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.