match audio on timeline.
  
• PowerPoint's export to video -- which does not synchronize audio with slides unless you embed individual audio clips on each slide... then it works very well, but not very efficient. And the files are huge
  
• Keynote's export to QuickTime -- same issue as PowerPoint (embed audio in each slide), but much slower process and QuickTime clip doesn't have controller at the bottom (not sure if there is a setting I am missing)
  
• ProfCast -- which only allows live recording ($30) which might work for some, but I like to edit my iPod recordings before adding the slides.
  
• LecShare Pro -- which is the most promising so far, but slow and quirky - it works with PowerPoint, saves its coding into the PowerPoint file or the audio file. That tool also lets you convert these slide shows to accessible HTML and uses both pre-recorded audio or lets you record directly in the program for each slide.
  

Labels: tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:05 AM 3 Comments

Labels: tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:44 PM 6 Comments

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:00 AM 0 Comments

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 5:55 PM 2 Comments

For the last 10 days, I have been on a cruise, from Ft. Lauderdale to Seattle (yes, through the Panama Canal... it was incredible). The technology for supporting the virtual presentation above has been a challenge. I tried three times to create a DVD in PAL format. For some reason, iDVD kept freezing, so I compressed the video with the best quality and uploaded a 1.6 GB MOV file to my server.

I also sent a data DVD to the conference organizers before I left. The conference presentation is actually in Finland on Friday afternoon (early morning for me, off the coast of Mexico between Acapulco and Cabo San Lucas). I had a challenging time getting the right telephone number to receive a phone call in my room (and I'm still not sure of exact GMT). So, if I get a phone call, that will work. Otherwise, I am inviting any conference participants to either send me an email with their questions or post a comment to this blog entry.

Why not use Skype? Because the cruise line blocks all voice connections over Skype, they say because of bandwidth issues. Their Internet access is by satellite. Also, my Internet access costs me 25 cents per minute. I bought a plan for 500 minutes when I got on the ship the day I arrived. That has worked OK for eMail and the occasional travel blog entry. I am averaging a half hour a day. At one port, I was able to get Internet access for $6/hour, and was able to have a Skype conversation with my daughter in Budapest.

On my Mediterranean cruise last year, I used iWeb for my 2006 travel blog. I had a lot of trouble with uploading the files to my .Mac account over the slow satellite connection. This year I am not taking as many pictures or any shore excursions, so I decided to take a simpler approach, setting up another Blogger blog. I do have two hours of video of the day we crossed the Panama Canal. Some of it is as interesting as watching paint dry (or water raise up by gravity feed, or lock gates open/close), but I should be able to edit it down to the key scenes.

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 5:52 PM 0 Comments

Labels: conferences, research

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 5:06 PM 0 Comments

Labels: portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 4:55 PM 2 Comments

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:18 PM 0 Comments

• Creating ePortfolios with Web 2.0 tools -- Consolidating some of my explorations with Web 2.0 tools
• "Telling My Story" -- Audio Clips I have collected at different EIFEL ePortfolio Conferences

Labels: conferences, publications

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:56 PM 0 Comments

While these are legitimate uses for portfolios, when teachers perceive that accountability is viewed as more important than their knowledge and expertise, they can become cynical, and their portfolios tend to be heavy with documentation but light on passion. (p.8)

By capturing the experience of the learning journey, reflecting on its meaning over time, and sharing the learning with others, teachers develop new insights and understanding. (p.27)

A portfolio that is truly a story of learning is owned by the learner, structured by the learner, and told in the learner's own voice. (p.39)

A fundamental principle of this book is that educators grow professionally as a result of producing a digital portfolio. They become producers as well as consumers of technology, enabling them to become more confident about using it in their daily work. They learn more about using the World Wide Web for teaching, research and for communicating with a global audience. This transfer of knowledge and skills will benefit not only themselves but their students, colleagues, and community. But more fundamentally, educators can show evidence of their deep learning...(p.78)

Labels: portfolios, publications

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 12:15 AM 0 Comments

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 2:26 AM 1 Comments

Labels: 21st-Century-Learning, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 6:42 PM 1 Comments

Labels: portfolios, tools, training

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 8:12 PM 0 Comments

I came across these two websites on one of my listservs. This isn't a political blog but I just couldn't resist adding them here:

It's not on the Test: Here's a new song about school testing that Tom Chapin wrote. It helped usher in the New Year on National Public Radio, appearing on "Morning Edition" on January 1, 2007.

Mad TV's iRack

Enjoy!

Labels: 21st-Century-Learning

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 6:23 PM 0 Comments

The dynamics of identity production play out visibly on MySpace. Profiles are digital bodies, public displays of identity where people can explore impression management [2]. Because the digital world requires people to write themselves into being [3], profiles provide an opportunity to craft the intended expression through language, imagery and media....

What we're seeing right now is a cultural shift due to the introduction of a new medium and the emergence of greater restrictions on youth mobility and access. The long-term implications of this are unclear. Regardless of what will come, youth are doing what they've always done - repurposing new mediums in order to learn about social culture.

Technology will have an effect because the underlying architecture and the opportunities afforded are fundamentally different. But youth will continue to work out identity issues, hang out and create spaces that are their own, regardless of what technologies are available.

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 4:34 PM 0 Comments

The major advantage of GoogleDocs is that it is a Web 2.0 tool, and universally available through a WWW browser. I found it fairly easy to use, although it helped that I knew how to edit HTML to fine tune the formatting. I tried to use the Google Spreadsheet to create the Portfolio-at-a-Glance matrix, since it was originally created in Excel. However, I could not easily create hyperlinks in the cells, and the links did not translate when I converted the Excel spreadsheet into Google. So, I converted the spreadsheet to HTML and pasted it into Edit HTML on a new page. A table is easy to edit in a GoogleDocs page. I also found it extremely easy to insert images on a page. I published another "How-To" page on using GoogleDocs to create an online portfolio.

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 3:48 PM 3 Comments

...attempts to capture some of the essential qualities of knowledge required by teachers for technology integration in their teaching, while addressing the complex, multifaceted and situated nature of teacher knowledge. At the heart of the TPCK framework, is the complex interplay of three primary forms of knowledge: Content (C), Pedagogy (P), and Technology (T). See Figure above. As must be clear, the TPCK framework builds on Shulman's idea of Pedagogical Content Knowledge.

Labels: assessment, conferences, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:44 AM 0 Comments

I am now very excited about the direction I hope to take the e-portfolio at our school. One of the things I have decided to do is to use this opportunity to mentor rather than teach my students. I am hoping that I will be able to work alongside them as we all create our own portfolios (me too). I have significant technological challenges and if you have time would appreciate your input. I am not as technologically savvy as perhaps I should be given that I teach online.

I have lots of cool ideas but my biggest stumbling block is technology. I want a space for students to create their portfolios that is:

1. interactive
2. will be able to support multimedia
3. allow students to individualize their portfolios
4. is secure
5. allows assessment
6. is portable (i.e. students can take it with them when they leave)

I figured that a student webpage (assuming they could make one) would cover 1, 2, 3 and 6, but not 4 or 5.

Moodle covers 1, 4, and 5 but not 2 (very well), 3 and 6

A CDROM covers 2, 3, 4, & 6 but not 1, & 5.

I know I'm asking for the world, but please help.

I know the parents at the school would balk at the idea of student pages accessible to anyone & to be honest I don't want my personal information out there either. This may not be where the Internet is right now, but I'm not comfortable sharing with the world! However I think that as a group of Grade 11 and 12 students and a mentor (me), we could really achieve something meaningful. Now that The Graduation Portfolio is no longer mandatory in BC, I want to make this an optional course for students interested in creating their own e-portfolios as a start to a lifelong journey.

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:59 AM 0 Comments

Purpose
Collection/Selection
Reflection
Connection/Interaction/Dialogue
Presentation/Publishing

Labels: portfolios, tools

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 10:29 AM 0 Comments

Labels: conferences, portfolios

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 11:18 AM 0 Comments

Labels: conferences

# posted by Helen Barrett @ 9:33 AM 0 Comments