ISTE 2010 Presentation

ISTE 2010

View more presentations from Helen Barrett.

I just did my presentation at ISTE 2010 today. It was scheduled to start at 12:30, and I went to the room at noon, walking past a long line (wasn't sure what they were waiting for). It turns out, they were waiting for my session! The room was full at 12:15 and they closed the door, so I spent the first 10 minutes just fielding questions. Then I did my presentation during the normal time (slides above). I forgot to audio record it, but the slides pretty much cover the content. I incorporated a lot of the content of my TEDxASB talk.

I would love some feedback from the participants.

Google Announcements

Google announced today at ISTE 2010 two more states, Colorado and Iowa, are joining Oregon to make GoogleApps available to all schools. In my opinion, soon schools in these states will have a ready-made environment to support e-portfolio development using this rich toolset.

Google also announced a set of training solutions for schools through a new online Google Apps Education Training Center.  They also announced a new Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer and Partner program to "provide a formal structure for certifying individuals and partners who lead workshops or trainings about Apps, and provides schools with an easy way to find the best partners in their area."

iPhone ePortfolios?

From a listserv post by Trent Batson, founder of AAEEBL, a professional organization supporting electronic portfolios primarily in higher education:

See this URL: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/eportfolio-for-iphone/id361277520?mt=8
From the person, Paul Treuer who was IP owner for the first OSP code set which is now -- a few new code sets later -- part of Sakai.

My response:
The UMN software only uploads pictures to a UMN portfolio, so far, although a comment in iTunes said, "Soon to follow, I've heard a voice recognition-to-text feature will allow you to dictate into your ePortfolio. How cool is that!" I agree. It would be powerful to be able to reflect by voice, and have it go directly into my reflective journal/blog. I can do that using Dragon Dictate in my iPhone and send the text online by email.

There are several other portfolio tools in the iTunes store. PebblePad has an iphone app. Also an app for physicians in U.K. for "Effortless recording of learning and reflection and access to reference materials." Right now, it is only by typing, but these are a start!

There is also a WordPress App. I just can't really edit my GoogleDocs artifacts or my Google Sites portfolio from my iPhone/iPad, and I can only blog by email. But, it's beginning to happen! Anyone have other examples?

Sent from my iPad

EduBloggerCon at ISTE10

I made it back to another EduBloggerCon prior to ISTE 2010 in Denver. It is very important for me to listen to teachers who are working with K-12 students and implementing Web 2.0 tools, although these were very advanced users! Lots of discussion of the iPad, and quite a few of them in the room. I took both my iPad and my laptop to the workshop, because I wasn't sure which one I would want to use. During the Smackdown (showcase of new Web 2.0 tools), I ended up using my laptop. Also, editing my Google Site... not possible with the iPad.

There were several sessions on the iPad: one led by a teacher who was really pro-iPad, another led by Scott McLeod, who brought up some serious questions about the trade-offs between consumption of data vs. production capabilities of the iPad. Lots of great discussion, documented in tweets using #ebc10ipad tag. No conclusions, because it is too soon, but some schools may be ready to replace laptops/netbooks with iPads, perhaps a premature decision. I said to wait until the Android tablets come out, and then compare the capabilities. I can still do more production on a laptop/netbook than my iPad. But there are advantages with battery life and instant on. Some educators are also impressed with the engagement of young students with reading on the iPad.

There were also good discussions on blogging with students, including Blogs as Web-Based Portfolios (PDF) from Jeff Utecht, International School of Bangkok. I also figured out how to organize my apps on my iPhone with iOS4, and touched an iPhone4. I'm trying to figure out when I will be home long enough this summer to buy mine. I want multitasking and iMovie for iPhone! (After updating my iPhone 3G to iOS4, it seems to run slower.) Dinner out with some teachers and more great discussion! Great Day!

Barcelona Beginnings

Today, I began a 2.5 day ePortfolios with GoogleApps workshop with secondary teachers at Colegio Montserrat in Barcelona, Spain. To help me adjust to jet lag, we started today's workshop at 3 PM. For the next two days, we will start at 9 AM.

Today, we started with a version of the presentation that I did at Castilleja School in Palo Alto two weeks ago, but because I only had a half day in that workshop and here I have 2.5 days, I only covered part of the presentation today...  I was conscious that I was being simultaneously translated, so I slowed down my pace. After our coffee break, all the participants logged in to their brand new Google Apps Education domain and I introduced many of the teachers to GoogleDocs for the first time. They wrote up a few notes about what they learned from my presentation, and then I showed them how to share their document with a partner. Their assignment before tomorrow: upload some of their professional teaching documents into GoogleDocs to build their digital archive. I discovered that now GoogleDocs will convert .docx and .xlsx files from MS Office 2007+, but not .pptx. You are still able to upload those newest Powerpoint file types, but they were saved in the original format, not converted to GoogleDocs.

I thought it was a pretty successful short first day. Tomorrow we will begin to use Google Sites to build their professional teaching portfolios. All of the teachers have laptops (mostly Windows Vista) and the secondary students will have netbooks next year. For the school this is the ideal time to convert their existing student Powerpoint portfolios into an online format. The school received training from my colleague Evangeline Harris Stefanakis several years ago, so they have a good grounding in portfolio theory. Tomorrow, I will be sharing strategies for developing Interactive Portfolios using GoogleApps. It was good to start with GoogleDocs today, since it follows my three-level process, beginning with a collection of digital documents. (A version of a journal article discussing this 3-level process was just published in English in a Portuguese Educom journal in PDF.)

Working in two languages is interesting... slows me down and simplifies my vocabulary. The translator told me I was doing fine. Reminds me of the workshop I did in Japan over 3 years ago... the first time I used GoogleDocs to develop ePortfolios. Since that time, I have seen major changes to GoogleApps, into a very rich toolset for developing student-centered ePortfolios, especially in schools and colleges adopting GoogleApps Education Edition for GMail. I can hardly wait until Google releases additional tools inside all versions of GoogleApps. I am hoping that Picasa, Reader and Blogger are available by September; I am also hoping that a protected version of YouTube will also be available soon, since video storage is a major issue in schools. Through the GoogleApps Marketplace, there are other great add-ons inside GoogleApps, some of them free, such as the Aviary Tools for image editing, voice recording and music creation. I wonder if Aviary is also working on a video editing tool? That would almost complete the toolset!

Part 2 of the workshop tomorrow. Should I introduce these teachers to digital stories in ePortfolios? I'm told they all know MovieMaker. Hmmm... Erin, my workshop assistant/daughter, isn't with me. I'll have to ask them tomorrow after we get through Google Sites. I'm not sure I can handle more than 20 teachers doing digital stories, while I am fighting jet lag! Stay tuned!

UPDATE: I introduced them to Digital Storytelling for two hours in the late afternoon, using my hands-on activity using seven images and a single audio file. They were excited to explore further on their own! On the last day, we explored more on reflection and feedback, and I introduced them to ietherpad. Then they used that tool to begin writing a vision statement for ePortfolios in their school.

Fruits of my Work

Today, I received the following email from Scot Hoffman, a teacher I worked with in Mumbai:

... I’ve been reading your blog and can see that holding space for a ePortfolio to be a student owned space is becoming important to define.  We had a great year with the ePortfolios.  They were so successful that we couldn’t really get away from them all year.  We ended up the year showing 35 teachers how to start their own professional portfolios.  I’ve also been busy with a Master’s Program through Boston University.  Hopefully my involvement in the program will give me opportunities to continue to build my practices and maybe even do some research to find out their effect.  Here is a blog post on Shabbi’s new blog that I wrote about ePortfolios.  Shabbi’s new blog is going to be worth following. I suppose that you’re probably the last person in the world who could get anything from it, but I did want to share it with you as a fruit of your work with us.  http://paradigmshift21.edublogs.org/2010/06/16/eportfolios-a-thread-through-the-21st-century/ 

...it seems like you’re continuing to gain momentum, reach, and foment in pursuit of giving students the keys to their futures.

I was very impressed with the work of the 3rd Grade Teachers at ASB in Mumbai. As you can see by this posting, they are preparing their students for the future in very profound ways using ePortfolios. They will be the third grade/primary case study in my book.

Japanese & Portuguese version

I just received a copy of the Japanese translation of my Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolios diagram.

Translated by Junko NEMOTO, PhD, Kumamoto University, Japan, who told me:

It helped us when we talked and decided our portfolio concept.
I also would like to use sometime to explain the portfolio to the students.

That makes three translations: Spanish, Catalan, and now Japanese. This conceptual model seems to make sense in multiple contexts.

The paper was just published (in English) in a Portuguese Educom journal in PDF.

UPDATE: Now I have a Mandarin version of the diagram, thanks to Andy Birch and Mei Ding, Hong Kong Academy.