Passion, Self-Directed Learning and Total Talent Portfolios

10 Ways Technology Supports 21st Century Learners in Being Self Directed by Lisa Nielsen
New York educator and super-blogger Lisa Nielsen posted a very interesting blog post on the Technology & Learning Advisor Blog. As Lisa introduced her post, "Life in the 21st century provides a whole-new world of opportunities for self-directed, passion-driven, personalized learning." Here is a summary of her ten points. (I provided the details on one of the items, for obvious reasons!)

1. Personal Learning Networks
2. Tweet to Connect with Experts
3. Skype an Expert
4. Free Online Educational Resources
5. Online Learning
6. Authentic Publishing
7. Use YouTube and iTunes to Learn Anything
8. Passion (or talent) Profiles
9. Develop Authentic Learning Portfolios When done write [sp] ePortfolios can be a powerful tool that not only helps remind students of all their accomplishments, but it also enables them to share these with the world.  In the 21st century, creating an ePortfolio is free and easy.  Student simply select a container (blog, wiki, website, Google site), decide how they’d like to organize it, and then post their work.  I strongly advise against using any paid for portfolio site.  It is important that students have ownership of their own work and that it can travel with them wherever they are.  When it comes to ePortfolios, Helen Barrett is the go-to person.  To learn more, visit her blog http://blog.helenbarrett.org where she shares fantastic ideas.  
10. Empower Students to Assess and Learn Themselves 

I also loved her earlier blog post: Preparing Students for Success by Helping Them Discover and Develop Their Passions where she says:

The Total Talent Portfolio focuses on student strengths and "high-end learning" behaviors. Although the teacher serves as a guide in the portfolio review process, the ultimate goal of the Total Talent Portfolio is to create autonomy in students by turning control for the management of the portfolio over to them. Students visit their portfolios often updating the selection of items to be included, maintaining and regularly updating the portfolio, and setting personal goals by making decisions about items that they would like to include in the portfolio. Teachers use the Total Talent Portfolio as a means to differentiate instruction and effectively group students. The students love having a Total Talent Portfolio because they know it’s their personal roadmap to making their dreams come true, whatever they are.

The students use their Total Talent Portfolios to help them pursue engaging activities in areas of deep personal interest. When discovering and exploring passions is the objective few teachers find their student have short attention spans. In fact quite the opposite. These students know what it’s like to be in a flow (the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.) and how to do so for real purposes.

Dr. Renzulli's article, linked from this blog post, clearly articulates "A Plan for Identifying and Developing Gifts and Talents." I love it! THAT's what a learning portfolio should be all about!

ITSC Conference Reflections

I spent three days in Portland at the ITSC 2011 Conference. They built an app, which linked to a mobile-friendly website. I don't normally go to a conference where I am not presenting, but I was fascinated by the program. I enjoyed the following sessions/workshops:

• Canby SDs iPod touch & iPad 1:1 Classroom Implementations - I plan to visit this district, where every 3rd grader in the district gets an iPod Touch. They have shown some dramatic increases in literacy and math scores of students in classrooms using these tools. Notable links: Main wiki on iPod use, Using iTunes as a Digital Portfolio. I was especially impressed with the story Joe Morelock told about how students post goals for the week with Corkulous - a cork board app ($4.99). A student creates a collection of cork boards, building small portfolio on device. Students set weekly goals in one color, show accomplishments in another color.
• Rethink, Relearn: What it means to think, learn and design curriculum with Dr. Roger Schank. I attended this conference because he was one of the keynote speakers and I have his book, Tell me a Story. I enjoyed the opportunity to work with Jackie Gerstein and another educator from Oregon, where we explored a lot of ideas around how students can find their purpose and passions. We entitled our GoogleDoc, "Everyone has a story" and we compiled a lot of resources on daily reflection, goal setting and how do we help students find their “spark?” A spark is something that gives your life meaning and purpose. It's an interest, a passion, or a gift. What do you bring to the world that is good, beautiful, and useful?  It was a very exciting morning.
• This looks interesting with Alec Couros and Dean Shareski - Lots of new apps and websites: Tagxedo.com, Instapaper, safeshare.tv, fur.ly, ujam.com, pen.io, min.us/
• Beyond Search with Lucy Gray - Learned lots of new ways to search Google. I especially liked www.sweetsearch.com which is powered by Yolink. Google Search Lessons,  Lucy's slides in Slideshare
• Mobile Learning in Your School with Ira David Socol (he helped his son create todaysmeet.com)- This was a good opportunity to learn from other educators about why and how to use mobile phones in education: let students choose their own device (SODs -- Student-Owned Devices). Start with calendar, use mobile organization of the day. I learned how to email reminders from Google Calendar. Other links we explored: polleverywhere.com, www.mobilestudy.org. We explored Dragon & Vlingo (voice to text) which doesn't work well with children's voices. He talked about MITS Freedom Stick (4 GB flash-based Freedom Drive-- some use MP3 player) which contains mobile versions of Windows open source software. Build mobile websites: site.mobi/, ubik.com/. Use mobile devices to make sense of things - map where you are, upload to Flickr - Flickr on your Mobile (How to Access Flickr Through Your Cell Phone) Read more: How to Access Flickr Through Your Cell Phone | eHow.com
  It is all about power for unempowered people.
• Closing Keynote: Cognitive Processes that Underlie Learning with Roger Schank. I intend to get his book when it comes out next fall: Learning 2.0 from Teachers College Press. I took voluminous notes in Evernote. Some of the key ideas:
• We learn from experience - which experiences affect memory? (memory is dynamic)
• Case-based reasoning - how it relates to me
• Learning is the abandonment of old scripts
  change by experience - what makes experience memorable: emotional reactions, satisfaction goals, surprises, deep involvement in developing a solution, catastrophic failure.
• Education must be defined as guided practice (death of "you will need it later")
• Education must be about helping students achieve truly held long term goals [reinforcing the need for student goal-setting]
• Education should be designed in order to match student goals with societal needs - start with a well-defined goal (one that the student wants to achieve)
• Education must focus on the non-conscious mind. If you have a motivated learner, you can teach then anything.
• Education should enable the satisfaction of curiosity
• Many ideas on how to change teaching: art of teaching is art of assisted discovery
• John Adams' purpose of education: learn how to live and how to make a living... and it should be fun!
• Provide an education allowing students real choices. The real goal should be getting students to think for themselves.
• Curriculum should be organized around Cognitive Processes: modeling (constructing a model of the world), judgment, prediction, causation, diagnosis, evaluation, experimentation, negotiation, describing, influencing, teamwork, planning.
He make me think deeply, and reinforced my passion for storytelling in learning. The research-based concepts he raised would revolutionize education, if he could get leaders to listen to his ideas. His Story-Centered Curriculum article provides a glimpse of what is possible; also his White Paper (PDF). His keynote was a great ending to the conference.

I am really glad I came to this conference. There were a lot of sessions on GoogleApps that I did not attend, and I had to make a lot of choice about which sessions I should attend, but I think I chose what I needed at this time. I have new ideas to integrate into my upcoming presentations next week. I also took the opportunity to visit a teacher in Portland, who is doing exciting work using Evernote for student portfolios in grades 3-5, but I will save that reflection for a future post, especially if I decide to go back to Oregon to visit Canby School District classes.

ePortfolios for Managing Oneself and Portfolio Careers

On Monday and Tuesday, I attended a Conference on Advising Highly Talented Undergraduates, held at Notre Dame University. On the first day, Dr. Richard Light of Harvard University provided the opening keynote address on the Challenges for Advising Highly Talented Undergraduates. He mentioned an article by Peter Drucker entitled, "Managing Oneself" published in the Harvard Business Review in 1999. I found several copies of the article through an iPhone Google search, and downloaded it. The purpose for the article struck a cord with me:

“Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves
– their strengths, their values, and how best they perform.”

We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: If you've got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out. 

But with opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren't managing their employees' careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be their own chief executive officers. It's up to you to carve out your place, to know when to change course, and to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years. To do those things well, you'll need to cultivate a deep understanding of yourself-- not only what your strengths and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution. Because only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence.

Here is where an ePortfolio can provide an ongoing environment where individuals can develop and manage their own personal SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). The article contains the following sections:

• What are my strengths?
• How do I perform?
• What are my values?
• Where do I belong?
• What should I contribute?
• Responsibility for Relationships
• The Second Half of your Life

I can see a powerful purpose for ePortfolios: managing knowledge workers' career development, from high school through late career. There is another opportunity: managing "portfolio careers." As I was preparing for my closing keynote at this conference, I explored websites that focused on Portfolio Careers:

• Portfolio Career and Professional Fulfillment:Flexible Working Patterns in the 21st Century
  http://www.suite101.com/content/portfolio-career-and-professional-fulfilment-a136379
  "A portfolio career offers flexible working arrangements to suit people and their personal and professional requirements during the 21st century"
• Portfolio Careers: Creating a Career of Multiple Part-Time Jobs http://www.quintcareers.com/portfolio_careers.html
• The Future Of Work: Portfolio Careers
  http://gigaom.com/collaboration/the-future-of-work-portfolio-careers/
• Portrait Of A Portfolio Career: Answer To The "Perfect Job"? http://www.successfromtheinsideout.com/e_letters/portrait.html
• The portfolio career: To find fulfillment try simultaneous careers http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/07/04/the-portfolio-career-to-find-fulfillment-try-simultaneous-careers/
• Portfolio Careers / Portfolio Lives
  http://ourfounder.typepad.com/leblog/2010/06/portfolio-careers-portfolio-lives.html

I also found this video that encapsulated some of the key elements of portfolio careers:

Next Generation Journalist: Nick Williams from Adam Westbrook on Vimeo.

"Today, security means being employable, even if you don't have a job." The speaker talks about the concept of personal branding: "everyone needs to know what they are uniquely brilliant at… what they're passionate about, what they love doing, and what they're good at doing, and then finding people who want to hire them at that.

Slides for my keynote presentation are posted on Slideshare.

High Tech High

I have spent the last two days visiting High Tech High in San Diego, talking with teachers, administrators and students, and visiting two different courses for teachers. I still have some more time to visit with a few more people and to debrief with their Director of Research, but I realize that I learned a lot more than how they are implementing DPs (digital portfolios) with their students; I also learned a lot about their philosophy of personalizing learning for a diverse student body. Since the school opened in 2001, every student has maintained a digital portfolio, which is used to support their POL (Presentation of Learning) twice a year and their TPOL (Transitional Presentation of Learning) at the end of the year as the student's rationale as to why they are ready for the next grade (or ready to graduate?). Even more important, every teacher has a digital portfolio, but some of them use these websites more like an instructional management system, as a resource for students. Some of the more impressive teacher portfolios showcase the project-based learning at the core of the school philosophy.

There is technical support in each building as well as a system-wide IT Director. The entire system adopted Google Apps over a year ago with over 4,000 accounts mapped to their Active Directory, and also has a WordPress server; these tools are used for different purposes in the program. Here is a school that matches my three-level model:

• Level 1. portfolio as storage (collection of artifacts)--Everyone has server space, with a folder called MyDP to store their portfolio, or a file that links to a portfolio developed on another server. The school also has three video servers, controlled by the teachers.
• Level 2. portfolio as workspace (collection plus reflection/metacognition, organized chronologically)--The school has a WordPress server and many teachers have their students use WordPress blogs for day-to-day assignments and reflections.
• Level 3. portfolio as showcase (selection, summative reflection and presentation, organized thematically)--Many teachers and students are moving from their original Dreamweaver-based DP over to Google Sites. These portfolios support student-led conferences (SLC)--which I observed--and the public Presentations of Learning

Four design principles underlie the work of High Tech High: personalization, adult world connection, common intellectual mission, teacher as designer. There are actually nine schools in the San Diego area; I only visited two of them. I will be writing up a more in-depth case study for my book, as the high school example. I asked one group of students how the public nature of their DPs and POLs impacted their learning. As one student said:

I want that work to be good. I know I'm up to it... It makes you want to understand what you're learning... My DP helps me self-reflect. I could update it daily. I self-reflect on how well I do. I learn from myself as well. I see my strengths; I see my weaknesses and how I can improve. I work harder to do better.

Top 5 Back-to-School Tech Tools

Read Write Web published the results of a survey: Teachers Pick Their Top 5 Back-To-School Tech Tools

1. The iPad: Mobile Learning (or tablets/netbook mini-lab) bringing mobile hardware in the classroom for 1-to-1 learning
2. Twitter: Real-Time Information (a microblogging tool in the classroom, to communicate with parents and the community, and as a part of a teacher's own professional development and personal learning network)
3. Google Apps for Education: Cloud-Based Collaboration
4. Blogs: Student Portfolios
5. Sharing and Collaboration Tools: 21st Century Teaching and Learning (i.e., Wikispaces, VoiceThread, and SlideShare)

Not surprising results, since the survey was widely re-tweeted.  I will be teaching an online course for Seattle Pacific University this fall, entitled "Issues and Advances in Educational Technology" for teacher candidates in their graduate program. I team-taught the class last fall, and I learned a lot about this state's technology standards, and some of the emerging technologies. We chose not to use Blackboard, but the Web 2.0 "open" tools that are available to everyone: Google Sites, GoogleDocs, Google Groups, Etherpad, delicious.com, etc. Each graduate student at SPU uses Wordpress.com as their bPortfolio, so they wrote a weekly reflection on their learning in each class. The students will also produce a digital narrative, and collaboratively develop an online resource on some element of integrating technology into their teaching specialty. I am looking forward to updating the course with some of these current findings, but I think the course design from last fall needs only a little tweaking.

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.

Learning my new iPad

Yes, I waited in line yesterday to pick up the 16GB iPad I reserved. Daughter posted some Twitpix last night. Spent the afternoon exploring capabilities of my new iPad. I sent a long email and learned to type on the screen with my finger pads, trying to avoid my fingernails (not easy). I bought a Bluetooth keyboard, but am trying to get used to the keyboard.

I have been exploring the apps. I responded to a blog post using Safari, but couldn't scroll through the comment field beyond what I could see on the screen (no scroll bars or arrow keys on the keyboard). I created a blog post with the WordPress App (after figuring out how to publish) and am sending this entry to Blogger as an eMail. Tweetdeck works great. I am using the old Facebook app (not ready to pay for one). I am finding that the games I like on the iPhone are different on the iPad. Easier on the eyes, but harder on the arms (reaching with arms, not fingers). I am trying to limit the games, anyways.

So far, the major deficiency is Google Docs. I can read documents, but not edit them. In my long spreadsheets, I can't scroll to data that is off the screen (I can scroll and do minor editing on my iPhone). Haven't tried Google Sites yet. As a media consumption tool, it looks like a dream. But in education, that is not the model we want to perpetuate. Yes, I can see the potential for textbooks in this format, but I want to be able to use cloud computing tools for content development, not having to buy iWork for this iPad. I know this is just the first day, but if it is going to be more than a print/paper replacement, we need to be able to use online content development tools. Of course, I want to see how it can be used to develop and maintain e-portfolios! Since I will be attending the ADE Institute this summer, where we will focus on Mobile Technologies, I hope to explore these issues further.

Sent from my iPad

Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age

In October 2009, Google hosted a two day meeting called Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age. I've spent the afternoon watching some of the YouTube videos of the sessions. These are interesting viewpoints from some of the leaders of the technology community plus a few educators.

• Day 1: Opening Panel: Recapturing Our Innovation Edge: America’s Urgent Education Challenge - Linda Darling-Hammond, Joel I. Klein, Mitchell Kapor, Jonathan F. Miller, Kavitark Shriram
• Day 1: Dinner keynote: Geoff Canada
  
• Day 2: Session I. The Next Revolution in Learning: How Digital Culture is Shaping Where and How Children Learn - Gary E. Knell, Mizuko Ito, James Steyer, Reed Hastings
• Day 2: Session II. Literacy 2.0: Creative Strategies to Prepare 21st Century Learners - Nichole Pinkard, Benjamin Bederson, Allison Druin, Karen Cator, Marissa Mayer, Daniel Russell
• Day 2: Session III. New Learning Designs: Scaling Innovation to Reverse the Dropout Crisis - Jason Levy, Larry Rosenstock, Katie Salen, Rey Ramsey
• Day 2: Session IV: Teachers for a Digital Age: New Strategies to Transform Practice - Anthony S. Bryk, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, Marshall (Mike) S. Smith, Ellen Moir, Esther Wojcicki
• Day 2: Closing Panel: Breakthrough Ideas to Drive Student Success: Action Steps for the Nation - Blair Levin, Jim Shelton, Barbara Chow, Susan Gendron, Elliot Schrage, Kathy Hurley

It is refreshing to hear the emphasis on learning, teaching, professional development, school culture, not really on the technology. I heard Linda Darling-Hammond call for another PT3 program for Teacher Education programs... yes!

I also discovered the blog that different participants contributed entries. A really interesting enry: Using Alternative Assessment Models to Empower Youth-directed Learning Including a high school senior's Digital Media Portfolio created using VoiceThread developed as part of Global Kids, Inc.

GoogleApps for K-12 ePortfolios

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.

MOSEP - More self esteem with my ePortfolio

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.

21st Century Portfolios

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

Creativity and ePortfolios

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).

Passion and Future ePortfolios

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.

K-12 Student Portfolio

I just received permission to share an amazing student portfolio, that has been maintained in a single school from Kindergarten to senior year. The portfolio was created with Apple's iWeb, and represents learning in a Multiple Intelligences curriculum.

Two Political Statements

I came across these two websites on one of my listservs. This isn't a political blog but I just couldn't resist adding them here:

It's not on the Test: Here's a new song about school testing that Tom Chapin wrote. It helped usher in the New Year on National Public Radio, appearing on "Morning Edition" on January 1, 2007.

Mad TV's iRack

Enjoy!

Apple's iPhone in Education?

I visited MacWorld on Wednesday, and saw the iPhone. I also watched the podcast (downloaded to my iPod) of Steve Jobs' keynote address at MacWorld. I am ready to order one of those phones today, despite the fact that I just started using a Palm Treo SmartPhone. It's a good thing that the iPhone won't be available until June. Still, as I look at the features of this phone, I see an incredible tool to support learning! It's a tablet PC in the palm of your hand, complete with OS X and wifi access. It has all of the features that I want in a cell phone/iPod/handheld Internet device (for email, web browsing, maps, and searching). How soon will it have voice recognition for voice dialing, like many cell phones do? Will it interface with a Bluetooth keyboard for those of us who find it faster communicating with all of our fingers, not just one? Jobs used a specially-built iPhone with a video board, that projected its image to the presentation screen. Will that adaptation be available?

As I look at this device through the lens of my current research interests, I wonder: Would Apple consider making a version that works without the phone service, but uses the device on a classroom network? I could imagine a lot of ways that this device could be used to enhance learning. Right now, schools are paranoid about cell phones, with many K12 schools banning their use. But these schools also filter the Internet, so that these devices could safely be put into the service of learning. Online simulations, games, learning objects, widgets, blogs, a built-in digital camera to collect images; the capabilities of this device could far exceed the way Palms are currently being used in education today. I could imagine many ways that this device could become the next 1-1 platform for learning. I also see a tool that will support the many stages of ePortfolio development, including collection and reflection.

What do you think?

Learning to Learn Portfolio Model

I just found this Learning to Learn Portfolio Model developed by Ian Fox, the Principal at Bucklands Beach Intermediate School, Auckland, New Zealand. This model provides a wonderful framework for thinking about portfolios in schools: Metacognitive Development, Assessment to Improve Learning, and Development of Home-School Links. His online paper, Learning to Learn in the 21st Century, provides further explanation of this model and how it is implemented in his school.

A Trojan Horse for ePortfolios?

I am currently teaching an online course on ePortfolios. In response to one of my articles, one of the participants raised the issue of developing a portfolio culture, and how to get a school district to adopt ePortfolios. I think he identified the real issues we face when implementing portfolios: how do we create a portfolio culture in a learning community? That question goes along with our approach to assessment: how do we adopt a system of assessment that emphasizes as much formative as summative assessment? In our accountability-driven system, there is a temptation to use more summative than formative methods. We can aggregate numeric data very easily; multiple choice tests are much easier to score. Portfolios are hard work. I think a mandated portfolio could be successful, as long as the implementation focuses on student learning (the story approach), rather than institutional accountability (the checklist approach).

I think the problem is that the predominant experience of educators is with these more summative (behavioral?) approaches, rather than the constructivist paradigm, which is where portfolios really began. Very few educators have experience using portfolios in their teacher preparation, and even now, I see a lot of incompatible uses of portfolios implemented in teacher education programs: the model of portfolios implemented with student teachers is not compatible with how their students would use them in schools. We aren't modeling appropriate practices.

How do we break this cycle? I recommend having administrators and teachers develop and maintain their own reflective portfolios, and create a collaborative environment where portfolios are used for collaboration and professional development, not only for high-stakes evaluation purposes.

This brings up a much larger issue... change. I published a web page called Professional Development for Implementing Electronic Portfolios where I include my recommendations, a discussion of the "Adoption of Innovations" (the Change Process) and a preliminary look at the competencies (both Portfolio and Technology Skills) to implement electronic portfolios. You will find some Resources for Professional Development as well as Recommended Professional Development and Readings... a graduate degree's worth of reading!

One thing I learned when I did my own dissertation research (on how adults teach themselves to use personal computers) I found that there is a simple formula about change: the benefits of a change must exceed the cost of that change, whether real or simply perceived. I think we will eventually reach a "tipping point" on the adoption of ePortfolios, but it will take a lot of small successes, with both grass roots advocates and top-down support to make it happen. But if there are enough of us who believe in the portfolio process, who are willing to model promising practices, and who are willing to tell our stories, then I think we will see some real change.

I once wrote in an article that stated, "Perhaps ePortfolios can become the Trojan Horse for integrating digital storytelling into the curriculum." What is the Trojan Horse for integrating ePortfolios into the curriculum? I think it is the evidence that we can collect that will show how portfolios can help improve student achievement, based on the model of formative assessment for learning. There is a research base from the Assessment Reform Group in the U.K. (Black & Wiliam) that supports this assertion (as I referenced in the article). I am also encouraging one of my colleagues on the East Coast to report her research, where the implementation of ePortfolios with ELL students in middle schools in New York City has led to increased test scores. According to her, the ePortfolios make it obvious to teachers where their students needed to improve, so that they can focus their remediation efforts. When her research is published, I will be the first to post it on my blog!

New NAP book

I just downloaded a new book (in PDF) from the National Academies Press: Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future by the Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century: An Agenda for American Science and Technology, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine. As described in today's The Scout Report:

For most of the 20th century, the United States was the pre-eminent leader in many enterprises that were based on advanced scientific and technological knowledge. In recent years, there has been a growing concern that the US may be losing its competitive advantage as other countries (such as India and China) continue to invest heavily both in higher education and the training of scientists and engineers. This very provocative and insightful 504-page report from the National Academy of Sciences takes a critical appraisal of the current state of these affairs, and also offers four primary recommendations along with twenty ideas about how best these recommendations might be achieved over the coming years. Some of these primary recommendations include creating attractive merit-based scholarships for those who wish to become K-12 science educators and lobby policy-makers to fight for tax incentives for innovation that is based in the United States. For those interested in this rather compelling issue, this is a report that is worthy of considerable time and attention.

I have a new PDF book to read on my upcoming flight to Europe!

Education in a Flat World

In doing a Google search on Thomas Friedman's perspective on education, I came across a Press Release from the U.S. Department of Education with remarks by Margaret Spellings, US DOE Secretary, to the National Association of Manufacturers Meeting in DC, September 28, 2005. She quotes Friedman's concerns that "people won't even acknowledge that there is an education gap emerging and that there is an ambition gap emerging and that we are in a quiet crisis." She goes on to point out the efforts of:

states measuring our children's progress each year in reading and math, and by focusing on each student, and on each group of students, we can discover where they need help before it's too late.

The problem with these annual tests is that they do not give the results in a timely-enough manner so that changes can be made in the "teachable moments" that Spellings refers to earlier in her speech. She also reiterates Friedman's concerns:

As a nation, we have no more important task than to help our children develop academic skills, and character, and a little ambition if we are going to succeed in this flattening world...

But the long-term solution is to make sure that every member of our rising generation has the education and skills to succeed in the 21st century. The education gap, the achievement gap—the quiet crisis—will cast a very long shadow over our future if we do not summon the will to stay competitive. And competitiveness begins with education.

Competitiveness also begins with imagination and innovation. Spellings also provides examples of school districts who have achieved their "No Child Left Behind" goals, but does not provide any details. I wonder how many of those goals were achieved through mind-numbing drills that achieve short term gains in the reading and math skills measured by standardized tests, but do not address the kinds of competencies that will lead to innovation and success in a Flat world... those right-brain abilities identified by Daniel Pink (discussed in my August 15 blog entry): design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. Portfolios, not standardized tests, can document those abilities. If only our education leaders would put as many resources into classroom-based, formative assessment FOR learning as they do into state-wide summative assessment OF learning! Then, based on the work of the Assessment Reform Group from the U.K., researchers Black & Wiliam and the Assessment Training Institute's Rick Stiggins, we would see more student engagement and improvement of their own work.