E-Portfolios for Learning

Balancing the Two Faces of E-Portfolios

I created a video tour of the new CIC website and added a narrated version of the presentation that was made at the Chief Academic Officers Conference of the Council of Independent Colleges, November 2009; audio recorded at Kapi'olani Community College, January 2010. I posted the presentation only in my blip.tv video collection. This one focuses on a higher education audience, and provides my most recent rationale for eportfolios as both workspace and showcase, addressing both paradigms of assessment: improvement or accountability.

Labels: assessment, portfolios, video

It is a rare meeting where I will travel all the way across the country for a single day (and two nights) when I am not working or presenting, but the AAC&U meeting in Washington, D.C., was worth the miles traveled. I connected with friends and total strangers came up to me, acknowledging my work. The opening session was conducted by Bret Eynon and Elizabeth Clark from LaGuardia Community College, providing an overview of their program, a model for community colleges around the country. I then attended a breakout session conducted by Dr. Mentkowski from Alverno College, a pioneer in e-portfolios and "Learning that Lasts." I attended their Assessment Institute over six years ago, and their model of assessment-as-learning is the process underlying their use of portfolios and e-portfolios.

The lunch speech was given by Melissa Peet from the University of Michigan. She did an outstanding job with examples of a process of reflection that can transform students' perspectives on leadership and social change. I had an opportunity to have a very enjoyable dinner with her, along with Trent Batson and the two presenters from Laguardia Community College. I am anxious to read more about Melissa's work at UM.

After lunch, there were five mini-presentations, and then many more table groups where we could talk in-depth to one of the presenters. I sat at Gail Ring's table to learn more about the Clemson ePortfolio graduation requirement. They have students create their portfolios using Google Sites, and have provided a lot of support materials. They also created their own assessment management system to manage the collection of key assignments demonstrating required outcomes and scoring of the portfolios. There was also panel on assessment that included Trudy Banta (she told the story about the questions she asked at the IUPUI Assessment conference... described in my blog). Finally, Randy Bass gave the closing keynote, about ePortfolios in the "Post-Course" Era. It was a very thought-provoking presentation. I hope they will be posting podcasts of the major presentations.

Labels: assessment, conferences, portfolios

In February 2010 I will be in Mumbai, India, at ASB Un-Plugged 2010, an International Schools Conference. Prior to the conference, I have been invited to make a presentation at TEDxASB, which will be held at the American School of Bombay on February 25th, 2010 between 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm. The theme of the TEDx event is “Embracing Leadership, Innovation, and Change”. The audience will consist of the participants of ASB Un-Plugged 2010 and members of the ASB community -- parents, faculty and students.

Here is my proposed presentation:

Social Networks and Interactive Portfolios: Blurring the Boundaries

Electronic Portfolios have been with us for almost two decades, used primarily in education to store documents and reflect on learning, provide feedback for improvement, and showcase achievements for accountability or employment. Social networks have emerged over the last five years, used by individuals and groups to store documents and share experiences, showcase accomplishments, communicate and collaborate with friends and family, and, in some cases, facilitate employment searches. The boundaries between these two processes are gradually blurring. As we consider the potential of lifelong e-portfolios, will they resemble the structured accountability systems that are currently being implemented in many higher education institutions? Or are we beginning to see lifelong interactive portfolios emerging as mash-ups in the Web 2.0 cloud, using blogs, wikis, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, etc.? There are many similarities between these two processes; the major differences are in extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation (Dan Pink's concept of autonomy, mastery, and purpose). This presentation will draw on Pink's new book, Drive, and how blurring the boundaries between social networks and e-portfolios could motivate people to adopt the portfolio processes of collection, reflection, selection/presentation, interaction, and collaboration to support lifelong learning.

Labels: motivation, portfolios, social networks

I have pre-ordered Dan Pink's new book, Drive, which is all about motivation in business, but the more I read, from his newsletter and website, the more I can see application in education. Pink quotes Internet guru and author Clay Shirky (www.shirky.com):

...the most successful websites and electronic forums have a certain Type I approach [to motivation] in their DNA. They're designed-often explicitly--to tap into intrinsic motivation. You can do the same with your online presences if you listen to Shirky and:
• Create an environment that makes people feel good about participating.
• Give users autonomy.
• Keep the system as open as possible.

These criteria came to mind as I recall the following e-mail message I received a week ago:

My school district has been using a ePortfolio system for over three years now with limited success, and is currently researching ePortfolio alternatives.  While I have found numerous platforms that are currently on the market, I have not found any recent articles which compare and contrast these options.  We are particularly focused on adopting a system that will easily allow us to aggregate/export data surrounding student achievement of specific learning goals, primarily as they relate to gradation requirements, but also as a manner to track the consistency of learning and teaching which occurs across the school.

Is there a particular ePortfolio platform that you feel is especially adept at accomplishing these tasks, or an article that you might recommend?

I really wonder what he means by "limited success" but here is part of my response: [after referencing my April 22 blog entry]:

So, you need to decide whether you want an electronic portfolio or an assessment management system. When you describe "a system that will easily allow us to aggregate/export data surrounding student achievement of specific learning goals, primarily as they relate to gradation requirements, but also as a manner to track the consistency of learning and teaching which occurs across the school" that sounds like an institution-centered assessment management system, not a student-centered ePortfolio.  For what purpose of assessment? Accountability or Improvement? (see my recent blog entry and the associated White Paper). There are a variety of recommendations in that blog entry.

In a recent presentation at the Assessment Conference in Indianapolis in October, I made the following point about "Opportunity Cost" (what you give up when you make a decision). You might also be interested in an article on the Limitations of Portfolios.

I don't know what systems you have considered. Do you have a server where you could install Mahara (an open source portfolio tool created in New Zealand)? Did you look at Digication? My research is on students developing student-centered ePortfolios using a variety of free Web 2.0 tools (that they can continue to use after they graduate), primarily GoogleApps (Docs, Sites) or WordPress/EduBlogs. These systems are not used to collect quantitative data about student learning. For that purpose, you could use a data management system that allows you to link to student-centered online portfolio artifacts.

I'm not sure this answers your questions, but the tools today are very primitive, and not well balanced between accountability and improvement. Also, most of the research has been done in higher education, not in K-12. If only we could just capture the engagement of Facebook into an ePortfolio system... but I do not advocate using social networks for ePortfolios... just incorporate those strategies into ePortfolio systems. The only one I know of that tries to include those social networking strategies in a hosted system is Epsilen.com.

So, in addition to the functional criteria for evaluating e-portfolio systems, what about some motivational principles for that are aligned with Shirky's three criteria, where students feel good about participating, giving them some autonomy, while keeping the system as open as possible? Can we also consider Dan Pink's motivating workplace environment that promotes autonomy, mastery, and purpose?

Labels: motivation, portfolios, social networks, tools

For the last six months, my daughter has been living with me, giving me an opportunity to observe how the younger generation lives with technology (not that I don't... but most of my generation of friends and colleagues only use email, not social networks). My Christmas presents from her today were: a windshield mount for my iPhone and a Phillips 8x10 electronic picture frame, to show up to 1,000 photos (one of the few electronic gadgets I have not already bought for myself!). She and I both have iPhones where we can both capture images... she just captures most of hers with the Facebook app and immediately uploads them to her account. Last weekend, we went to a Messiah concert, she took pictures, and had comments from her friends before the concert was over. She has developed a habit of documenting her experiences with her iPhone and Facebook, creating the 21st Century form of the family photo album and diary combined. She has demonstrated the "everydayness" of documenting her experiences because she has a handy tool, and the motivation to share among her far-flung community of friends... who provide feedback through comments.

The ability to immediately document (and also reflect) on experience, and receive immediate feedback from both peers and mentors, is what we need in the academic e-portfolio development process. I am not advocating using Facebook for academic portfolios, but I am witnessing many portfolio processes that can be supported by adding this capability to any number of available systems (already available with most blogs): a social networking app that works with a mobile device (including a camera... missing from the iPod Touch right now). The iPhone/iPod Touch also has the capability to record audio clips, important for younger learners, or those who reflect better with their voices than with their fingers. (There is Dragon Dictation on the iPhone that seems to do a fairly good job of translating spoken words to text... in a quiet place... it didn't work for me when I tried it in an airport Food Court... would that be similar to a busy classroom?).

The tools are slowly starting to emerge to facilitate the workspace/learning/process portfolio, or eDoL (Electronic Documentation of Learning). As we approach the end of this decade, and I reflect upon how much technology has changed in the last 10 years, it is pretty exciting to think about where it will be at the end of the next decade (an appropriate reflection for New Year's Eve?). It is an exciting time to be exploring the potential, and to help others find the relevance of these social networking processes in the service of lifelong learning. Such a gift!

Merry Christmas! (my annual Christmas letter)

Labels: iPhone, mobile, portfolios, social networks, Web2.0

Nick Rate, educator and portfolio deep thinker from New Zealand, posted some simple, elegant diagrams on his blog: http://nickrate.com/2009/12/02/portfolio-visualisation/ These simple graphics help explain the progress of portfolio ownership and purpose over the school years.
There is something about these simple diagrams that help to explain a complex process. He also published a more recent blog entry that helps explain the inquiry process: http://nickrate.com/2009/12/06/inquiry-visualisation/

Labels: blogs, K–12, portfolios

Assessment Portfolios are implemented somewhere along the continuum between those two paradigms. As I emphasized in an earlier blog entry,  the concept of Opportunity Cost should be considered here (what do we give up when we emphasize accountability or improvement based on these two paradigms of assessment?). How can we find a balance along the continuum between these two approaches? Here are some preliminary ideas for addressing the balance issues:

Tools

• Use separate tools for assessment management and student e-portfolios?
  (Ball State’s rGrade & WSU’s Harvesting Gradebook)
• Incorporate blogging and social networking tools for interactivity and engagement
  (Open Source Tools:  WordPress, Movable Type, Mahara)
• Allow embedding student Web 2.0 links, including video, into their e-portfolios
• Enable exporting e-portfolio to students’ lifetime personal webspace

Strategies

• Acknowledge the importance of both portfolio as workspace (process) & showcase (product)
• Support student choice and voice in e-portfolios
• Facilitate reflection for deep learning
• Provide timely and effective feedback for improvement
• Encourage student use of multimedia in portfolios for visual communication and literacy
  • Digital Storytelling & Podcasting
  • Picasa/Flickr slideshows
• Acknowledge/Encourage students’ Web 2.0 digital identity

Labels: assessment, portfolios, publications

Here is another blog entry from a faculty member at Boise State University, where I visited last week. It is refreshing to see faculty members model the use of blogs as a reflection space. Both Barbara and Lisa's blogs are developed in WordPress.com, taking advantage of the pages in addition to the blog entries. As they implement a reflective journal (aka, learning log) with their graduate students in the Educational Technology Program at Boise State, they will be providing a model of reflection that their students can emulate in their K-12 classrooms. Bravo!

Of course, all blogging tools are not created equal. I am creating this blog in Blogger, because that is the tool I started using in May 2004. Blogger allows Labels (key word tags) but not the categories available in WordPress. Blogger doesn't allow additional pages, like in WordPress. When I first started blogging, I posted duplicate entries to both a WordPress blog on my own server space (but gave it up after a few months as duplicative), and developed a portfolio using the pages and sub-pages available in WordPress.com (version 2.0+).  I keep a private personal blog in WordPress because I require a password to access the blog (or any individual entry in a public WordPress blog can require a password). So if WordPress has so many more features, why am I still writing this blog in Blogger? I think it is the user interface: Blogger is clean, simple, easy to use; I find the WordPress interface to be more cluttered, complex, but I can see its advantage for institutions that want to host the system on their own servers. For me, the major difference is that I can embed audio, video and slideshare files into my Blogger blog, but WordPress.com would require me to upgrade my account with VideoPress for an annual $60 fee (not applicable for sites hosting WordPress on their own server).

I just finished reading a dissertation written by an elementary teacher who implemented an electronic portfolio to support process writing with her fourth grade students using WordPress on a server in her school... in Greek! In the school where I worked in Turkey last month, that school is implementing e-portfolios with fourth and fifth grade students, making a transition from PowerPoint to WordPress on their own server... in Turkish! It helps to have a technology support staff! The value of this open source tool that can be installed on an institution's server, and modified to be implemented in the native language of the school, provides an easily modifiable environment to facilitate the reflection that is "the heart and soul" of a portfolio. My next project will be to test out the blogging capabilities built into the Mahara open source e-portfolio tool.

Labels: blogs, portfolios, tools

I just spent a fun day at Boise State University, working primarily with faculty members in the Educational Technology program, to help them streamline their graduate student summative ePortfolio process. We used my "Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolios" presentation and diagram as the framework for our discussions. It was really fun to talk with faculty members who knew the technology, and we were able to brainstorm strategies for building a reflective learning journal over time, to help students capture their learning (probably in a blog) throughout the program. Then, they would be more prepared to develop a final assessment portfolio at the end of the program, tied to the program standards. Overall, I was pleased with the discussion and I enjoyed seeing how a group of faculty worked together to improve their program.

At the beginning of the day, I asked how many of them had their own e-portfolios. There was a few tentative hands that went up... but at the end of my presentation, many of them who kept a blog (most using WordPress.com) were able to say that their blogs and the associated pages really represented who they were professionally. Lisa Dawley, the program chair, raised an interesting idea: to incorporate students' blog-folios into the LinkedIn professional network site, to begin building their professional network before they graduated... an interesting approach, especially as a showcase portfolio for employment and self-marketing. The LinkedIn site appears to work well with a WordPress.com blog. I am talking with schools that are using the Ning social networking site for similar purposes, all part of embedding academic work into a larger context. More to explore!

Labels: blogs, portfolios, training

This article, published by T.H.E. Journal provides a shallow overview of e-portfolios in K-12 schools, mostly providing an incomplete look at the types of tools available. The author also made the following statement:

Google is probably the leading provider of mashup services and software for the creation of e-portfolios. The search giant isn't yet offering an e-portfolio product, per se, but in 2007 it began publishing a step-by-step process for combining its Google Apps software into e-portfolio mashups. On its "Google Apps E-Portfolios Mashup" web page, the company has published a series of documents describing how to mash up such applications as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Notebook, Blogger, and the iGoogle portal to, essentially, create an e-portfolio.

Google is also providing guidance specifically aimed at K-12 education. The company has published descriptions of three levels of K-12 e-portfolios: e-portfolio as storage; e-portfolio as workspace; and e-portfolio as showcase.

Lowendahl [Garner Group] is pleased to see Google getting into the e-portfolio business. He says interest from companies of such stature is necessary to secure the application's future.

I agree, it would be nice if Google was getting into the e-portfolio business, but they aren't. What the author is referencing is MY website. Here is the comment that I added to the article:

 This article provides interesting information about e-portfolios, although some of it is inaccurate and incomplete. It is true that most of the research and implementation of electronic portfolios has been in higher education. My reading of the Gartner Hype Cycle for Education, 2009, noted that ePortfolios were listed in the stage of "Sliding Into the Trough" (...of Disillusionment). To move to the next stage of the cycle (Climbing the Slope... of Enlightenment) we will need to have more research on the most appropriate strategies and "best practices" to support student learning, especially at the K-12 level.

Your reference to Google's support of ePortfolios was actually posted on MY website (http://electronicportfolios.org/google/ ). I wrote the K-12 support materials for both GoogleApps (and WordPress), linked from my web page (http://electronicportfolios.org/ and published using Google Sites). I developed the three-level model, based on my collaboration with both Washington State University and several school districts in California and Texas:
1. portfolio as storage (collection of artifacts)
2. portfolio as workspace (collection plus reflection/metacognition)
3. portfolio as showcase (selection, summative reflection and presentation)

It is also important to recognize that reflection is the "heart and soul" of a portfolio... not the technology or collection of artifacts. The real value of an e-portfolio is in the reflection and learning that is documented therein, not just the collection of work.

My note to the author: To whom at Google do I send the bill for all my development work over the last two years? ;-)

UPDATE: After having a nice conversation with the author, the online article was corrected to read:

Google is probably the leading provider of mashup services and software for the creation of e-portfolios. The search giant isn't yet offering an e-portfolio product, per se, but in 2007 educator Helen Barrett, who has been researching strategies and technologies for e-portfolios since 1991, began publishing a step-by-step process for combining Google Apps software into e-portfolio mashups. On her "Google Apps E-Portfolios Mashup" web page, she describes how to join such applications as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Notebook, Blogger, and the iGoogle portal to create an e-portfolio.

Barrett also provides guidance specifically aimed at K-12 education. She has published descriptions of three levels of K-12 e-portfolios: e-portfolio as storage; e-portfolio as workspace; and e-portfolio as showcase.

Labels: Google, portfolios, publications

We just finished a wonderful four days at Enka Schools in Istanbul, working with 4th & 5th grade teachers on ePortfolios, and a few of their students developing digital stories... in English, their second language! They were wonderful, very short stories about themselves or their best friends, and their enthusiasm was energizing. They have new skills to enrich their ePortfolios, now in Powerpoint, but soon they will explore more interactive tools, on their own WordPress server.

It was an interesting experience having all of my presentations translated... forcing me to slow down, reduce my content to the most critical elements. An interesting insight: There is no word for REFLECTION in Turkish, so they had to use a version of "thinking about your thinking/learning."

On Saturday, we had a tour of the historical center of Istabul. Now we are getting ready to leave for Spain. More later... with photos!

Labels: international, K–12, portfolios, storytelling

Nick Rate, an educator from New Zealand (and fellow ADE) who published a paper last year for the Ministry of Education on Assessment for Learning and ePortfolios, has just written a few blog posts about using mobile devices to maintain student-centered mPortfolios using the iPod Touch. As he said in a previous post last year:

I see a huge potential in how mobile technologies can contribute to this area and it relates closely to some of the core beliefs I have about ePortfolios. The ability to share, for the purpose of receiving relevant and constructive feedback to improve learning, can only really happen if the learning is shared or made available almost immediately.

The web can make his happen. A blog post with embedded media takes minutes and then it’s there, ready to share. But a web based portfolio does not necessarily mean that parents will view it and share in the learning. And if they do, will they leave a comment? Will they view the learning with their child?

The physical presence of a portable device, like an iPod touch, could significantly change this. A child bringing home an iPod containing their learning gives an opportunity for sharing, not dependent on a broadband connection, taking only on a few minutes of time with mum or dad. Feedback is instant. Praise here and a suggestion here. Done.

His most recent blog posts focus on some of the software available for the iPod Touch that could be used to support mPortfolios:

• ePortfolios and mLearning Part 1 - a look at Apps available for the iPod Touch: WordPress (works with EduBlogs), Evernote, BlogPress (works with Blogger), Tumblr, BlogWriter, and Tubey, all having a web-based version to host the text, images and video. 
• ePortfolios and mLearning Part 2 - a look at popular Web 2.0 ePortfolio solution and support from a mobile device: WordPress/Edublogs, GoogleSites, Blogger, Elgg, Blackboard, PebblePad.

I learned about a few new apps available for the iPod Touch/iPhone, and his discussion raises a lot of possibilities for developing mPortfolios. The challenge is in the interactivity: a web browser is needed to add comments and provide feedback. It looks like these tools can support the presentation but not necessarily the conversation about learning. Still, these developments are in the right direction, especially when combined with web-based solutions that provide the interactivity.

Labels: ADE, mobile, portfolios

Here are my slides for the Council of Independent College' Chief Academic Officers Institute, held in Sante Fe, New Mexico over this last weekend. I found it interesting that there was no Internet access provided by this conference, although the hotel charged a daily fee. I ended up just using my iPhone, and found a cafe with free wifi (to clean out my Inbox). I am now in the Albuquerque airport with slow but free wifi.

I will be developing a guided tour to my part of the Teach21 website that was developed as part of CIC's project developed under a Microsoft U.S. Partners in Learning grant. As part of that tour, I will be creating a narrated version of this slide presentation, which will also be posted to the CIC website. The narrated version should be available by the end of the year.

Labels: assessment, conferences, portfolios, presentation, storytelling

I have been working on this new website for the last five months, and it will be announced and showcased at The Council of Independent Colleges annual Institute for Chief Academic Officers, to be held in Santa Fe on November 7-10, 2009. The website includes the ten webinars that I did for CIC under a Partners in Education program funded by Microsoft (seven on electronic portfolios, three on digital storytelling). I also helped the faculty members develop the digital stories that are embedded in this site.  I learned a lot about converting WMV-to-Flash video and discovered Motionbox as a website to store videos online. I also published a simplified version of the content on my website.

Labels: portfolios, publications, storytelling

Campus Technology just published another article about ePortfolios (where I am quoted extensively). I'm not sure if she quoted my blog, or the ePortfolio Track keynote that I did last week, when I said I thought that universities should be getting out of the portfolio storage business, giving students control of their own web space to store their portfolio documents, using Web 2.0-based storage systems. My response to the article:

Thanks for quoting some of my work. There are some standards under development in the U.K. (LEAP2A) which resemble blogging standards for interoperability. There is a student side and an institution side to the e-portfolio process. The student side is the Personal Learning Environment (as indicated in the article); the institution side is more of an assessment management system. We need to be careful that the standards don't over-structure the PLE side of the e-portfolio so that personalization and creativity are diminished... that is the situation today with most of the commercial and open source e-portfolio tools. The article didn't mention WSU's Harvesting Gradebook which keeps track of assessment data, letting the student use a variety of Web 2.0-based portfolio artifacts. We need more R&D on better tools that keep the portfolio development and assessment processes distinct but interconnected. At the Assessment Institute in Indianapolis last week, I proposed that there is an Opportunity Cost in the way we implement portfolios for accountability vs. portfolios for learning/improvement. Student engagement supporting lifelong learning strategies should be as important as collecting data for accreditation. Finding balance in the process is the challenge.

 The article mentions the Gartner Hype Cycle for Education, 2009, and ePortfolios were listed in the stage of "Sliding Into the Trough" (...of disillusionment, where we say "woah, we were sold down the river"). To move to the next stage of the cycle (Climbing the Slope... of Enlightenment, where we say, "no, come to think of it, used in the right way, this can be good") will be a challenge: figuring out "the right way" from which philosophical perspective? Accountability or Learning/Improvement?

Labels: assessment, portfolios, publications

The final report, plus case studies (34 in total) from the "Study on the role of e-portfolios in formative and summative assessment practices" by a team led by the Centre of Recording Achievement (U.K.), are now available from JISC:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/eportfolios/studyontheroleofeportfolios.aspx
Interesting reading from higher education in U.K.

Labels: assessment, portfolios, publications

I just finished attending another conference with my daughter: the Northwest eLearning Conference held in Nampa, Idaho. She and I led a pre-conference workshop entitled, "Voice and Reflection in ePortfolios: Multiple Purposes of Digital Stories and Podcasts in ePortfolio," and our slides are posted on SlideShare (embedded here).
It was the first event we have done together since she attended the Center for Digital Storytelling workshop in August. We didn't have time to do anything hands-on, but we were able to show many examples and cover the process, as shown in these slides. Most of the examples are online, with the links on the slides. (I won't comment too much about the difficulty I had in hooking up my Macbook Air to their projector… I ended up using a monitor for the small group, with my own speakers. Later that day, I took all on my videos out of my keynote presentation, and just transferred my slides over to the presentation computer… which was being used for both projecting to the room and on Adobe Connect. Ah, the frustrations of being a Mac user… still!)

Then, I provided the opening keynote address entitled, "Interactive ePortfolios: Using Web 2.0 tools to Provide Feedback on Student Learning." My slides are also posted here from Slideshare.
I think I opened a lot of eyes about the multiple purposes for portfolios, and the challenges of balancing formative and summative assessment in portfolio development. The pressure of accreditation seems to be driving the push toward portfolios; I think my message of "what's in it for the students" is starting to make people think about the tension between the two approaches. My conversations with faculty after my presentation led me to the conclusion that there is not a lot of experience with ePortfolios, and therefore, not a lot of research to support their implementation in many of these small colleges and universities. I probably unsettled a lot of people who were considering the adoption of different tools. My focus was on the process, and I only talked about a variety of Web 2.0 tools, and none of the commercial tools available. My presentation was recorded with Adobe Connect and is available online.

Later in that afternoon, Erin made her first conference presentation on teaching English Language Learning in Second Life. She was much braver than me… I never count on a live Internet connection for my keynote presentations… only for hands-on workshops. She included participants in her Cypris Chat community, both the founder of the group and some of the student participants. She uploaded her slides into Second Life, and made her presentation "in-world" for both the guests in-world as well as those of us present in the room. I was very proud of her and thought the presentation went very well. She will be repeating the presentation in-world with a group of graduate students from UNLV next week, and then will be doing a conference presentation at the Hawaii International Conference on Education in January, where she cannot count on Internet access. So, she will create some videos to use in her presentation to substitute for a live demo.

In all, most of this has been a good trip, including the eight hour drive each way! I hope I made some contacts that will lead to more collaboration with higher education institutions in the Pacific Northwest.

Labels: assessment, conferences, portfolios, storytelling

Yesterday, I conducted a day-long pre-conference workshop on Web 2.0 Tools for Formative Assessment and Interactive ePortfolios. Today, I gave the ePortfolio track keynote (my slides are embedded here) at IUPUI's Assessment Institute. I recognize the perspective on assessment in the ePortfolio process in higher education that I see here at this conference. It was interesting at the opening session to see the number of people who stood up when asked if they were using standardized assessments (or e-portfolios) and sit down if they thought that method did not enhance student learning; most people using standardized measures sat down... more people using e-portfolios remained standing. An interesting response! In my keynote, I emphasized the concept of Opportunity Cost (what do we give up when we emphasize accountability or improvement (learning) based on Two Paradigms of Assessment (Ewell, 2008). Here are the slides that emphasized these concepts:
This was the first time I have presented these slides, but I intend to write more about these ideas, and share them with other educators who may (or may not!) be wrestling with this tension.

Labels: assessment, conferences, portfolios

Today, Shavelson, Klein & Benjamin published an online article on Inside Higher Ed entitled, "The Limitations of Portfolios." The comments to that article are even more illuminating, and highlight the debate about electronic portfolios vs. accountability systems... assessment vs. evaluation. These arguments highlight what I think is a clash in philosophies of learning and assessment, between traditional, behaviorist models and more progressive, cognitive/constructivist models.

• How do we build assessment strategies that bridge these two approaches? Or is the divide too wide?
• Do these different perspectives support the need for multiple measures and triangulation?

(It reminds me of the current culture clash we are seeing in our larger society today. Is this the equivalent of a red-state/blue-state perspective on assessment/accountability?)

My viewpoint on assessment is through my work with e-portfolios, which are not always developed for the purpose of assessment or accountability. My track keynote at the Assessment Institute in Indianapolis on Monday, October 26, is on "Balancing the Two Faces of E-Portfolios." Those two faces are:  the "portfolio as workspace," a formative approach to support learning with feedback for improvement; and the "portfolio as showcase" of achievements, often used for summative assessment, accountability, or marketing and employment.  I am concerned with the "opportunity cost"* of using ePortfolios for summative assessment.

• What is the opportunity cost of emphasizing accountability in portfolios over reflection and deep learning?
• What learning opportunities are we missing when we completely structure a learner’s portfolio, as often happens in many of the commercial e-portfolio tools in use today?

*opportunity cost: the alternative you give up when you make a decision…the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action

Labels: assessment, portfolios

Just saw this link on a New Zealand listserv. Great resource on using GoogleApps for ePortfolios.

• Google Apps for Education - Rating Our Transition - The Mistakes
  
• Google Apps for Education - Rating Our Transition - The Good
  

Also a nice video to introduce ePortfolios to students (the author, Matt Montagne of Palo Alto, quoted my Google blog entry... several times!):

• Portfolio Talk with Grade 9 Learners
  

Labels: Google Apps, K–12, portfolios

Posted to my website today:
I am embarking on a new form of research, to be conducted online. Participation is open to K-12 teachers or teacher educators. To be a full participant in this open action research project, teachers need to do the following:

1. Set up a new blog to document your process of implementing ePortfolios with your students. Use Blogger, WordPress, Edublogs, or any blog that has RSS feeds. Send your blog address to Dr. Barrett by email. Describe your context (grade level/subject, type of school, state where you are located, whether you are urban, suburban or rural, etc.).
2. Create a blog entry that outlines your goals for implementing portfolios with your students - and create a web page that describes those goals for both students and parents. This web page could be on your school web space, or a Web 2.0 space such as Google Sites. Send the web page address to Dr. Barrett, when you get it posted.
3. Maintain weekly blog entries about the process, including what you did, what your students did, examples of instructional materials that you used (or developed). Dr. Barrett will follow your RSS feed and will respond as time permits by commenting on your blog.
4. Enroll in Dr. Barrett's Google Group on K12 ePortfolios with other teachers participating in the project. In this group, Dr. Barrett will post suggestions and answer questions about the ePortfolio development process using Web 2.0 tools. Due to limited time and resources, answers will be limited to the use of blogs, wikis, GoogleApps and other free Web 2.0 tools, not on using commercial or open source tools. The primary communication will be through email posts to the group. (This group is moderated to avoid spam.)
5. For those who like to Twitter, use the following tag #web2eportfolios or join the group: http://www.twibes.com/group/web2eportfolios
6. Use the following resources to support implementation of ePortfolios in K-12 schools:
   
   
   • http://sites.google.com/site/eportfolioswp/ (ePortfolios with WordPress or Edublogs, developed by Dr. Helen Barrett)
   • http://sites.google.com/site/eportfolioapps/ (ePortfolios with GoogleApps--Docs & Sites, developed by Dr. Helen Barrett)
   • http://sites.google.com/site/reflection4learning/(Reflection for Learning -- ideas for scaffolding reflection in ePortfolios developed by Dr. Helen Barrett and others)
   
   
7. If you are alone in your school, trying to implement ePortfolios, find a partner and get your principal's support! My previous research shows that it really takes a school team and strong leadership to effectively implement ePortfolios. Let's see what we all learn together!

If you maintain weekly blog entries, you may schedule periodic Skype conversations with Dr. Barrett to discuss your specific implementation strategies, issues and concerns.

Labels: portfolios, research, Web2.0

I just finished a Classroom 2.0 webinar on Interactive ePortfolios, and there was some technical problem with my slides, so they started to use my SlideShare version. (For the first time in years, I printed out my slides... good thing! Paper? Oh, well... it all worked out.) I received the following email from Slideshare during my presentation:

"Classroom2.0" is being tweeted more than any other document on SlideShare right now. So we've put it on the homepage of SlideShare.net (in the "Hot on Twitter" section).

Well done, you!

- SlideShare Team

Wow... 15 minutes of fame!

UPDATE on 9/22:  Another email from SlideShare:

Your presentation is currently being featured on the SlideShare homepage by our editorial team.

We thank you for this terrific presentation, that has been chosen from amongst the thousands that are uploaded to SlideShare everday.

Congratulations! Have a Great Day!,

Labels: portfolios, presentation, Twitter, Web2.0

Google Wave – how will it change the online learning landscape?

This blog entry, from a university in New Zealand, points out the potential advantages of Google Wave over a traditional Learning Management System (LMS). I love the quote,

"On every investment, one expects at least some positive return. As far as LMS’s go the students actually get none! All the work they do in a course over the semester is lost as the courses on LMS’s are recycled for use next semester. As far as the notion of ePortfolios go, Google Wave will have a huge impact upon selection of what tool to go with and a positive spin for the students who’ll be able to showcase all of three years work to prospect employees." 

Amen! I am so anxious to get my hands on Google Wave! I hear a beta release is due out September 30, 2009, to a select group of users. Other recent blog posts:

• Why Get Excited About Google Wave and the New Google Interface? 
• Still Some Ripples in Google Wave Beta

A Virtual Revolution Is Brewing for Colleges - washingtonpost.com

Will the Internet Revolution have the same impact on Higher Education as it has on the newspaper industry? This quote is disturbing to me:

The typical 2030 faculty will likely be a collection of adjuncts alone in their apartments, using recycled syllabuses and administering multiple-choice tests from afar.

To me, that statement reflects a misunderstanding of both teaching and assessment.

Ask-Dr-Kirk: E-portfolios A Useful Tool For Both Students And Faculty 

The attachment on this page is by J. Elizabeth Clark, Professor of English, and Bret Eynon, Assistant Dean for Teaching and Learning, both of Laguardia Community College, CUNY entitled "E-portfolios at 2.0—Surveying the Field" published by AAC&U, Winter 2009. This is a good overview of the current issues in implementing ePortfolios on a national and international scale. Providing a good counter-argument to the Washington Post article, the paper identifies the Four Major Drivers of Portfolio Use:

1. pedagogical change in higher education, a growing interest in student-centered active and integrative learning
2. technological capacity to document and publish diverse forms of student learning online... and the experience of learners with social networking tools
3. the pressure for increased accountability in higher education, facilitating a more classroom-based and faculty-driven alternative form of assessment
   
4. the need for “an education passport,” a way for mobile students—and professionals—to represent their learning and carry it with them as they move from one setting to another.
   

One emphasis of the LaGuardia ePortfolio is their attention to visual rhetoric in students' portfolios [increasing personalization and creativity]. A quote from this article supports the notion that the loss of visual richness in "fill-in-the-blanks" types of ePortfolio systems does not allow the level of student engagement that an ePortfolio should encourage, along with my issues of balancing student ownership with institutional accountability:

Through e-portfolios we have an opportunity to harness the power of imagery and digital media to advanced cognitive processes. If standardized presentations become the norm, it may jeopardize student enthusiasm and miss an opportunity to connect academic discourse to the visually rich multimedia universe. (p.21)

...if e-portfolios are only assessment tools, without value or meaning to the students who create them, they will lose vitality and become an exercise in discipline and surveillance. (p.23)

Another Amen! The article also quotes me (about different approaches to ePortfolios and assessment) during a panel at the ePortfolio Conference held at Laguardia in April 2008.

Labels: Google Wave, portfolios

Today, President Obama said:

Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

He also told students, "stay focused, find something you're passionate about... set goals and work hard to achieve them." I would add: How will you know what that "something" is? We all need a space where we discover, explore, and document what we are good at... what we have to offer. What better place for than exploration than a reflective portfolio, to highlight our strengths and passions? In an online journal/portfolio, we can share our goals and dreams with ourselves and our teachers, friends and family. That's an opportunity an ePortfolio can provide.

Labels: portfolios, reflection

I worked on developing two new Google Sites this weekend to support ePortfolio development in both K-12 schools and in higher education:

• GoogleApps ePortfolios - a resource on using Google Apps for Education (and specifically Google Sites) to develop and maintain ePortfolios
• WordPress E-Portfolios - resource on using WordPress or Edublogs to develop and maintain ePortfolios

I am inviting other educators with experience using these tools to participate in developing these two sites. I intend to use these sites as part of the research for my book, also inviting teachers who want to implement ePortfolios with Web 2.0 tools to participate in the research. I will be formulating a plan which will be announced right after Labor Day.

Labels: portfolios, publications, Web2.0

It just gets better and better! For a large company, Google is very responsive to making upgrades to its software. Now we can transfer Google sites between owners (i.e., from an education domain to a personally owned Google account). Now, ePortfolios created in one domain can be transferred to another! That is just what we have been waiting for! Now these ePortfolios can be transferred between accounts, making these sites as portable as blogs! They also improved the Announcements page.

• GoogleApps blog entry: Copy your site, more search options, and better announcements for Google Sites
  
• My Google Sites page with specific instructions written by Heather Stafford for transferring a site between owners
  

In July, Google also announced changes to the Navigation Bar in Google Sites, to automatically generate links to pages as they are created (the option needs to be set for sites created prior to July 2009: More Actions -> Manage Site -> Site Layout ->edit [Navigation] -> Automatically organize my navigation). They also allowed more flexibility in HTML coding embedded in Google Sites pages.

• GoogleApps blog entry: Tags in gadgets, navigation bar links and pasted HTML enhancements in Google Sites
• GoogleApps blog entry: New themes and layouts and automatic navigation in Google Sites
  

In the last entry, Google announced a new attachment section was added to the Google Sites management section for easier management of all uploaded attachments to Google Sites. Now you can see all attachments and which page they appear! Very useful for an ePortfolio. I wonder if you can generate a link to an attachment from another page?
(Thanks to Kathy Schrock's tweets for keeping me current on these changes. Her recent blog entry on how her district is implementing GoogleApps is very insightful.)

Labels: Google Apps, portfolios

This week I was "on the road again" to Texas and Ohio. In Texas, I worked with 3rd-8th grade teachers in a school district, focusing on ePortfolios and the three levels of implementation using a blogging platform (they are using EduBlogs which is based on WordPress). In a previous entry, I provided a link to the diagram that I developed to explain the process between Level 2 (collection+reflection in blog entries) and Level 3 (selection+reflection in thematically-organized pages). After sharing this diagram with my colleagues at Seattle Pacific University, I modified the diagram for higher education, based on how they are actually developing "bPortfolios" using WordPress.com. So I have posted both a K-12 version and a higher education version of my latest concept map. I also set up a Google Site to support my work with the district.

During the latter part of the week, I worked with a small college in Ohio to help a group of faculty members to adopt one new Web 2.0 tool in one of their classes this fall and next spring. I introduced a range of technologies, modeling the use of Google Sites and GoogleDocs. I love it when I learn something new while I am teaching: in a discussion of RSS, I learned how to subscribe to changes in a Google site (by eMail, not RSS). We also explored blogs, Twitter, networking through Google groups and Ning. I also wrapped up the workshop with an introduction to digital storytelling, with lots of higher ed examples. The participants downloaded Audacity, and explored ways that they could add audio clips to their courses in their CMS. From feedback, I hear that they want more on digital storytelling (no surprise!). I will be back there in January for a feedback and sharing session before the spring semester. I will also provide an introduction to creating digital stories (script development, image selection), so that they can prepare a digital story about their learning by the end of the school year. I will be back in late April or early May to do a hands-on workshop so that they can construct their stories. The faculty participants had new laptops (either Mac or Windows), but the experience was almost the same, since we were focusing on web-based tools. I am looking forward to working with them over the rest of this school year, to help these faculty tell the story of their Web 2.0 discoveries.

Labels: K–12, portfolios, training, Web2.0

I am in Texas, working with a school district, where they are implementing ePortfolios using EduBlogs (WordPress). Here is a new model that I created to help explain the process. I was reading David Warlick's Classroom Blogging book on the plane ride from Seattle to Dallas, and the concept of blogging as a conversation really resonated with me, as the left side of this diagram reflects. This model works with any blogging tool that also allows pages, such as Movable Type. I added a full size version of the graphic on one of my web pages.

Labels: blogs, portfolios, tools

This teacher's application to the Google Teacher Academy... the essence of an ePortfolio. I hope he got in!

Labels: portfolios, video

David Warlick wrote about The Next Killer App? (e-portfolios!) in his blog, where he outlines a very nice list of features for eportfolio assessment. My response to his blog and the very interesting comments that followed:

I applaud your list of features, which exist in one form or another somewhere on the internet. The challenge is putting them together into one system without making it very complex. I have experience with a lot of the commercial and open source e-portfolio systems, and the learning curve/ease of use is a challenge. In my blog– http://electronicportfolios.org/blog –I am discussing a lot of the issues of e-portfolios for learning. I have seen e-portfolios in teacher education programs move from stories of deep learning to checklists of standards/competencies. There exists a lot of confusion about e-portfolios: are they reflective journals? or are they assessment management systems? I believe the current collection of commercial tools were developed in response to the NCATE 2000 Teacher Education Program Standards. The problem with ePortfolio tools today is their genesis in higher education. There are very few tools that were created specifically for K-12, and especially usable by primary students.

After the last NECC, I wrote a blog entry (http://bit.ly/LZRM3) where I discussed ePortfolios and the new Accountability Systems discussed in the Obama Education Plan. There needs to be a wider discussion of the implementation of the e-portfolio process in K-12 schools, that is not tool-specific, but provides educators with a range of Web 2.0 technologies to support BOTH student learning and institutional accountability. Right now, I advocate using separate tools to meet these disparate purposes, because I believe that the capability for student personalization and creativity always takes a back seat to data collection and aggregation in these all-in-one systems. My blog entry on Which ePortfolio Tool? (http://bit.ly/4otfoo) outlines some of these issues. I also discuss “Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolio” on my website and in conference presentations and keynotes: http://electronicportfolios.org/balance/ (I believe we need to separate the workspace from the showcase; the process from the product; the learning portfolio from the presentation portfolio.) David, your work on Classroom Blogging is, for me, the foundation of a reflective Learning Portfolio.

Let’s keep up the dialogue. I think some of the best thinking on ePortfolios is happening in New Zealand, where they have published several interesting White Papers, and they are addressing the issues from the students’ learning needs. They have developed a very interesting e-portfolio model (http://bit.ly/RjoaJ) that includes a database to store artifacts or links to documents stored anywhere on the Web. Such a database could be used to organize all of the artifacts for use in a portfolio (regardless of the tool to be used to construct the presentation portfolio). With the Internet, the process is really one of hyperlinking and, as I learned from Hall Davidson at NECC: “All you need is an EMBED code!”

Labels: assessment, K–12, portfolios, Web2.0

Yesterday, I had an interesting conversation with a teacher educator from a college near me. Several years ago, they had adopted one of the commercial tools but just recently gave up on it. Instead they have their students sign up for WordPress.com accounts so that they would own the site after they graduate. I also pointed out the fact that blog content follows an interoperability standard that allows them to transfer their content to another blogging system, should they want to. He had read some of my website (but not this blog) and decided that student choice and creativity were more important than data aggregation! He noticed immediately a change in students' attitudes toward their blogs compared to those who used the rigid commercial system.

We also talked about confidentality and the ability to password-protect individual entries or the entire site. I like the ability to document learning over time in tagged blog entries and then construct pages around specific themes (outcomes/goals/standards). I just wish WP would automatically generate permanent pages with aggregated entries based on tags... but that is a topic for another day.

When asked about how they are managing the data aggregation, he said they are using the gradebook function of the college's CMS to collect faculty evaluation data. We are planning to meet next month to talk about their process.

This discussion reminds me of the discussion held at the NCEPR meeting earlier this week. When talking about technology challenges, more than one person mentioned "rigid" systems, either home-grown or commercial. Once again, the needs of institutions for data aggregation often overshadows the importance of student choice and voice, especially in how the visual presentation truly represents the learner's own vision and creativity. This Teacher Ed program has figured out how to balance the needs of the institution with the needs of their teacher
candidates... who just might want to replicate the process with their own students... with tools that are free and available in schools.

Follow-up: The teacher educator, David Wicks of Seattle Pacific University, gave me permission to share his FAQs about WordPress and his blog entry where he discussed their decision to adopt WordPress, a process he calls bPortfolios (b is for blog).

Labels: assessment, blogs, engagement, portfolios

In response to my blog posting yesterday, I received a link to a blog entry of an educator in Spain who adapted Derek Wenmoth's model (from New Zealand). International collaboration at work! I think the tools on the left side are only a few of the many tools that are used, and the NZ model saw the need for a database to manage the PLE "collection of atifacts" process. Keep up the conversation!

Labels: international, portfolios, schools

Derek Wenmoth, of CORE-ED in New Zealand, published this image in his blog last year, focusing on Conceptualising e-Portfolios. I found this link in a discussion group established by the Ministry of Education in New Zealand on Managed Learning Environments (MLE), "the software and digital content that suppoort learning."

This diagram is very similar to several of my model diagrams, where the storage/repository is separate from the presentation portfolio that I might construct in different systems (as I have done in my "Online Portfolio Adventure"). In all of these diagrams, I have focused on the storage issues with ePortfolios; if we could solve the storage/management issues (a lifelong repository?) then the ePortfolio presentation issues will be more manageable. In the NZ MLE discussion, Trevor Storr made the following suggestion:

Lets assume that we have a national data store for our ePortfolio Applications (note the 's'). Different ePortfolios would access the data store (I could imagine at least one funding model for this). Now if the data store was a simple database that could be mapped to open ePortfolio standards then the data would easily be used by different applications with little user intervention.

The benefit of this approach is that to use the national ePortfolio data store vendors will have to map the database to whatever standard they choose. Secondly, the problem of portability (at a user level) is avoided. Finally, as standards evolve, database fields can be mapped to match the standard.

In summary: the data does not have to move between ePortfolio applications if applications are able to access a single data store that can be mapped to the relevant standard(s).

That is the model that I have been advocating for several years. A year ago, I explored different online storage systems for creating this digital repository. A database of artifacts that is maintained over a lifetime is the centerpiece of Derek's diagram, and should be central to our thinking about next generation ePortfolio tools. In the MLE discussion, Russell responded:

I'm with Trevor here,
I don't think interoperability is about where the components of artefacts/DLO's or artefacts themselves sit or are stored. I think its about the ability of LMS's/Eportfolio's to aggregate that stuff in a way that preserves some chronology and preserves a time stamped example of work. (along with appropriate related assessment) We're already in an age of mashups where a creative online artefact or piece of work may be sucking a component out of flickr or animoto and being combined with text in a blogger type environment. We have a whole cluster of kids in Tamaki, from Y1 -Y13 already creating content in this environment. For me, & I think our cluster, an eportfolio needs to be able to access a set of time stamped artefacts that were created on or offline, (some of the online ones being multi-sourced mashups), that the school & student identify as being part of the student's cumulative record of work. Copies of these artefacts/DLO's could sit in one central repository (as Trevor suggested) and individuals ought to be able to rearrange their portfolio's with different examples of content to suit different purposes over time. I see the portfolio as an overlay and an organiser for this content. I see a developmental continuum of teacher organisation gradually giving way to learner organisation in respect of how this stuff is managed and owned.

OK, Google, when is the Google WebDrive going to be released? The ePortfolio community is ready! What do we need? EMBED codes or drag-and-drop HYPERLINKS to our artifacts in an online data storage system!

Labels: archive, portfolios, Web2.0

An interesting article was posted this week to the PBS Media Shift blog with the title, "Personal Branding Becomes a Necessity in Digital Age." As I read this post, I found many references to processes that sounded like ePortfolios, at least for the purpose of employability.

[Scott] Karp says he built his brand at Publishing 2.0, using it as a soapbox of ideas and a forum to discuss them through comments.

"My blog became resume, business card, references, network all in one," Karp told me. "I would go to conferences, meet people, and find they already 'knew' me through my blog -- an odd but useful form of micro-celebrity."

I've had that same experience with my blog, meeting people who only knew me from this blog, but carrying on a conversation that seemed like they were "inside my head." This quote ties personal branding directly to an ePortfolio for employability:

"When you're considering switching jobs, even a personal website with a small portfolio of sample work can be invaluable," [Matt] Cutts [of Google] said. "People will search for you online, so it's important to take part in that conversation, and having your own website can be a great way to put your best foot forward."

"Grab a domain name and work on burnishing your personal reputation online. It's definitely not the case that everyone needs a blog, but having one place that acts as a face to the world can really help. There's room for a resume/CV, but also for some writing samples that show off your abilities." -- Matt Cutts, Google (from his Letter to a young journalist post)

Isn't that a portfolio? I also love this quote:

...And in this era, you need to be very careful, as search engines can log all sorts of things. Remember: Whatever happens in Vegas...stays on Google." -- Scott Monty, Ford Motor Co.

Even more illuminating are the comments that appeared from other readers of the article:

I find the whole idea of personal branding both a necessity and an opportunity to find ones true voice.

Remember MONEY magazine said in there 12/07 issue - "You're only as good as Google says you are"

Personal branding, to my opinion, is a tool to tell people who you are and what is your unique contribution to the business. It validates and manifests the inner knowledge of your being and empowers you to act freely to your full potential.

Labels: branding, Digital Identity, portfolios

I was doing a search on Google Scholar this week, using the terms "electronic portfolios in elementary education." I came across the following abstract for an article ... the title of the article really hit a nerve with me: Will Mandating Portfolios Undermine Their Value?

Mandating portfolios on a system wide or statewide basis may destroy one of their greatest assets: allowing students to reflect on their learning and feel a sense of hope and control. Once standards are defined by an outside authority, teacher-student collaboration is minimized and the importance of students' own goals and learning assessment diminishes.
-- Case, Susan H. (1994) Will Mandating Portfolios Undermine Their Value? Educational Leadership, v52 n2 p46-47 Oct 1994

This quote underlines the challenge we have with mandating portfolios: how do we maintain student engagement and ownership? Then, again, if there is no extrinsic motivator or mandate, where is the intrinsic motivation to reflect on learning, especially when there are so many competing priorities in our students' lives? If only we could capture the motivation behind social networks to facilitate reflection on learning! That is the place where students reflect on life, albeit most often with a more social, less academic focus.

From my brief longitudinal review of the literature, it is obvious that the research on portfolios focused on K-12 schools in the 90s, and switched over to higher education since 2000. Perhaps the reason focuses on two factors: No Child Left Behind (2001) federal legislation changed the focus of assessment from the K-12 classroom to statewide standardized testing for high stakes accountability; and NCATE 2000 accreditation requirements for Teacher Education programs required establishment of Assessment Management Systems to document teacher candidate achievement and program improvement. In 2002, the Chronicle of Higher Education also declared that ePortfolios were the "next big thing" in IT... and college students provide an easily-researched population for faculty with research and publishing requirements.

While the direction for the renewal of NCLB has not been finalized, there are indications that a broader definition of assessment will allow multiple measures of achievement, supporting more formative, classroom-based assessment, which will make portfolios more popular in K-12 schools. Maybe the portfolio pendulum will move back toward K-12. President Obama made the following statement in his March 10, 2009 speech on Education:

And I'm calling on our nation's governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.

Wouldn't an electronic portfolio help a student showcase these 21st century skills... especially creativity? The Obama Education Plan contained the following statement:

Develop better student assessments that allow teachers and parents to identify and focus on individual needs and talents throughout the school year. Technology can help get information about student performance to teachers and parents in real time, and support ongoing efforts to improve student performance in an area of weakness and support student success in areas where the student shows particular interest or aptitude.

Shouldn't an electronic portfolio be one of those formative assessment tools, allowing a student to showcase their successes... and empower them to assess their own work? I advocate an ePortfolio that is student-centered, emphasizing student ownership and "voice" (as highlighted in the NZ report in my last blog entry). There are other tools that can be used as institution-centered data-collection systems. I hope these two approaches won't get confused... or combined. Otherwise, K-12 ePortfolios will look like many of the ePortfolios produced in Teacher Education programs today, which are, to quote Hartnell-Young and Morriss, "heavy with documentation but light on passion."

Labels: assessment, engagement, K–12, portfolios, reflection

The New Zealand Ministry of Education has just posted a report that discusses these questions:

1. What are the important features of a platform to support ePortfolios for NZ education?
2. Is it possible for one system to accommodate the entire spectrum of requirements across the education sector?
3. How important is interoperability of ePortfolio data?
4. What are the key criteria for selecting a system?
   

This report was written by Ian Fox, Sandy Britain and Viv Hall, and provides a good discussion of the issues of implementing ePortfolios across the K-12 age span. I was impressed by the five case studies included in the Appendix, as well as a brief comparison of the two ePortfolio technical standards: the IMS ePortfolio specification and LEAP2A, developed by CETIS in the U.K. (hint: the report recommended adoption of the LEAP2A standard).

At NECC, I heard a rumor that ePortfolios were proposed as part of the National Educational Technology Plan. After reading this report, I am wondering whether individual states and/or the U.S. Department of Education would consider the ideas presented in this study. I am always so impressed with the implementation of ePortfolios in New Zealand, and I've blogged about them frequently. I am trying to figure out how to get down there in February or March 2010, when I am also going to conferences in India and possibly Singapore. A visit to NZ will wrap up the research for my book!

Labels: portfolios, publications, research, Web2.0

I just finished my presentation at the 30th (and last) National Educational Compting Conference (NECC). Next year the conference will just be called ISTE 2010 in Denver. I uploaded my slides again to Slideshare... it seems a lot easier than converting a .pptx file to .ppt and then uploading to GoogleDocs, publishing it, and then capturing the Embed code. I have a new saying that I got from Hall Davidson's presentation on digital video: "All you need is an Embed code!" (to embed artifacts into a Web 2.0 site, just as I have done here!)
It has been a lot fun introducing my daughter to this community of educators... my 21st NECC, her first. She is much more experienced with social networks and Second Life, which will be an element in my book. We are already learning from each other, as she pursues a Masters in Educational Technology and I write a book on Interactive Portfolios for Learning. I just posted a new document on my website, inviting K-12 schools interested in participating in helping me build some case studies for this book.

Labels: conferences, necc09, portfolios, presentation, Web2.0

Over the years, I have had an avoidance of book publishing... I've canceled two book contracts over the last ten years. With the #1 website on "electronic portfolios" (based on a Google search using that term), I've wondered whether writing a book in the age of Web 2.0 was an oxymoron. With the changing nature of the Internet, wouldn't a book be quickly outdated? I'm glad I didn't publish the book I outlined ten years ago, since my vision has changed radically since that time.

Well, today I signed a book contract with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) for a book on ePortfolios, focusing on K-12 students and teachers at all levels of their careers. The content will focus on creating student-centered interactive portfolios using generic Web 2.0 tools and processes. I have a lot of the components already on my website and written in this blog over the last five years. I feel like a sculptor... all I have to do is cut away all of the irrelevant stone/words and the statue/book will emerge! I intend to develop the book around themes of interactivity, reflection, engagement, and my vision of Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolios.

So, I have seven months to write the first draft of the book! I am looking for case studies from across the world on using Web 2.0 tools for ePortfolios. I am also looking for a few good teachers who would like to implement the portfolio process using "safe" Web 2.0 tools, primarily GoogleApps for Education sites set up as "walled gardens" to protect student privacy. I am also willing to work with schools who have adopted other Web 2.0 tools to implement ePortfolios. I would provide training and then regularly observe some "real life" classrooms implementing ePortfolios using these tools across the age span: primary, intermediate, junior high and high school.

I am interested in finding teachers who are already familiar with the paper-based portfolio process, and who are already comfortable with the use of technology, who would be willing to work with me on implementing ePortfolios over the next school year. I would work with appropriate IT staff and a handful of teachers in their classrooms, on a mutually-agreed-upon schedule, to establish the free Web 2.0 services, and integrate ePortfolios throughout the school year, including student-led conferences, where appropriate. We could collaborate virtually over the Internet, or face-to-face in the Puget Sound area of Washington state.

Interested? Send me an email!

Labels: Google Apps, K–12, portfolios, research, schools, Web2.0

I found this diagram of Gartner's hype cycle in a blog entry about cloud computing and the Tech Crunch blog.

Essentially, industries, companies and people go through the 5 stages of: 1) heh, this is cool, 2) yeah, we all think this cool, 3) woah, we were sold down the river, 4) no, come to think of it, used in the right way, this can be good and finally 5) this has become part of what we do." (Source: Buzz Canuck)

Where are ePortfolios along this continuum? I think Higher Ed is generally in stages 2 and 3... what needs to help move into stages 4 and 5? In my opinion, K-12 is just entering the cycle. I found a couple of online publications by the New Media Centers Consortium that outline emerging technologies:

• The Horizon Report - 2009 Edition (Higher Education)
  One year or less: Mobiles and Cloud Computing
  Two to Three Years: Geo-Everything and The Personal Web
  Four to Five Years: Semantic-Aware Applications and Smart Objects
• The Horizon Report - 2009 "First Ever" K-12 Edition
  One year or less: Collaborative Environments and Online Communication Tools
  Two to three years: Mobile Devices and Cloud Computing
  Four to five years: Smart Objects and The Personal Web

It is interesting to note that the NMC sees K-12 following higher education in some technologies that I think are going to have a big impact on ePortfolios: Cloud Computing and The Personal Web. It is encouraging that Collaborative Environments and Online Communication Tools are imminent adoptions in K-12 (already adopted in higher education), and I believe both of these technologies are essential to an ePortfolio 2.0 environment.

Labels: portfolios, publications, Web2.0

There has been a lot of chatter online about using VoiceThread as an ePortfolio publishing environment. In an online class, I became aware of the following link: VoiceThread as a Digital Portfolio - a teacher blog entry with instructions and two examples of digital stories using VoiceThread for student-led conferences in fifth grade. In the first example, the feedback is in the form of text, in the second there are several voice comments; a great way to involve parents! There are two really good examples of reflection that focus on what the students learned, the challenges, and their goals for improvement in different content areas.

I recently wrote to the teacher who wrote that blog entry, requesting a copy of the booklet that she used to scaffold the students' reflections. This is the response that I got this morning:

I'd just like to share with you this little thought too. Do you remember speaking in New Zealand a number of years ago, at the ULearn Conference in Auckland? You were one of the keynote speakers and you spoke about the power of telling stories - you shared with us one story that combined photos, pictures, music and voice. Your keynote really struck a chord with me, as you emphasised the beauty and power of simplicity and choice. I base most of my digital storytelling and digital portfolio work with students on the things I took away from your keynote.
You can imagine how "tickled" I am now to be giving back something to you. Thank you for the inspiration back then and for the continued inspiration into ePortfolios.

Wow! It is thrilling to get this type of feedback from a keynote presentation that I gave in 2005.

Early childhood technology expert Gail Lovely, quoted in an article in T.H.E. Journal, says "The power of this [tool]...is in the commenting." Here are some resources from the VoiceThread website:

• VoiceThread Manuals (in PDF) Getting Started in the Classroom and Sharing VoiceThreads
  
• A series of tutorials, created with VoiceThread

Labels: portfolios, reflection, storytelling, Web2.0

This is the 36th tool that I have used to re-create my electronic presentation portfolio, as part of my Online Portfolio Adventure. The process moved very smoothly; I was able to convert all URLs to weblinks (copy the link, create a weblink and the URL in the Clipboard is automatically inserted). The tool allowed me to reconstruct my portfolio in less than two hours, once I figured out the interface, copying the information from my Google Sites portfolio where I had the URLs on the page (and the links). All of my other artifacts are web links. I prefer to have the links open a new window (and the portfolio remains open). When an artifact is opened, the reader can then close the window to go back to the portfolio. However, in this tool, the weblinks opened in the lower window. Clicking on the Back arrow went back to the source of the link. That makes it very nice for keeping the portfolio navigation on the screen.

This tool would work very well for a presentation portfolio but other tools will need to be used for summative assessment. To aggregate assessment data, a spreadsheet could be created to collect quantitative data. The real advantage of Personal Brain is the dynamic nature of the mind map to organize and present the portfolio. I was able to upload a few files as attachments. I was able to create this hyperlinked set of web pages, with no knowledge of HTML. Once the "plex" was built, I exported it to HTML view, which created a folder that I uploaded to my website. However, to make any changes to the site required me to export the entire site again. There is also no interactivity with readers. So, while this is a very interesting "mind mapping" approach to developing a presentation portfolio, it lacks the ability to insert graphics except as an attachment. The software must be downloaded to a desktop computer to construct the "plex" so I used the Pro 30-day Trial version, but I'm not sure the Free Edition allows exporting to HTML.

Labels: portfolios, tools

On April 1 this year, I provided the keynote address at the Sakai Conference in Rhode Island where they have implemented Sakai and the Open Source Portfolio for all high school students in that state. My presentation focused on my Balance article, and the importance of student-centered strategies that included the students' own stories, with personalization, multimedia, and creativity. There were students in the audience, and I was told that they loved what I had to say. One of them told their teachers, "Our portfolios look like our textbooks, they don't look like us!"

So, as we consider tools, I think it is important to value the capability for students to personalize their ePortfolios as much as the capability to collect assessment data. There is a trade-off in most of the ePortfolio tools, between the type of creativity and personalization that students have in their social networking websites, and the data collection for institutions to track student achievement. I also think an online workspace in an ePortfolio system should include a reflective journal (a blog) for students to immediately reflect on their learning and the work that they are collecting. The blogging process facilitates feedback for improvement (assessment for learning--Black & Wiliam, 1998). Then, when students put together a hyperlinked presentation portfolio at the end of a course or a school year, they will have the collection/reflection of work to draw upon to build a more summative portfolio.

Labels: portfolios, schools, Web2.0

I found this cartoon on a website in the U.K. focusing on choosing an ePortfolio system. It really shows that our underlying assumptions have an impact on the way ePortfolios are implemented... and on the tools that are chosen to meet these diverse purposes.

Labels: portfolios

I've been working with K-12 educators on implementing ePortfolios. I am seeing more attention being paid to GoogleApps, as evidenced in an email I received today:

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.

I just set up a Google Group on developing electronic portfolios in K-12 using Google Apps:
* Group name: Using Google Apps for ePortfolios in K-12 Education
* Group home page: http://groups.google.com/group/k12eportfolios
* Group email address k12eportfolios@googlegroups.com
I am hoping that other K-12 educators can join the group, and share their experiences developing ePortfolios with these free online tools. I recommend that if schools decide to use GoogleApps, they establish their own Google Apps for Education site, with their own domain name, as a quasi "walled garden" where student work can only be viewed by someone with an account within that domain.

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

Some new online articles and an updated version of a book:

• 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).

I also received the Second Edition of The Learning Portfolio: Reflective Practice for Improving Student Learning, edited by John Zubizarreta. The new version of this book, part of the Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series, provides 14 articles under a section entitled, "Models of Learning Portfolios" and both Sample Learning Portfolio Selections and a large section of Practical Materials, including portfolio assignments and rubrics. The author made a slight change to his graphic model of a learning portfolio, which illustrates the following equation: Reflection + Documentation/Evidence + Collaboration/Mentoring = Learning. It is at the intersection of these three elements that you will find a Learning Portfolio.

Labels: portfolios, publications

I spent the first half of this week visiting schools in the school district where I am facilitating their implementation of ePortfolios K-12. Then I facilitated a two-day workshop with the committee. On the first day, there were "progress reports" and I gave the committee feedback on my visits to all of the schools. In the afternoon, we focused on Change, and I facilitated the Change Game with the committee. I think they really saw the challenges of implementing a change across the district.

On the second day, we built a plan for district-wide implementation of electronic portfolios as a developmental process, addressing both the diverse and growing technology competency of the students and teachers, as well as the varied experience with the portfolio learning and assessment process. We identified three levels of portfolio implementation: the ePortfolio as Storage (Collection), the ePortfolio as Workspace/Process (Collection + Reflection), and the ePortfolio as Showcase/Product (Collection + Selection/Reflection + Direction + Presentation). Of course, our goal is to get everyone to the third level by high school, we also recognized that there are developmental levels of both teachers and students, and that to be successful with ePortfolios, there has to be good integration of technology across the curriculum, as well as a student-centered approach to reflection and deep learning.

I set up the framework for the plan in Google Sites, but they wrote their grade-level plans collaboratively in GoogleDocs and I linked these plans into the Google Site. We have developed a first draft, which they are going to be able to share with the staffs in their individual schools. I will be heading back in May to help with the practical implementation of this plan. Luckily, each school site has access to an xServe, so they can avoid slow Internet access, and we are going to figure out how to use the blogs and wikis in Leopard Server to store the reflections and digital artifacts. The district has implemented a 1-1 Macbook program in all secondary schools, so this is a wonderful opportunity for this Apple Distinguished Educator to see a truly creative model in ePortfolios being implemented!

Labels: portfolios, training

I had a great two weeks. I spent three days in Eugene, working with the University of Oregon's ePortfolio Committee. While in Eugene, I also did a webinar on ePortfolios and Web 2.0 for ISTE. I went to the NCCE Conference in Portland for one day and I then drove to San Francisco. During this week there were meetings at San Francisco State on the new version of the eFolio Minnesota, and then a Day of Dialog on ePortfolios sponsored by SFSU. That was an interesting (but fragmented) day. The groups were divided into two or three rooms, and there wasn't a clear, common theme, nor an opportunity for all of the groups to gather for a common gathering. But there were a lot of good conversations because they built two times into the agenda for conversation around different themes.

On the last two days, the National Coalition for ePortfolio Research (NCEPR) had a meeting, and I joined as part of the University of Oregon team. It was a very valuable experience. We developed a del.icio.us set of weblinks related to NCEPR and eportfolios. Here were some of my reflections during the first day:

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.

I hope I can stay involved with the UOFolio team as they go through the process. I find the collaboration and conversation to be such a valuable part of my own learning. I really miss this type of community of practice. Maybe I should take a recent offer to create a course that I offer online. Or maybe I should try to find a university that wants me to facilitate the development of ePortfolios with either faculty or students through an online tutorial format. I realize now how much I miss having colleagues that I can talk with, share face-to-face on a regular basis.

During the second day of the NCEPR meeting, there was an emphasis on Web 2.0 tools and social networking. Each group shared documents that outlined their students' use of Web 2.0 tools. Then the entire group discussed the question that I asked during the EPAC online chat (on Monday): We really need to look at the engagement [motivation] factors that drive the use of social networks: how we can incorporate those factors into ePortfolios?

Labels: portfolios, research, Web2.0

I've been getting more requests for my recommendations on software for ePortfolios. Here is a request on one of my listservs"

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.

My response: Here is my answer to anyone who emails me about ePortfolio tools: "It Depends!" The first question to ask is not about what tool to use, but rather: "What is your purpose for having your students develop an e-portfolio?" A clear description of the purpose should then drive the selection of appropriate tools. [Yes, plural... integrate multiple tools into the process.]

Do you want a student-centered ePortfolio that is the student's story of their own learning, or do you want a system to collect data about student achievement for an external audience (accreditation, accountability). These are the extreme ends along a continuum, but also the major debate in the field today. In my opinion, if you say you want to do both, then pick two different tools, because when these two functions are combined within the same system, data collection/management tends to depress creativity and personal expression in student portfolios. [See my last blog entry about MySpace.]

I will be doing a webinar for ISTE on February 16 entitled, "ePortfolios and Web 2.0" where I will focus on a variety of tools to create student-centered portfolios: WordPress MU (a multi-user blog with pages you host on your own server), GoogleApps for Education, and a variety of Wikis. Google Sites is Google's version of a wiki (replacing Google Pages) and well integrated with GoogleDocs and other Google tools (except Blogger). I just recommend that if you decide to use Google, establish your own Google Apps for Education site, with your own domain name, as a quasi "walled garden" where student work can only be viewed by someone with an account within your domain.

The Electronic Portfolio Action Committee (EPAC) is conducting an online discussion on Monday, February 23, to discuss the whole range of tools that I outlined on my website (http://electronicportfolios.org/categories.html) or in my blog, where I am currently exploring what I call "balancing the two faces of ePortfolios" as mentioned above. You can read my article that is "in progress": http://electronicportfolios.org/balance/

I'm also doing a "bring your own laptop" workshop at NECC (Saturday, June 27) entitled, "Web 2.0 Tools for Classroom-Based Assessment and Interactive Student ePortfolios" where we will focus on GoogleApps, but will also discuss blogs and wikis.

There are more commercial ePortfolio systems out there than course management systems (per Trent Batson in Campus Computing, 1/7/09). Most of these commercial systems are what I call "assessment management systems" developed in higher education to meet the accreditation requirements of Teacher Education programs [or as an add-on to a course management system used primarily in higher education]... There are few commercial systems that were created specifically for K-12. With the current economic environment, most schools are looking for a free solution... I just worry about the continued economic viability of some Web 2.0 sites. That's why I tend to prefer the big "cloud computing companies" (especially Google).

Sorry this message is so long... it just seemed like a "teachable moment" and very current with my own discussions in the ePortfolio community [including my own Google Group on Researching Lifelong ePortfolios and Web 2.0... requires membership application with reason for wanting to join].

Labels: portfolios, training, Web2.0

I enjoyed the video clip of Charlie Rose's interview with the co-founders of MySpace, conducted on Tuesday night. They claimed that there are 125 million visitors a month to their website. Of particular interest to me at the end of the interview was their response to Charlie's question, "Realizing that you're not a philosopher, why is it so compelling for so many people?" Chris DeWolfe's response:

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.

The issue of personal expression is the major challenge with many of the ePortfolio systems that are in use in formal education today. It is fascinating to contemplate the role of social networks to build what I call "Your Digital Self" online (EIFeL calls ePortfolios "digital identity"). There are many capabilities missing from the current social networks that we need in institutional ePortfolios. Some of the most current ePortfolio systems (Elgg, Mahara, Epsilen) have blogs and built-in social networks, but most of the commercial and open source tools lack the capability for the level of personal expression found in MySpace or Facebook. As DeWolfe described the "discovery mechanism" which is learning, it is interesting to think about creating "Academic MySpaces" (that aren't blocked on most school networks!) that would engage students as much as the current crop of social networking sites. Engagement just won't be a factor until we can incorporate those elements of personal expression.

Labels: engagement, portfolios, social networks

I am working on a new diagram and document that focuses on the two major purposes of ePortfolios in (primarily) higher education, and will discuss the difference in strategies and tools, much of it discussed in other entries in my blog. I've transfered the working version into a GoogleDocs file, and invite co-authors who are interested in working on these ideas. This is also the theme of an upcoming keynote address that I will be making next fall.

Labels: assessment, blogs, portfolios, publications, reflection

On Thursday, January 15, I participated in an online audio conference, sponsored by "Teachers are Talking," that was streamed live through EdTechTalk. It was my first time using this process. A few of us connected via Skype and broadcast to a small audience who joined in a chat room and asked questions or posted comments in their live streaming page. The show should soon be available online for download.

It was an interesting conversation. Perhaps I got a little radical, but I think I got a good response from my comments about teachers trying to implement ePortfolios without having that experience for themselves. When asked how we could improve the process, I used one word: modeling (teachers being able to show their own portfolios to their students). I was also asked about how I keep going when ePortfolios seem to have lost their popularity in K-12 schools (especially in response to NCLB). I just emphasized my view of the lifelong, life-wide perspective, talked about my vision of "Portfolios in the Cloud" and a lifelong approach, which several people commented that they had never thought about portfolios in this way. I emphasized student ownership and personalization of ePortfolios, and the two different types of portfolios. Many of the participants currently are blogging with their students... I showed how these blog entries, with any work attached, is the learning portfolio (portfolios as workspace/process). Then we talked about the challenges with putting together a more formal presentation portfolio (time consuming, questions about audience). A lot of interesting questions and, I hope, an intriguing discussion.

How do I keep up my enthusiasm for this process? I mentioned the inclusion of digital stories in ePortfolios, as a way to personalize and support reflection. The digital storytelling workshops that I am doing with teachers and students are very inspiring.

Labels: portfolios, storytelling

There are several new articles recently published about ePortfolios, primarily in higher education:

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

I'm sitting in the OSPI conference (state of Washington's Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, not the Open Source Portfolio Initiative) at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, in a session on "School 2.0: Leading, learning and living in a flat world." The content is not new (to me) but it seems to be new to a lot of the participants. This is a conference for all of the teachers in the state. In this session, due to the weather in the Northwest (floods and avalanches), one of the presenters was stuck in a hotel about 90 miles away, but participating on Skype and using a presentation on GoogleDocs. I know, I've used Skype for years and have blogged about some of my online conferences (mostly from my home, where I have great connection speed). The presenters at the session have struggled with low bandwidth in the convention center. This session was a real-world example of the challenges of using Web 2.0 in the classroom: adequate bandwidth for sharing video. I know why in my presentations I only show videos that I have stored on my own hard drive.

I am hoping that Obama's proposal to upgrade schools for the information age will include not only more hardware and increased bandwidth, but also professional development for teachers. I am preparing for an ISTE Webinar on February 18, entitled "ePortfolios and Web 2.0" with this description:

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

Daniel Goleman defines emotional intelligence as:

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

I found this diagram online:
While the source of this diagram is focused on success in organizations, these abilities are essential for success in education at all levels. While most of this model focuses on empathy and interpersonal skills, the Personal competencies (Who I am... self awareness and What I do... self-motivation) is well documented in reflections that are the "heart and soul" of a reflective journal/portfolio.

Labels: portfolios, reflection

I just watched Arianna Huffington's interview on Charlie Rose Show, December 4, 2008, where she talked about blogging and the new book just published by her and the editors at Huffington Post. I'm one of those new readers of her blog site, getting hooked during the election campaign beginning in August 2008. I think blogs have had a huge impact on our political discourse; Arianna Huffington credits Obama's use of the Internet and social networking with his election as the 44th President of the United States.

Huffington said that blogging is successful because it is an intimate, conversational form of writing (first thoughts, best thoughts) and "the key is really to find your voice and to find your passion. That's what makes a good blog." These ideas support my opinion that a form of blogging should be included in any ePortfolio process: it provides a conversational form of writing that is essential for reflection and deep learning, which I believe is part of the "heart and soul" of a portfolio. I am promoting the concept of two portfolios: the Working Portfolio, which WSU calls the "workspace" or some schools have called the [digital] shoebox; and any number of Presentation Portfolios (depending on purpose and audience) which WSU calls the "showcase" and schools call "showtime!" In order to build more formal presentations, we need the digital archive or the storage of work samples (collection) to draw upon (selection) for inclusion in these presentations. Reflection takes place at two points in time: when the piece of work (an artifact) is saved in the digital archive (a contemporaneous reflection while the work is fresh on our minds)... thus the role of the blog; and when (and if) this piece is included in the more formal presentation/showcase or assessment portfolio. The reflection written at this point of time is more summative or cumulative, providing a much broader perspective on a body of work that represents the author's goals for the showcase portfolio. Technologically, selection would involve creating a hyperlink to specific blog entries (reflection) which may have documents (artifacts) as attachments.

These two types of reflection involve two levels of support for reflection: the reflection in a blog would focus on a specific piece of work or learning experience (such as in service learning), and what has been learned while the experience is very fresh or immediate. The reflection in a presentation portfolio is more of a retrospective as well as an argument, providing a rationale that a collection of work meets specific outcomes or goals (related to the goal of the portfolio).

Most ePortfolio systems tend to emphasize the showcase (portfolio as product) rather than the workspace (portfolio as process). There are also two different types of organization: Blogs are organized in reverse chronological order; most showcase portfolios are organized thematically, around a set of learning goals, outcomes or standards. Both levels of reflection and organization are important, and require different strategies for supporting different levels of reflection.

Labels: blogs, portfolios, reflection

The following item was posted in the Ning social network of the next ePortfolio conference to be held in Europe on October 22-24, 2008, in Maastricht, The Netherlands. The title of the blog entry was "Towards a future that works - the Committee on Labour Market Participation recommends an ePortfolio for all workers."

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.

It will be very interesting to observe the implementation of this plan. This policy is the first national statement that I have seen that recommends e-portfolios outside of formal education institutions, and is part of the territorial approach to ePortfolios promoted by EIfEL.

I have also been contacted by Athabasca University which is Canada's biggest (almost only) open and distance university, where they do PLAR (Prior Learning Assessment and Accreditation) across all programs there. Their portfolios are still primarily paper-based, although they have a virtual version of a paper-based portfolio posted on their website. Their portfolio manual (PDF) provides comprehensive guidance on building one of these PLAR portfolios.

Labels: international, portfolios

I just left a workshop in an elementary school in a small town in New Hampshire, where a few teachers were learning to use GoogleApps for Education. They established their own domain name for their school, and learned how to manage the site so that it restricts viewing by only those who have an account in their domain. They found that they were able to restrict the "gadgets" that were available for students to add to their Start pages. We recognize that there are growing numbers of universities adopting this tool; I hope that Google recognizes the special needs of K-12 schools who adopt this toolset, with students who are under age 18.

In this after-school workshop, we covered using GoogleDocs on the first afternoon, then we covered Google Sites on the second day. They taught me a lot about how to modify their sites. (I love working with creative teachers; I learn so much from them!) I introduced how to use the Announcements page type in Google Sites for students to create reflective journals (simple blogs). I've already modified my "how-to" page based on my work with them, and set up another site to demonstrate the various examples with all of the "how-to" instructions.

I am now convinced that in GoogleApps (Sites, Docs, etc.) I have found the best free Web 2.0 tool for maintaining an online personal learning environment that can be used for formative assessment in education. Here are the descriptions of the workshops that I am doing in New Hampshire this fall:

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

Google Sites (the former JotSpot wiki bought by Google in 2006) was released in February 2008 and is replacing Google Page Creator. I recently tried to log into Google Page Creator and got the following message:

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.

With that situation, I decided to work on a Google Sites version of my online portfolio. My detailed reflection on this tool is part of my Reflections on creating this 35th online version of my online portfolio. I am finishing up another "How-To" page on "Creating an Interactive Presentation Portfolio with Google Sites."

The bottom line: this tool has the potential to be one of the best free Web 2.0 tools to construct a presentation portfolio. I really like the way that it integrates (and can embed) all types of GoogleDocs and video stored in either YouTube or Google Video. With RSS feeds and a very simple interface, I think it will have a very low learning curve for the average user who is familiar with other Google Tools. It is much easier to use than Google Pages. Each site includes a Site Map and the author can decide which pages to include in the Navigation bar through the page settings.

I have a lot of questions about file attachments and the File Cabinet page type, but since the tool is still in Beta, I'm sure there is a lot more development ahead. This tool is a winner, especially when used within the GoogleApps Education Edition, where collaboration can be restricted to members within the same domain. I will be learning a lot more about this tool this fall as I help teachers in a few New Hampshire communities to implement GoogleApps Education Edition for student portfolios under the NH Educational Technology Plan.

Labels: portfolios, tools

I just received this email, which was wonderful feedback from the ePortfolio Conference in Wellington, New Zealand, in March 2007.

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

It is messages like this that make my work so rewarding! I responded with how very gratifying it was to receive this type of feedback, asked for his permission to publish the message above, and expressed my interest in being able to see videos of some of the student presentations. I also shared some of my work with GoogleApps Education Edition. His response:

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.

I couldn't have said it better, myself!

Labels: learning, portfolios, storytelling

I am attending a workshop on "Using Worldware for Student Success in the Classroom and Beyond" conducted by Gary Brown from Washington State University, being held at the Campus Technology Conference in Boston. I had an opportunity to see a much larger picture of the WSU work that I have been observing from afar. I am impressed by their characterization of ePortfolios as "workspace" vs. "showcase" of student work. This is a glimpse of their concept of the ePortfolio as Personal Learning Environment.

Labels: portfolios, Web2.0

Are Digital Portfolios a Realistic Alternative to Standardized Testing? ISTE’s magazine, Learning & Leading with Technology, wants your opinion. If you would like to share your thoughts on this topic, reply to Paul Wurster (pwurster@iste.org) with a 25–50 word response by July 15. They are going to select 6–8 of the best comments they receive (attributing them with name, affiliation, city, and state) and publish them in the September/October issue of L&L. Not sure? Read the opinion of two other education professionals in the June/July edition of Point/Counterpoint in L&L on the Web.

The second paper referenced in my previous blog entry contained a reference to a January 2006 article by Kathleen Blake Yancey in Campus Technology: "An Exercise in Absence... Notes on the Past and Future of Digital Portfolios and Student Learning." She makes excellent points about student learning and engagement, the importance of reflection, and some cautions about portfolios:

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."

I am concerned that the positivists, those advocating the use of portfolios to replace standardized testing, are having a major impact on mandatory portfolio implementation in some states. It reminds me of Lee Shulman's [in Lyons (1998) With Portfolios in Hand] five dangers of portfolios, and specifically "perversion"

"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)

These articles (and the Shulman chapter) provide a more student-centered view of portfolios in education. At NECC by contrast, I talked with at least one technology vendor selling the "e-portfolio as standardized-test-replacement" and two classroom teachers who focused on a more student-centered approach to electronic portfolios (see my last NECC blog entry). I actually think we need both. Portfolios best support learning and formative assessment; standardized tests are best for institutional accountability. One can inform the other, but not replace it. When I write my 25-50 word response, I'll post it here in my blog.

Labels: assessment, portfolios

I just learned about a couple of new papers that have recently been published about ePortfolios in higher education. The first one was published in the Journal of Computing in Higher Education Spring 2008, Vol. 19(2), 47-90: "Development of the Electronic Portfolio Student Perspective Instrument: An ePortfolio Integration Initiative" with authors Albert Dieter Ritzhaupt, Oma Singh, Thelma Seyferth (Department of Secondary Education) and Robert F. Dedrick (Department of Educational Measurement and Research), University of South Florida. Here is the executive summary:

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.

Another article was fully published online in The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 9, No 2 (2008), ISSN: 1492-3831: " Eportfolios: From description to analysis" with authors Gabriella Minnes Brandes and Natasha Boskic, The University of British Columbia, Canada. Here is the abstract from that article:

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

I am sitting in the Blogger's Cafe in the San Antonio convention center. Yesterday, I did my short presentation on the final results of the REFLECT Initiative. I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the vendor exhibits. Today, I am enjoying the morning just doing networking, taking with people who are dropping by, and decompressing after four very full days. It is time to go home and get settled into my new condo!

I just had a wonderful conversation with a high school English teacher, who used my website for resources on working with her 11th grade students on electronic portfolios (she showed me some examples). She started her students with a blog, but many of them went far beyond the blog and created their own presentation portfolios using one of the Web 2.0 tools. She herself had to use one of the commercial e-portfolio/assessment management systems in her graduate program, and she said, "It took all the thinking out of it. They gave me the standards and told me which artifacts to put into each one! It wasn't as effective as what my students did!" I am hoping she will share her story with my new Google Group: web2eportfolios. I invite others to join the group (please give me your reason for wanting to join as you fill out the form).

I had another delightful conversation with a tech coordinator from a small Texas school district, who talked to me about his proposal for hosting ePortfolios for his 1400 student school district using WordPressMU. We talked about this strategy, and how they could implement the blogs and pages that the tool supports. Their district has already established a GoogleApps account for branded GMail in their district as well as all of the other Google tools. They are also setting up servers to host podcasts and video sharing. I am hoping he can also tell their story through my new Google Group.

Labels: NECC08, portfolios, Web2.0

I am at the 2008 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) and attended a session conducted by two Google employees. In the Q&A after the session, I had the opportunity to ask the following question: "When am I going to be able to use my GMail space to store plain old documents?" The two of them whispered something to each other and then said something about having a policy not to talk about when unannounced products would be available. But then they said something like "Soon!" Hmmm...

On Sunday, I did a day-long workshop on Web 2.0 Tools for Classroom-Based Assessment and Interactive Student ePortfolios. We started with a blog and them moved to Google tools (GoogleDocs Documents for creating artifacts, GoogleDocs Spreadsheet for creating a table to keep track of artifacts, GoogleDocs Presentation to create a linear presentation portfolio, and Google Pages to create a hyperlinked portfolio (without the interactivity of the GoogleDocs tools). One of the participants, who had been playing with the Zoho tools, and especially the Zoho Notebook, tried the Google Sites tools (released in February) and found it to meet his needs better than the other tool. I will need to try the Sites tool when I get home.

Labels: NECC08, portfolios, Web2.0

On June 1, Campus Computing published another article on ePortfolios and Web 2.0, entitled "Unleashing the Power of Web 2.0," which highlighted some of the work of Washington State University and their use of SharePoint. It also discussed the continuum of ePortfolios as Personal Learning Environments (PLE--on the learner-centered end), and ePortfolios as Assessment Management Systems (AMS--on the institution-centered end). The article discussed the Evolution of Web 2.0 and the ePortfolio, and reported on discussions with three ePortfolio vendors (Digication, Angel Learning, and Desire2Learn) and the adaptations that they are making to their commercial systems in response to the Web 2.0 technologies. One of the ironies of this discussion is that free Web 2.0 technologies could be a threat to some of the commercial tools, since students could replicate ePortfolio/PLE functions of many of the commercial tools using these Web 2.0 tools. Accumulating institutional accountability data (AMS) is the real value added of many of the other commercial tools not mentioned in the article. The real value of Web 2.0 tools is for the students to create an ePortfolio that they can own and modify across the lifespan, gaining valuable lifelong learning skills that they can use once they leave higher education. That is the value of the WSU model using SharePoint, and other places using other types of social software for ePortfolios (blogs, wikis, Google tools, etc.)

The author of this Campus Technology article also published an earlier article, "ePortfolios Meet Social Software" which discusses some of the "stickiness" issues with ePortfolios, and the interest in the "own-it-for-life model" of implementation.

Labels: portfolios, Web2.0

Last week, I added a new page to my website: Learning about Electronic Portfolios. I converted the "open source" MOSEP course, created by the Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft under a European Commission grant, into HTML format (I found their wiki hard to navigate, and impossible to link to specific pages within the course). After I finished, I discovered the PDF version of their course materials online, but it is still impossible to link to specific lessons in the course! I also posted the course that I have been constructing about Web 2.0 Tools for Lifelong & Life Wide Learning. The course includes "Portfolio Pointers" on how to use the different Web 2.0 tools to construct an online portfolio "mashup".

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

I received a comment on a previous blog entry that I would like to highlight here, with a graduate student's portfolio created with WSU's SharePoint service.

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/

Thanks, Matt!

Labels: portfolios, tools

The comment on my blog entry earlier this week, made by Nils Peterson at Washington State University, encouraged me to revisit some other entries that have come to my attention over the last six months:

• 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

Eifel is sponsoring a conference in Montreal in May 2008 entitled, "ePortfolio & Digital Identity." Serge Ravet of Eifel has recently written a blog entry entitled, "The ePortfolio is dead? Long life to Digital Identity!" I think the way Serge conceptualized the ePortfolio is more like my concept of the Working Portfolio, or the Digital Archive for Life. Below are Serge Ravet's 2004 metaphors as listed on my Portfolio Metaphors page:

• 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

These metaphors go far beyond the concept of a portfolio as "a purposeful collection of work that demonstrates efforts, progress and achievement" over time. So, giving that list of services a new name is fine with me... but I don't think the ePortfolio itself is dead! Just the conceptual definition that Eifel held in 2004. I have always seen two elements of ePortfolio development:

• 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.
  

The research that I have conducted since 2004, where I have recreated my portfolio with now 34 different tools, services, or software (my Online Portfolio Adventure) really focused on the ePortfolio as Product or Presentation. All of my artifacts were stored on my web server or one of my online services, such as my .Mac account. My most recent study, looking at different online storage services, plus this blog (my own eDOL), represents the concept of the Working Portfolio, or ePortfolio as Process.

As more companies begin to offer online storage or lock boxes, such as Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Google (medical records right now), Amazon's S3, IBM, and a host of other online storage services, we need to find another term that incorporates all of these purposes. What would be the unifying concept of Eifel's former ePortfolio services, Wells Fargo's digital safe deposit box, Europass' universal CV or online personal health records? I'm not sure I like the word identity in the context of the Working Portfolio, because it will be further misunderstood (just as the term ePortfolio has been). The term identity is used in a variety of other contexts, such as identity theft (criminology), identity development (sociology and psychology), corporate identity (business), etc. Within the context of portfolios in education, perhaps a better term to use would be "digital archive" or "lifetime personal web space" or just plain online storage.

I do see the larger picture that Serge proposes:

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.

That is certainly a provocative statement, subject to further debate. I've never viewed the use of an ePortfolio as simple. Perhaps that is because the more I learn about ePortfolio development, the more I see its complexity. I agree that young learners need to be good "digital citizens" and be more aware of the consequences of their online activities. ISTE has made Digital Citizenship one of the new National Educational Technology Standards (NETS). I am excited to continue this debate in Montreal.

Labels: archive, ePMontreal08, portfolios

In my AERA conference blog entry, I mentioned the research done at the University of Calgary and their concept of eDOL: Electronic Documentation of Learning, which is essentially a reflective journal that teacher candidates maintain. For more information, they have a short article in the campus newletter, and a longer article in Field Notes, the MT Program Newsletter Fall 2007 (entitled Learning to document Learning Online - an introduction to edoL on pages 8-9 in this PDF).

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.”
  

The University of Calgary has added an important dimension to the ePortfolio literature, by emphasizing the importance of process (the eJournals or blogs) as much as the product (the ePortfolios).

Labels: portfolios, reflection, research

I have been aware of the MOSEP project (funded by the European commission, managed by the Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft). I was just sent the link to a PDF version of their report on the project. This is a very impressive piece of research, with participation from across Europe, specializing in adolescents (aged 14 to 16). To quote their web page:

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.

They also developed online materials for a course for educators which helps support the process. As part of that course, I found the following video, created by Graham Attwell of Pontydysgu (in Wales) on E-portfolio Development and Implementation used in the Mosep Course (this flash video is streaming from Europe, so it may be slow...be patient):
This project is further evidence that the Europeans are very enlightened about the use of ePortfolios, especially with adolescents. I am impressed with the emphasis on building self-esteem through the development of an ePortfolio in the adolescent years.

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

I received a notice that the Online Education Database has published a new article: e-Learning Reloaded: Top 50 Web 2.0 Tools for Info Junkies, Researchers & Students. Here is also an excellent list of 15 Websites to Learn Web 2.0 written by educator Vicki Davis and published by 21st Century Connections. Vicki is well known for her use of Wikispaces with her students (her #1 link). Her #2 link is Google and its many services.

I have also been doing some research on the different tools that can be used for online storage, as I found Google's March 2006 vision of "a place for users to store 100% of their data online.”

• "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.
  

The big question is, WHEN??? I am experimenting with a third party addition to my Firefox browser, called GSpace, which lets me use 2 GB of my GMail/Picasa web space, being able to transfer files into folders within a browser window. I have already paid $20 (annual fee) to upgrade my online Picasa Storage so that I could upload more than the 1 GB limit for images. As of today, GMail storage has increased to more than 6 GB per account (and keeps growing).

To effectively use any of these virtual storage solutions as the digital archive for any e-portfolio system (or "lifetime personal web space"), they need to have the capability of OmniDrive and Box.net to "share files by creating a Web address that others can access." If I were to make a wish, I'd like an interface like YouTube or Picasa, that provides the HTML or URL to easily embed or copy/paste a hyperlink. I'm also hoping that the new interface allows more seamless integration between the different Google Apps (dare I hope "drag and drop" within a single window?). Now I have to switch between multiple windows to copy URLs for links to different documents. I hope the Google virtual storage service becomes available soon, and I hope it also works seamlessly with a Mac (not just Windows).

Labels: digital preservation, portfolios, Web2.0

I was in Birmingham, Alabama, last week, helping UAB define their vision for ePortfolios across their campus, and leading a workshop to help them identify their change strategies and potential tools. During a break, one of the participants showed me a collection of images on her iPhone, showcasing her husband's sculptures, a classic implementation of an art portfolio. I knew the time would come when people would start using mobile devices to publish their portfolios. I'm still not ready for my own iPhone (I'm waiting for upgrades I discussed in my July 15 blog entry). Maybe I should get an iPod Touch in the meantime! But I can't record audio (yet) or take pictures with it. I bought my last two iPods just before they released a new version. I think I'll wait.

Labels: portfolios, tools

I just bought the book Made to Stick, which is subtitled,"Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die." The subtitle really made me think about ePortfolios. How can we have ePortfolios that both students and teachers want to use. I found Ali Jafari's Educause Review article, The “Sticky” ePortfolio System: Tackling Challenges and Identifying Attributes (2004) which raises some very good issues related to institutional implementation of ePortfolio systems. He compares ePortfolios with the implementation of course management systems (CMS), and identifies these factors for a Successful ePortfolio Project = I + J + K + L + M + N + O:

• 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)

The Made to Stick book identifies six qualities of an idea that is made to stick (with the acronym SUCCESs):

• 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?"

I think these concepts work well when considering ePortfolios. To be successful with students and teachers, ePortfolios should be simple: the more complex, the less they will be used. They need to include concrete examples. They need to have an emotional component which includes stories to help make them meaningful.

Labels: portfolios, publications

Buzzword is an online word processor sponsored by Adobe. Although it has similarities to GoogleDocs and ZohoWriter, it has some significant differences. A real difference in this tool is the page layout formatting: every document has margins, can have a header and footer added, and visually shows page breaks. It does have the ability to add links, but I had to use the full URL for links to the other pages that I created. It does not have the ability to create "bookmarks" within documents, to be able to link to different parts of a single multi-page document (which I can do in GoogleDocs). If I wanted to print out a Buzzword document, it would be fully formatted. The tool has some other useful features: in addition to spell check, it shows the number of flagged words in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. It also has an automatic word count at the bottom of the screen. There is also the ability to zoom in and out of the screen using a slider bar at the bottom.

I have discovered that when you share a document with another person, you have three choices:
* Co-author- full writing privileges
* Reviewer- can only add comments to the document
* Reader - can only read the document

To share a document, the program sends an email with a URL, which requires the individual to create a free account before viewing the document.

The purpose of this program is collaborative writing, not to create a portfolio. However, it does have the capabilities of full interactivity, either through co-authoring or being able to add comments. It really doesn't have a "public" view. It is currently a "work in progress" so I'm sure there will be a lot of progress over the next few months.

Labels: portfolios, tools

This article, written by Trent Batson in Campus Technology on December 12, 2007, discusses the differences between ePortfolios and assessment/accreditation management systems. I've been discussing these issues in some of my web-based articles, conference presentations and blog entries since 2003. Hopefully the word will spread that LEARNING can be a powerful use of ePortfolios, not just accountability. Thanks, Trent.

Somehow, we need to get back on track with the metaphor of "ePortfolio as Story" and not only "ePortfolio as Test" or we will lose a powerful tool for reflection and lifelong learning. The challenge we have is accommodating the strong pressures for institutions to produce tangible evidence of achievement for external audiences (accreditation and government agencies), so that faculty and students can also focus on the internal audiences (small, private, personal) to realize growth over time. I am concerned about the "opportunity cost" (the value of the benefits forgone) in the current focus on accountability portfolios. How can we find a balance?

Labels: assessment, portfolios

This video on YouTube was posted by the Connecticut Education Association (the teachers' union) about the Connecticut Beginning Educator Support and Training (BEST) Program and so it has a specific point of view. The comments after the video give a different perspective. Still, the video and the comments show the consequences of a portfolio used for high stakes accountability. No mentoring? No feedback? The basic principles of portfolio development in education are being violated. I wonder if these teachers will ever use portfolios with their own students after this experience? Another example of taking a powerful tool for learning, and ruining the potential through narrow implementation to meet accountability mandates. This is another example of what Lee Shulman calls perversion of the portfolio process.

Labels: assessment, portfolios

I just posted an updated version of My Online Portfolio Adventure, including Categories of ePortfolio tools and services. Links to the services can be found on that web page. I have not included the many services that are emerging in Europe, because I don't have enough experience with them to classify them. Input from other ePortfolio developers is welcome.

• 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]
  

* Interactivity allows dialogue and feedback in the portfolio, either through comments or collaborative editing
** Data management system allows collection of evaluation data about portfolios,
and can produce reports aggregating quantitative data

As I look at this list, the level of individual personalization and creativity is roughly in the same order; the most creativity for the portfolio developer is in the first category, and the least is in the last, although there are exceptions (many of the Web 2.0 services allow a lot of creativity).

Labels: portfolios, tools

I've tried a few more tools for constructing ePortfolios:

• 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

My daughter Erin's class provided me with another reality check today. She teaches conversational English in a high school in Budapest, Hungary. Today, I put together a short presentation, and introduced portfolios to one class of her students. For about 45 minutes, we talked about why we collect "stuff" and then I showed them parts of Victoria's Kindergarten, First Grade portfolios, her 2nd grade autobiography and then her 6th grade poem. Then we talked about the elements of language learning: reading, writing, listening, speaking and "use of language" (grammar). I asked them how they would collect samples of their "evidence" of speaking. We talked very briefly about recording audio.

In the class period that followed, we had only half of the class and asked them to make a short recording that included the answers to three questions:

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

The students worked in pairs, and either helped each other record or interviewed each other. We had three iPods with microphones, but we found that many of them had MP3 players with built-in microphones! So everyone was able to make a recording in a 45 minute period. Their instructions were to send their audio file to their teacher (my daughter), and to save it for later use.

I then shared a little bit of the research about schools who are using iPods to record students' reading, with the ability to immediately listen to the recording. I understand that those elementary students are dramatically improving their reading scores. I also shared my visit to the Defense Language School in Monterey last summer, where all of the students are issued laptops and iPods with microphones, which are used extensively in language instruction.

What impressed me today was the number of students who pulled out their MP3 players (not iPods) which had the built-in ability to record audio clips. We will be developing more printed support materials to help these students to store their recordings so that they can be included in their language portfolios. Erin and one of her colleagues introduced me to the European Language Portfolio which consists of three documents: the Language Passport, the Language Biography and the Dossier ("Select materials to document and illustrate achievement" (evidence in the portfolio). The way we did it today (using MP3 players) may be a lot easier than asking students to record audio clips into their computers. Our next task is to figure out where the students will save their audio clips online. Stay tuned!

Labels: portfolios

(Now I am in Budapest, and Blogger screens are in Hungarian! Good thing I've used this website for over three years, and can remember where the commands are on the screen!)

After hearing that the MyStuff e-portfolio, being created by the Open University in the U.K. was using tags instead of folders to organize the work in their system, I decided to try the quintessential tagging program, del.icio.us (now owned by Yahoo), to create a version of my portfolio. Since all of my artifacts are stored online in one of my server spaces, it became relatively easy to create a set of tags to describe the work in my portfolio. I also started to create a list of other resources, as well, including commercial e-portfolio tools and open source e-portfolio tools.

Interestingly, each tag can have a 1,000 characters of explanation, which was more than enough for each section in my portfolio. Where I ran out of space was in the captions for each link, limited to 256 characters. Not enough for a full reflection, but enough for a brief caption for each artifact. It has occurred to me that a fuller reflection could be posted as a blog entry, with the link to that specific entry tagged in del.icio.us, would overcome these limitations.

The next challenge is where to store artifacts online. I am starting to look at online storage services, although I'm not sure any of them let you create a hyperlink to the individual items stored in their space. That is a subject for future research.

Labels: portfolios, tools

At the ePortfolio Conference in Maastricht, The Netherlands, one of the keynote speakers was from the Open University in the U.K. They have been developing an open source ePortfolio system for several years, and it should be fully deployed in February 2008. They call their system MyStuff and it is fully integrated with Moodle. This system does not use folders to store files, but uses tags instead, which offers a very different, more flexible and intriguing way to access artifacts in a portfolio.

The list of open source ePortfolio systems to date includes:

• 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
  

I heard from some New Zealanders at the conference that the Mahara team has received more funding to adapt the system to schools, and the adaptations should be completed by the end of this year. In a few weeks, I hope to do an evaluation of the capabilities of some of these tools. I have already developed a portfolio in Elgg. I will also see about getting access to MyStuff. I tried Klahowya a few years ago and couldn't make it work on my server space. I will be working with the University of Oregon's Center for Advanced Technology in Education to evaluate Mahara and Elgg for their Special Education ePortfolio project. I am working with SPDC and schools in New Hampshire to implement the Moofolio to demonstrate technology fluency. Since I just learned about MyStuff, I am anxious to try it out, as well.

Labels: portfolios, tools

I just finished an ePortfolio planning workshop in New Hampshire, where the state is requiring that digital portfolios be used to demonstrate the 8th grade NCLB technology literacy requirement. I developed this diagram to illustrate the relationships between the new ISTE NETS standards, content standards, and effective assessment, teaching and learning. The new NETS standards support the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and schools in New Hampshire are going to demonstrate that an ePortfolio is the best way to demonstrate these skills:

• 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

Today I was a guest "speaker" in an online conference on Adult Learning for an organization in the U.K. for which I created a new online video (27 minutes) discussing the "What, Why and How" of ePortfolios in Adult Learning. In the follow-up discussion, one of the participants asked about how a user can control who sees their stuff (in light of some current issues around cyberbullying). My response:

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.

That makes the GoogleDocs (both Document and Presentation) better tools for collaboration and interaction (not available in Google Pages) and the fact that you don't have to publish to the Internet, but can simply share with specific online users. You can also carry on a live text chat with the Presentation tool, and post comments in a Document. But they are both very linear! I was also asked about mind mapping tools that could be used to create a concept map of learning. I have seen one portfolio done with Inspiration, and I love that tool for conceptualizing my own personal learning and growth, but I do not use that concept map as part of my portfolio. Maybe I should look into those online concept mapping tools, since they might address a learning style issue of many learners.

Labels: portfolios, tools, training

While sitting around a hospital yesterday using their free wifi for guests (and also caring for a relative), I created two new "how to" documents, using the actual tool itself:

• GoogleDocs Presentation
• Google Page Creator

I learned even more about the tools as I was creating these mini-tutorials, which both originated as PowerPoint presentations. Converting the first document to GoogleDocs was very fast and easy, only requiring a minor amount of tweaking. However, I also deleted my first version and uploaded the PowerPoint file again because I couldn't make the changes I wanted in the online version. The second one, created in Google Page Creator, required that I save each graphic as a separate file and then upload that file into the file repository in Google Pages. Once there, I could re-use some of the images. I could also very easily hyperlink to some of the pages in my portfolio as an example. After using both of these tools, I like the "quick and easy" nature of the GoogleDocs presentation tool, doing most of my authoring in PowerPoint. I also like the Share feature, and being able to "present" a portfolio in real time online, where there is a chat window for comments. Google Pages is for more of a formal presentation, without the interactivity capability. Both tools allow as much creativity as I wanted, without needing to use any HTML coding.

Labels: portfolios, tools, training

I realized that I uploaded the Google Mash Up page too quickly. I fleshed out the details a little more this morning, but have a lot more to add. I will update this blog when I think the page, and its attachments, are more complete.

Labels: portfolios, tools

Here is a conceptual model that I am exploring, using the variety of Google tools to facilitate an online learning portfolio. Here is a full size version of the image, plus a further discussion that I am building about this conceptual model.

Labels: portfolios, tools

This is the 31st tool that I have used to recreate my online portfolio. It was also the quickest! It took me about two minutes to convert a 6.3 MB PowerPoint file into my online portfolio using the brand new Google Presentation tool. I understand it was just released yesterday. I changed a couple of slides and published it, all in about 15 minutes! I am very impressed!!! (I tried the same thing a few months ago with Zoho, and it never worked)

Anyone can use this software to create an online portfolio if they have a good Internet connection. Even the hyperlinks that I had on the slides were converted. The interactivity can be facilitated through the "Share" feature, just like GoogleDocs Document, although it lacks the Insert function available in that tool. I am wondering if they intend to add comments in later versions. I see that other people can be sent the URL for the presentation, and they can view the presentation in real time. Wow!

I can see that I need to do a whole new set of instructions on using the Google Apps (Docs, Presentation, Pages) to create electronic portfolios. Here is a short YouTube video about GoogleDocs that discusses the process. I'm going to showcase this toolset next week in an online presentation that I am doing next week for the NIACE online conference in the U.K., focusing on electronic portfolios in adult learnng.

Labels: portfolios, tools

This is the 30th tool that I have used to create my electronic portfolio. The process moved very smoothly. I was able to convert all URLs to weblinks. The tool allowed me to reconstruct my portfolio in less than an hour, copying the information from my Elgg portfolio, where I had the URLs on the page (and the links). I easily uploaded my graphics. All of my other artifacts are web links. The program's Site Manager shows all of the files that I have uploaded. There is a limit of 100 MB per account for all pages and files. There is also no data management tool, to aggregate assessment data. I'm not sure there is an interactivity feature to this program, such as found in a blog or wiki. Therefore, this tool would work for a presentation portfolio but not for formative or summative assessment.

The real advantage of Google Pages is the many different tools, gadgets and widgets available, as well as the file management system. I was able to upload files as attachments. I created a Table of Contents on the left side of the page, with links to each section on the site, and then copied to each page. I was able to create each page as I created the first link. I am very impressed with this tool. I was able to create this hyperlinked set of web pages, with no knowledge of HTML. I had one small problem with editing the graphic at the bottom of one page. So, I closed the browser window, and opened it again. It automatically saves the pages every few minutes. This program would work well for a presentation portfolio, but GoogleDocs would work better if the goal is a learning portfolio, with interactivity and feedback. I could see GoogleDocs used to create artifacts, with collaboration and feedback, and Google Pages used for the formal presentation portfolio.

Labels: portfolios, tools

I've been watching the Elgg tool for several years, but was waiting until the presentation builder was finished. This is the 29th tool that I have used to re-create my electronic portfolio. The process moved pretty smoothly. I was able to convert all URLs to weblinks. The tool allowed me to reconstruct my portfolio in less than an hour, copying the information from my ZohoWriter portfolio, where I had the URLs on the page (and the links). I easily uploaded a few graphics. All of my other artifacts are web links.

Since I prefer to have the links open a new window (and the portfolio remains open), I was able to specific each link to open in a new window. When an artifact is opened, the reader can close the window and easily return to the portfolio, rather than using the Back button. There is also no data management tool, to aggregate assessment data. Therefore, this tool would work for formative assessment (providing teacher and peer feedback on student work) but not for summative assessment.

The real advantage of Elgg is the social networking and blogging built into the system, as well as the file management system. I could not figure out how to create links to another Elgg presentation page, so I put the entire portfolio into a single presentation page. The program created a Table of Contents at the top of the page, with links to each section on the page. Very nice! It is very nice to have a presentation builder now as part of Elgg. Even if it is a very simple tool, it allows text, blog posts and files to be included on a presentation page. I would really like pages and sub pages, such as in WordPress, but at least it now has another way to present portfolio data, instead of just the reverse chronological order of the blog.

Labels: portfolios, tools

I had the privilege of participating in an ePortfolio conference at Stanford last week. In two days, more than 26 participants came together to plan their ePortfolio implementations. A few were from the private sector, and one person was from a local high school, but most from higher education. There were participants from Guatemala, Japan and New Zealand as well as across the U.S. But what impressed me most was how they modeled the use of technology. Helen Chen and the staff at the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning, drew on the extensive research done at Stanford on Folio Thinking. Leaders of the EPAC, Tracy Penny-Light and John Ittelson, led the group in the planning process and technology implementation. Toru Iiyoshi of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching introduced the KEEP Toolkit for the participants to use. Their guest dinner speaker was Jim Gemmel of Microsoft, who spoke about the MyLifeBits research project. I was a last minute addition to the schedule, and I spoke about digital storytelling, Web 2.0 tools, and assessment for learning.

I was most impressed by the way they used technology. The institute was held in Wallenberg Hall, where Stanford explores many innovations in teaching and learning, so there was wireless Internet. Everyone was encouraged to bring laptops, and there were extras to use. The conference established a PBWiki site, and one graduate student was assigned to document the activities of the conference in the wiki. Everyone was given a page in the wiki to document their thoughts. There was extensive use of digital cameras, as well as the small handheld USB Flip Video cameras which were used to record reflections on the process. I was privileged to interview three individuals and one team about their reflections at the end of the workshop, using the Flip cameras. They also used traditional technologies, like white boards, markers and sticky notes. I'm not sure if the participants realized how much they experienced the process of creating an ePortfolio, especially using the wiki and video reflections. I really appreciated how the workshop leaders modeled the process.

Labels: portfolios, training

I received the following question in an email last week:

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?

Here is my response: Now you know why I no longer use Microsoft Word for ePortfolios. You might try GoogleDocs (the equivalent Web 2.0 tool). If you converted everything to PDF (including the portfolio) and hyperlinked the documents together (or put everything into a single PDF file with hyperlinks), you would solve that problem when you publish to CD. My instructions for creating PDF-based portfolios are online: http://electronicportfolios.org/portfolios/sitepaper2001.html (but that was published in 2001).

But even that process is ePortfolio 1.0. You really need to look at some new tools, but using the same strategies. I really like wikis and blogs or many interactive Web 2.0 tools. I have a web page that outlines the different options:
http://electronicportfolios.org/web20portfolios.html

CDs are going away. Even DVDs are limited in the future. They aren't interactive environments. Read my description of ePortfolio 1.0 and ePortfolio 2.0: http://electronicportfolios.org/web20.html
Everything is moving to the WWW. Here is my latest proposal for a paper at next year's AERA (created/published in GoogleDocs):
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd76m5s2_42cscw4g

Labels: portfolios, tools

Last June, I worked with a school district in New Hampshire on ePortfolios. Over the summer, they built a vision statement about ePortfolios:

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.

Very impressive!

Labels: portfolios, schools

Becta released their "Impact study of e-portfolios on learning"
http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_02&rid=14007
The study was conducted by a team of researchers in the Learning Sciences Research Institute at The University of Nottingham led by Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young. This report presents the potential impact of e-portfolios on learning and teaching and is primarily aimed at policy-makers. This study provides eight case studies in the early stages of e-portfolio use from across the sectors of education, from primary school to adult learning. To quote the report:

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

This model from their report identifies the three distinct components of an e-portfolio system: the digital archive (repository of evidence), tools to support different processes, and different presentation portfolios developed for different purposes and audiences.

Labels: portfolios, research

I received another message from Mike Caulfield in reference to a previous dialogue that we had:

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.

First, there is nothing wrong with assessment, as long as it is student-centered, or benefiting student learning. But too often, the term is mis-understood, and used to mean "evaluation" or "accountability" or another purpose that is more institution-centered. A student doing self-assessment is engaged in a powerful process. Rather than calling your idea an inverted LMS, why not call it a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) or personal learning space. I discussed this briefly after the New Zealand ePortfolio Conference. As I look at how (mostly young) people use MySpace or FaceBook or most blogs, they are often using these online spaces not only for social networking, but also for identity production. I also received another message today from Nathan Garrett of Woodbury University a Claremont graduate student, who was commenting on my blog entry and Digital Archive for Life paper:

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).

The challenge I see is raising the awareness of the potential for using these more open systems, and to provide models that show how they work in practice. I can see this working well in higher education, but my current interest is in K12 schools and in families, where the concern for security is paramount. We need more research at all levels of human development, to validate some of these theories.

Yesterday, I purchased the Freedom Writers DVD. I had seen Erin Gruwell last February at a conference, so I knew the story and had watched the video many times on my cruise and on some flights this spring. But I was able to focus more on the commentary and the underlying meaning of this movie. Erin Gruwell's students used writing as a tool for liberation and self-identity, first in their hand-written journals and later in the computer lab. They didn't call these journals "blogs" because they weren't online (at least not in the movie) and there was an emphasis on anonymity. However, that same process is experienced by many young learners, as they use many different types of Web 2.0 technology for self expression. This movie provides an example of a talented teacher who challenged and channeled these writing efforts to a positive outcome in these young lives; it shows the power of reflection and storytelling to change lives.

Labels: archive, assessment, portfolios, reflection

I just spent the day getting caught up on TED videos. What an incredible resource on the most interesting ideas, all presented in 20-minute chunks! I was most impressed with the video of Sir Ken Robinson entitled, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" I also remembered that I received a copy of the latest version of the National Educational Technology Standards for Students at NECC. These revised technology standards begin with Creativity and Innovation, followed by Communication and Collaboration, Research and Information Fluency, Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving & Decision-Making, Digital Citizenship, and lastly, Technology Operations and Concepts. Maybe now, portfolios will become more valued for the development and demonstration of these new standards, as they will be used in New Hampshire. The use of electronic portfolios to develop and demonstrate creativity in K12 schools is my new mission (and passion).

Labels: 21st-Century-Learning, portfolios

I recently had a meeting at the Center for Advanced Technology in Education, part of the Teacher Education Department at the University of Oregon. As a result of that meeting, I have started to expand on an earlier blog entry (Digital Archive for Life). Here is the executive summary of the paper, which is posted as a GoogleDoc. Comments are welcome. If anyone would like to collaborate on these ideas, send me an email. I intend to publish a polished version of this article in On The Horizon, a journal on Futures and Education.

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

This is the 27th tool that I have used to recreate my electronic portfolio. I was asked to try out the tool by the founder of the company. Since I copied the pages from an earlier online version, I was able to reconstruct my portfolio in less than an two hours, copying and pasting the information, although the fine tuning the formatting took more time. As with all of my other portfolios, all of my artifacts are documents already stored on one of my websites. It did not automatically convert URLs embedded into the text into hyperlinks; I had to convert each artifact link individually, although I was told that it should have converted them.

My eCoach offers collaboration, communication, curriculum, and coaching tools for a one-time fee of $35 to set up the account. A team leader can set up teams for $200. This version of my portfolio was created using the Universal [Web Page] Builder. I set the setting so that every page in this portfolio will allow comments, which provides the opportunity for interactivity/feedback.

My general impression is that this tool is relatively easy to use, although it took me a few tries to select the right template. It created an attractive layout, although limited to 800 pixels wide, to accommodate older computers and projectors. This caused a problem with one of the images that I uploaded, which they fixed. The system allows 100 MB of online storage, so I uploaded a video version of my last portfolio.

This is a flexible tool that allows for cloning pages, for others to leave comments, and coaching support from an eCoach. Users can create multiple tabs as categories with multiple pages under each category. Each page has a text editor that allows users to add text, images, videos, audio files, podcasts, documents, presentations, and most types of files.

Labels: portfolios, tools

PowerPoint is the 26th tool that I have used to create my electronic portfolio. I authored the portfolio in PowerPoint and then created different versions linked from a more comprehensive web page. In addition to using LecShare Pro, I also used the "Save as Web Page..." command in PowerPoint. The Lecshare HTML version (with audio and notes) did not create hyperlinks that I had created in the PowerPoint file; the PowerPoint-created HTML version includes the hyperlinks. The more detailed reflection on the web page is also part of the audio narration at the end of the video versions.

Labels: portfolios, tools

I just finished watching the Steve Jobs-Bill Gates fireside chat at the All Things Digital Executive Conference, sponsored by Dow Jones. It has been more than 20 years since these two people have been on the same stage together, and some of the moments were hilarious. It was also funny to watch the video from 1983 (the Macintosh Software Dating Game). But the real value in watching the entire program was the vision of these two pioneers of the future of personal computer technology (and other post-PC devices). What impressed me was that these two geniuses don't have a clear picture of where we will be in ten years, but they are both excited to take us there! It is also obvious that these two people have passion about what they do, and this passion is what drives them: not the money, but the act of creation, of "inventing the future" (to quote Alan Kay).

That reminded me of a statement made by Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat: CQ + PQ > IQ (Curiosity plus Passion is greater than IQ) in the learning process. As I look at my work on ePortfolios, I feel a real disconnect between my vision of the ePortfolio as a way to document the story of deep learning, and the pervasive implementation of ePortfolios as a source of data for accountability and accreditation. As I quoted Hartnell-Young and Morriss in an earlier blog entry, portfolios created for this purpose "tend to be heavy with documentation but light on passion."

As I wrap up my current study on ePortfolios in secondary education, I know what I want to study next: this issue of passion, or framed a little less suggestively, excitement, flow and engagement. When I talked with students last year, I heard more excitement in the students' voices when they talked about their use of MySpace than their use of the academic tools. If part of the problem in education today is that many students are bored and see no relevance in schools, I want to find examples of where students are excited about learning, using ePortfolios as a way to demonstrate that excitement for learning. Maybe those places are few and far between, but if we are going to change education, we need to change the way students document their own learning. My passion for the last decade (or more) has been ePortfolios, and the related processes that enrich the experience (reflection, digital storytelling). I realize that I have changed my vision from the early days, when I was more focused on assessment and standards-based portfolios. Today, especially due to my travels around the English-speaking world, talking to primarily educators at ePortfolio conferences, my vision has broadened to a more lifelong, life wide perspective. ePortfolios aren't just for schools... in fact schooling may be ruining the experience for a lot of learners. I hope that we can find the passion again in documenting, and better yet, celebrating learning within a worldwide community. That is a future worth working toward.

Labels: 21st-Century-Learning, portfolios