E-Portfolios for Learning

Welcome to my WordPress e-portfolio. I am exploring the capabilities of using WordPress to maintain electronic portfolios as part of my research on implementation of online electronic portfolio systems.

Click on one of the links in the right side to see the pages that I have decided to include in this version of my portfolio. You can read my biography, see the artifacts that I have identified as my best work, and read my reflections about creating this portfolio. If you follow a link and want to return, use the Back button on your browser.

Every portfolio has a purpose. My purpose for developing this portfolio is to show my skills in developing an electronic portfolio using any number of tools. After reviewing all of my artifacts (see my Portfolio at a Glance) I found five general types of competencies:

1. Electronic Portfolio Competency - Knowledge, Skills and Experience
2. Digital Storytelling Competency - Digital Video Editing Skills
3. Technology Competency - Multimedia & Web Page Authoring Skills
4. Teaching & Instructional Design Competency - Presentations
5. Writing & Assessment Competency (included under the first category)

Here are my reflections on the process of creating this electronic portfolio. In reality, this is the fifth tool I have used to publish my e-portfolio on the Web. The first version of my new e-portfolio was published using a portfolio system developed by the Maricopa Community Colleges. The second was completed using the system in place at Fairleigh Dickinson University. The third was created using Yahoo’s GeoCities, and the fourth was created with Mozilla’s Composer. These are some of the comments that I write in the blogging tool that is included in the Maricopa system:

I spent an evening going through my web pages and my hard drive (my digital archive) to select the specific artifacts that I wanted to use in my portfolio. I set up an Excel spreadsheet that let me list the artifacts (21 in all) and then create hyperlinks to each URL. Portfolio at a glance-Excel

After creating the list with the URLs, I added comments in Excel to represent the captions for each artifact. I played around with converting the document into HTML, but spent too much time fighting the Microsoft style sheet codes. So I just converted the document into PDF, which I will use on the WWW. I uploaded the Excel spreadsheet to this portfolio as a document, but I might prefer using the PDF. Portfolio at a Glance - PDF

After selecting the artifacts, I tried to identify which competencies or skills each artifact demonstrates. I found five or six major categories right now, maybe more when I think about it. But the major categories have emerged. Now, all I have to do it create a collection for each grouping, and write an overall reflection plus record the captions. Since I had all of the artifacts on one of my websites, all I had to do was capture the URL.

From start to finish this project has taken me an evening, and most of the time was spent in selecting the artifacts and writing the captions. Those aren’t really technology issues…they are portfolio issues.

It took me about two hours to finish all of the entries using WordPress, which was mostly a copy/past job between my HTML and my browser. Not too bad for 20+ entries.

My Vita can be viewed on my website at http://electronicportfolios.org/vita2002.pdf

I am on the faculty of the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage and have been researching electronic portfolios since 1991, publishing a website on Technology and Alternative Assessment since 1995 (http://electronicportfolios.com). I have been involved in Educational Technology and Staff Development in Alaska since 1983, first as Staff Development Coordinator with the Fairbanks School District and now with the University of Alaska Anchorage. I was in charge of Educational Technology programs for the School of Education and initiated the development of UAA’s New Media Center for campus-wide faculty development.

As the Assessment Coordinator for the International Society for Technology in Education’s National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (ISTE NETS.T) Project, I have been developing strategies and resources to assess teacher technology competence. I also served as Vice President for Assessment and E-Folios for the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE). Through the Educause/NLII/AAHE Community of Practice, I provided early leadership to define pedagogical specifications for online portfolio systems.

Over the last three years, I have written several successful federal technology grants, the most recent through ISTE to support technology and assessment in teacher education programs throughout the United States, providing training and technical assistance on using electronic portfolios to assess achievement of teaching standards. I have been on loan to ISTE on a full time basis for the duration of this PT3 Catalyst Grant (2001-2004).

My presentations at numerous regional and national conferences have explored the emerging field of technology and alternative assessment and my authoritative articles have appeared in books, journals and proceedings published by ISTE, AACE, AAHE, and WCCE. I recently produced a multimedia CD-ROM-based Electronic Portfolio Handbook. My research about electronic portfolios began with a study of K-12 student e-portfolios for the Alaska Department of Education in the early 90s. In the mid-90s, my research focus changed to electronic teacher portfolios, and I am currently exploring both high school graduation portfolios and family involvement in e-portfolio development in early childhood education. This newest research focuses on how schools can meet the Parent Involvement goal of NCLB through the collaborative development of electronic portfolios to communicate authentic student learning related to standards, goals or outcomes.

These documents were selected to showcase my competencies in teaching and instructional design. I have developed and delivered workshops on electronic portfolio development, from three hours to three days, and most have been evaluated through my PT3 grant. I have also developed a set of two-day workshops on electronic portfolios and digital storytelling for a major technology company.

Descriptions of presentations and workshops available
These are descriptions of the presentations and workshops that I have developed.

Workshop Outlines on Electronic Portfolios and Digital Storytelling
These two-day workshops were developed in the winter of 2004 for a major technology company. The Digital Storytelling workshop was piloted twice in 2004 through my PT3 grant. The evaluation report from Rockman et.al. demonstrates the success of the first workshop.

Distance Courses on Electronic Portfolios and Digital Storytelling
I developed this series of courses on electronic portfolios and digital storytelling, which were piloted with Wichita State University in 2003 using Blackboard. The courses need to be updated, but can be offered using any web-based environment.

Professional Development for Implementing Electronic Portfolios
My most recent web page on my website, responding to requests by school districts for information on how to help teachers who need to support student electronic portfolio development. Includes Change theory, portfolio and technology skills assessments.

These publications were selected as evidence of my writing skills and my knowledge about portfolios that support assessment for learning. I chose examples of my publications from the early 1990s through to the summer of 2004. I can definitely see a change in my thinking about portfolios, from learning about e-portfolio tools, to learning about assessment for learning.

Portfolios at the Crossroads - Book Proposal
I developed a book proposal with Joanne Carney to address Portfolios at the Crossroads: the impact of high stakes accountability and emerging technologies on the portfolio in education.

Create Your Own Electronic Portfolio
The latest article that I published in Learning & Leading with Technology, April 2000, focused on “Using Off-the-Shelf Software to Showcase Your Own or Student Work.” In this article, I moved from commercial software to the use of common desktop software tools.

Technology-Supported Portfolio Assessment
This was my first publication on Electronic Portfolios, published in The Computing Teacher, March, 1994. Reprinted in Student Portfolios: A Collection of Articles edited by Robin Fogarty (1996). Palatine, Illinois: IRI/Skylight Training & Publishing, Inc., pp. 127-137.

Differentiating ePortfolios and Assessment Management Systems
This SITE 2004 paper addresses some of the issues of definition, between electronic portfolios and online assessment management systems. It is difficult to conduct comparative research on electronic portfolios because of the emergence of very diverse models of implementation, especially in some of the new commercial tools that are available. These different implementations and “definition by default” make the task more difficult. This paper is an attempt to delineate the differences between electronic portfolios and online assessment management systems.

Conflicting Paradigms in Electronic Portfolio Approaches
This 2004 paper covers the conflicting paradigms in portfolio development, positivism vs. constructivism. The paper covers the Legal and Psychometric Issues of High Stakes Portfolios, and how to separate assessment management systems and electronic portfolios, to maintain the integrity of both. Links to institutions who have successfully kept the two tools separate. Discusses a theory of motivation and electronic portfolios around content, purpose, and process.

Electronic Portfolios as Digital Stories of Learning
This 2004 paper provides the a summary of assessment of and for learning, portfolios that support assessment for learning, and technologies that engage learners in the portfolio development process: digital storytelling, blogs and wikis.

These artifacts represent my skills in multimedia development and web page authoring. I have developed a CD-ROM using Adobe Acrobat and QuickTime movies. In addition, there are Digital Stories that are posted in another collection, and my web site which showcases my knowledge and skills in electronic portfolio development.

At-a-Glance Guides
Common Software Tools for Creating and Publishing Electronic Portfolios. These short guides were developed to support the stages of electronic portfolio development, from the collection/digitization process, through the selection/reflection construction/hyperlinking process to the final publication process. I developed these guides as part of the Apple Learning Interchange Exhibit.

CD-ROM-based Handbook
I developed a CD-ROM in 2002 to use in workshops and to sell on my website. I made a major revision in the spring of 2004, adding Digital Storytelling to support deep learning.

Using Adobe Acrobat for Electronic Portfolio Development
This paper outlines Adobe’s Portable Document Format as the ideal container for electronic portfolio reflections connected to digital artifacts, describes the software environment, and then describes the process for converting digital artifacts from many applications into the Portable Document Format, and maintaining a cross-platform, web-accesible, hyperlinked digital portfolio. I received an award at the SITE 2001 Conference as “Best Technical Paper.”

The QuickTime movies below provide examples of digital stories that I have created over the last three years. I attended the Center for Digital Storytelling workshop in January 2003, and have been exploring the practice since then. I have designed and delivered workshops to help Teacher Education students and faculty to develop digital stories as reflective artifacts in their electronic portfolios.

Family Portfolios and Digital Stories
These documents contain portfolios developed with my granddaughter for her Kindergarten, First and Second Grade years. The digital stories for K & 1 are reflections on the year. The digital story for 2nd grade is her autobiography written as part of a school project. The “Dad” story is the project we created at the Center for Digital Storytelling.

Prepare for a Digital Storytelling Workshop (.mov)
I created this digital story to help participants prepare for a digital storytelling workshop.

Electronic Portfolios as Digital Stories of Learning (.mov)
This narrated slide show presents the content of my article posted at http://electronicportfolios.org/digistory/epstory.html This presentation looks at technologies that are engaging forstudents to foster intrinsic motivation, specifically digital storytelling.

Choices - A Digital Story of Learning (.mov)
Seventh grade provided one of my most vivid memories of learning. I have made sense of this experience with a reflective digital story.

Reflecting back on that learning experience as a professional educator, I realize that the problem was not with me, but with the assignment. What a difficult task I was given… it takes time to build those synapses in the brain. Memorization has its place in learning, but I didn’t derive the true meaning of the poem I had to memorize until much later in life.

This is my collection of artifacts that are selected to demonstrate specific competencies in portfolio development knowledge and skills. I have been researching, presenting and writing about electronic portfolios since 1991. This collection shows the growth in my thinking about electronic portfolio development between 1991 and 2004.

Apple Learning Interchange Exhibit on Electronic Portfolios
I developed this Expert Exhibit on Electronic Portfolios for Apple Computer as an Apple Distringuished Educator. I was flown down to Apple’s office in Austin to record the video clips, which I am not very pleased with the results. Some day I will redo the whole exhibit, with new video clips.

Publications on Electronic Portfolios
These specific papers published on my website highlight the change in my thinking about electronic portfolios between 1994 and 2004.

My Website on Electronic Portfolios
This is my web site on electronic portfolios in education. I started working on this website in 1995, on the server that I set up for the University of Alaska Anchorage School of Education. I bought my own domain names in 2000, and have been updating it ever since. You might say that this web site contains the archive of my professional work in electronic portfolio development since my research started in 1991. I actually have three URLs that point to this same page: http://electronicportfolios.com, http://electronicportfolios.org, http://helenbarrett.com.

My ‘Blogger’ blog
I started to experiment with blogs in the spring of 2004. Within a couple of months, this blog has been highlighted on several lists of recommended educational blogs. I have enjoyed writing in this blog, to use it as a way to explore my own thoughts and reflections on my experiences. As a result of writing in this blog, I am experimenting with other tools, as well, to see how various blogging software would work to construct e-portfolios.

I believe that all portfolios need to include three forms of reflection, focusing on the past, present, and future. These questions are:

• What? (the artifacts that I have collected from the past)
• So What? (what these artifacts show about my learning at the present time)
• Now What? (my future learning goals)

So, here are my future goals. This portfolio comes at a time when I am winding up my PT3 grant, and getting ready to retire from the University of Alaska Anchorage. I am using this portfolio to help me reflect on my strengths and how that will contribute to my future professional direction.

After I retire, my husband and I want to begin providing training to “baby boomers” and senior citizens on using digital storytelling to preserve their memories and life stories for future generations; our mission statement: “using today’s technology to tell yesterday’s stories to tomorrow’s generations.” The current popularity of scrapbooking and genealogy all indicate that there is an interest to preserve these memories. But those who study genealogy know that we can find the dates and facts about a life, but stories that are not preserved are lost forever. Everyone has a story to tell. Digital storytelling is one way to preserve and share our family legacies.

Perhaps we can also work into the process a “retirement transition” focus, using digital family stories as a way of finding a new purpose in retirement after a very busy working life. Learning to share digital stories could become a powerful transition activity. And in the process, new retirees could learn technology skills that they might have missed in their professional careers.

Here is an opportunity for schools, as well, to bring this digital storytelling process to their communities, to match young people who have the technology skills with older people who have the stories to be preserved. Then, we can truly become a community of learners.

Welcome to my “test” e-portfolio using the WordPress blogging software. My goal with this portfolio is to experiment with using this software to construct e-portfolios using generic web-based tools.