Assessment in Race to the Top

On July 29, President Obama made a major speech on education reform to the National Urban League. One comment that he made stood out for me as I listened to the speech:

Because of Race to the Top, states are also finding innovative ways to move beyond having just a snapshot of where students are, and towards a real-time picture that shows how far they’ve come and how far they have to go.  And armed with this information, teachers can get what amounts to a game tape that they can study to enhance their teaching and their focus on areas where students need help the most.

He didn't use the word "portfolio" but the description of that "real-time picture" sure sounds like Assessment FOR Learning to me.

Assessment for Learning is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there.

I believe ePortfolios are one powerful strategy for this purpose, and I have written and talked about these issues extensively. I am wondering what states are working on...

The Future of mPortfolios

I just finished my last presentation at the AAEEBL ePortfolio conference. Eight people joined me in a conversation about the use of mobile devices is ePortfolio development. This was the first time I presented with the iPad (and not quite what I expected). The Keynote slide show had only a few slides, where I showed a few samples of apps available for the iPhone. The discussion focused on the immediacy of access to technology, through these mobile devices, which may let students slow down to reflect within the context and time of a learning experience... Not at a time removed when memory is less fresh. In the near future we may have opportunities to implement these strategies when emerging tools, such as iPads, iPod Touch/iPhone devices, Android tablets, including the XO-3, become affordable and available in schools.

I posted the slides on my iWork account, but was not able to attach a PDF to this message, which is the only way that I can post to my Blogger blog from my iPad. So I will need to add the slides once this entry is posted to my blog.
Sent from my iPad

M portfolios

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AAEEBL Conference - Days 1 -3

I've been participating in the AAEEBL Conference (the Association of Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning -- a community of ePortfolio practitioners). On Monday, I led a day-long workshop with a small group of educators from the U.S. and Australia. Our focus was "Your Digital Self: Web 2.0 as Personal Learning Environment and ePortfolio" and we had a wonderful discussion. Here is a sample of tweets from the session:

• Going to get some breakfast before my session w/Helen Barrett on Web 2.0, PLEs & ePortfolio. Hear she rocks #aaeebl
• Fabulous workshop w/@eportfolios (Helen Barrett) at #aaeebl. Great group and lots to think about. Thanks!

I agree! It was a great group and we had some very in-depth conversations. On Tuesday, I led a 50-minute presentation that summarized the content of the day-long workshop. Here are my slides:

AAEEBL2010 web2

Today, I gave a keynote address with the title, "Blurring the Boundaries Between ePortfolio Development and Social Networking." Here are my slides for my keynote address:

AAEEBL 2010 Keynote

At the end of the presentation, I shared an example of a digital story (my daughter's letter to her students). Several people came up to me to say how much they were touched by her brief story.  Here are a few pertinent tweets after my keynote:

• passion and purpose co-exist #aaeebl
• Eportfolios document mastery (pride in the process) #aaeebl
• "flow" is there in social media and open source creativity-we must create "flow" in eportfolios. #aaeebl
• I recall Dan Ariely's TED talk: any creative or critical thinking task was more successful/productive when intrinsically motivated. #aaeebl
• Two faces of eportfolios : workspace vs showcase,or, process vs product. Lightbulb moment! #aaeebl
• Eportfolios and social media: are ppl organically creating eportfolios outside of higher ed by using facebook, picasa etc? #aaeebl

I'm glad there was at least one "light bulb" moment in the room. I had some great discussions afterward over lunch. I also met a graduate student I worked with in 2004, who created a wonderful story that I often use in my presentations.

I have a lot of feedback for the conference organizers (not enough time for reflection between sessions, no organized interest groups, too expensive for most K-12 participation, etc.). But for the first AAEEBL conference, it is a good start, giving higher educators many opportunity to hear a lot of points of view. I am still concerned that there is too much of an emphasis on ePortfolios for accountability, and little for K-12 in this conference, but I made my thoughts known.

Models of Reflection

At the closing session of the EIFEL Conference, we had an interesting discussion on reflection. I discovered two more models of reflection:
Gibbs Model of Reflection

Peter Pappas' Taxonomy of Reflection, based on the revised Bloom's Taxonomy. This blog entry includes more detailed scaffolding of reflection for students, for teachers, and for principals.

Keynote at EIFeL 2010

I am at my eighth European ePortfolio Conference, this year in London. Below are my slides for my keynote presentation.

Eifel2010

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It is fascinating for me to see the many presentations at this conference from the health care field and from other countries, including Japan and Australia. The interest in ePortfolios is truly becoming worldwide. The first keynote of the morning was from the health care field, and the last presentation was about 21st Century Skills. There weren't many participants from K-12, though.