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!

Online Course

Next week, I was asked to facilitate a one-week online class which I am calling Interactive Electronic Portfolios. I have been learning to use Moodle as the course management environment. I know, I'm pretty late trying this tool, since I was an early user of Blackboard at UAA in 1999. I just have not had access to a server or a reason to use it until now. It also helps to have an experienced guide as I explore the different tools.

I got so inspired that I bought new webserver space for two years to host the three URLs that I've owned for three years but have not used so far: electronicportfolios.info, electronicportfolios.net and electronicportfolios.us. The hosting service provided automatic installation of Moodle, WordPress, MediaWiki and Joomla, a content management system. This website is going to be a Dreamweaver-free site. I want to see what I can do with some of these open source tools on my own server space, without using any HTML authoring tools.

Web 2.0 explorations

Since I returned home, I've been online full time, learning new online Web 2.0 tools. A colleague from Australia introduced me to two new websites: Wet Paint (a new wiki that is based in Seattle!) and Protopage (an AJAX Start Page). I am using my Wet Paint page to plan a workshop in Melbourne next March. I am using my Protopage to emulate an aggregator for my new model of ePortfolio development, as discussed in my EIFEL conference keynote (small pieces, loosely joined).

PodPals in Budapest

I am in Budapest, visiting my daughter who teaches English in a high school. I visited her classes several days this week. These students are in a tourism and culinary arts high school. In one class, the students who are learning to become tour guides are going to start podcasting. I introduced them to both ePortfolios and podcasting with odeo.com. We are looking for students in other parts of the world who would like to become "podpals" with them, showcasing their conversational English skills, while talking about Budapest.

Creating PodCasts with GarageBand

I just finished two digital stories/podcasts using Apple's GarageBand, and I am really jazzed! This is such a cool tool, and I am relatively pleased with the results. After taking a half-day workshop at Camp Podcast in Vancouver, B.C., I felt confident enough to tackle this software.

The first podcast I completed was a new story called Changes, which I wrote to help me come to terms with a major change in my life. I recorded the story in my tried-and-true Sound Studio program, imported the audio into a track in Garage Band, and proceeded to add images at appropriate places on the Podcast Track timeline. The quality was not nearly as good as iMovie, but it was much faster, since I needed to finish the story in a day for a presentation. I also wanted to include audio from GB, and I was pleased with some of the music loops that were included there.

The second podcast that I completed was the keynote address that I did at the ePortfolio 2006 conference held in Oxford last week. I used my new iPod with the Belkin microphone to record my speech. Just started recording and lay it on the podium in front of me. When I was through, I had the audio of my entire presentation. I brought it into GarageBand. I also took my PowerPoint presentation and changed the page layout to square dimensions (required by GB's podcast track), which did a remarkably good job of adjusting the text on the slides. It squashed the pictures, though, but not that noticeably. I saved the entire slide show as JPEGs in a folder. Then, I put markers into the timeline for where each slide would start. When finished, I went back to the beginning and began adding the images onto the Podcast track. For the half hour keynote, it took me about an hour, twice through the audio. I have now posted it online for the world to hear.

There are many ways to create a narrated slide show. This was the easiest that I have tried. I also have downloaded a piece of software called ProfCast that I will need to try very soon.

EIFE-L Conference 2006

I just left the fourth annual EuroPortfolio conference sponsored by EIFE-L. My keynote presentation on the second morning was entitled, Voice and Interactivity in ePortfolios: Digital Stories and Web 2.0. It was based on two articles that I have on my website: Authentic Assessment with Electronic Portfolios using Common Software and Web 2.0 Tools and Purposes of Digital Stories in ePortfolios. I will post the podcast of my presentation here when I finish editing it, adding my slides.

One of the things I emphasized was the need for “every day-ness” or how we can make ePortfolio development a natural process integrated into everyday life supporting Lifelong and Life Wide Learning. I also mentioned Social Learning, or how we can integrate ePortfolio development with what Vygotsky told us about learning as an interactive social activity. I also mentioned that the Architecture of Interaction (Web 2.0) allows a Pedagogy of Interaction (ePortfolio 2.0).

I took the opportunity to create a new graphic that describes a "mash-up" of different Web 2.0 tools that could be combined together for a powerful ePortfolio system, using a variety of online tools that students might already be using. These are generic tools or types of digital documents that can be created by any system. The important components are interactivity and multimedia.


I discussed three emerging Models for Portfolios
mPortfolios (Mobility)
iPortfolios (Interactivity)
Digital Stories (Voice) facilitating Individual Identity, Reflection, and Meaning Making.

Thanks to my friend Evangeline Stefanakis, I showed that Portfolios are Lived Stories and that the real power of the portfolio is personal by showing the story that I am currently living. It was a risk, but the response was gratifying.

There are some exciting developments and new tools that were shown at this conference. Every year the field matures. I did not have a chance to attend the "plug-fest" on the first day, so I was limited in my observation of the technical developments. Elizabeth Hartnell-Young will be researching the use of Nokia mobile phones in ePortfolio development in schools. I also learned that there is another ePortfolio conference planned for Asia in March. Here is the schedule:
March 19-20, 2007 - Hong Kong
March 26-27, 2007 - Melbourne, Australia
March 29-30, 2007 - Wellington, N.Z.

PDP and ePortfolios

I am attending the first conference on "Researching and Evaluating Personal Development Planning and e-Portfolios" near Oxford, England, sponsored by the Centre for Recording Achievement. I worked with this group over two years ago, and their development is very evident in the time since 2004. They define PDP (Personal Development Planning) as

"A structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own learning, performance and/or achievement to plan for their personal, educational and career development." Dearing (1997)

The way that ePortfolios are used, to support the PDP process, provides a different purpose for portfolio development. Whereas portfolios in the U.S. are often adopted for institution-centered assessment and accountability purposes, the planning goals in the U.K. provide an institution-mandated student-centered approach, which is very refreshing. Each institution can implement the PDP program in individual ways, so there are examples that focus on accountability; but for the most part, student learning appears to be central to the process.

Digication Spotlight

I recently tried DigiCation Spotlight, another ePortfolio tool. This was the 21st tool that I have used to re-create my electronic portfolio. The process moved pretty smoothly. All URLs had to be converted to weblinks (it did not happen automatically). The tool allowed me to reconstruct my portfolio in less than an hour, copying the information from various online portfolios.

There is no data management tool, to aggregate assessment data. Therefore, this tool might work for formative assessment (providing teacher and peer feedback on student work) but not for summative assessment. The tool does not allow comments (as in a blog) or collaborative writing (as in a wiki), so its utility is really as a presentation portfolio. At the present time, the tool does not allow exporting the portfolio as a stand-alone archive. The real advantage is the price. At the present time it is free to the first 1000 users in a school.

Video iPod

I just bought a new 30 GB 5G iPod that plays video. This replaces a five year-old 5 GB 1G version and a two-year-old 40 GB 3G version that I gave to my daughter. I also bought the Belkin TuneTalk voice recorder that connects to the bottom of the iPod. The cable that connects the iPod to a TV was also ordered. I loaded my music and then learned how to convert all of my movies so that they would play on the iPod. Works great through iTunes. I've also uploaded a few of my photos, but will organize more of them into folders in iPhoto, and then upload the folders. I also downloaded iWriter that lets me create interactive content that can be uploaded to the iPod, my .Mac accounts, or just a folder that can be uploaded to any web server. It has an iPod preview window so that the content and navigation can be checked. I intend to see how I can incorporate these tools into the development of ePortfolios. The first project that I will develop will be an iPod version of my last paper, Purposes of Digital Stories in ePortfolios. A new learning opportunity! I will post the first project here.

Purpose of Digital Stories in ePortfolios

I just published another online document, looking at Purposes of Digital Stories in ePortfolios. Where I have examples of digital stories, I have provided web links. If you have examples that you would like to share, send me a link and an e-mail, giving permission to post the link on that page.

Perhaps ePortfolios can become the Trojan Horse for integrating digital storytelling into the curriculum. Most ePortfolios today are digital paper: text and images only. Digital Stories can humanize any model of ePortfolio using any type of ePortfolio tool. Digital Stories add VOICE to electronic portfolios. Digital Storytelling is also a motivating strategy for involving students in their own learning using 21st Century tools of engagement.

E-Learning 2.0

There has been a lot of buzz coming my way about Web 2.0 and its impact on education. Stephen Downes discussed e-Learning 2.0, a term that does not refer to the numerous course management systems that are more about teaching than learning. What is the comparable tool to support lifelong self-directed learning, like eBay for online auctions, or Amazon for books (and a lot more now), or iTunes for music (and now video), or MySpace for social networking? It's more than using blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, digital storytelling, ePortfolios to support learning. It's really the synergy between all of these applications. It's also access to a variety of learning resources through intelligent search engines. In the 1980s, I remember the adult learning literature talked about people who would function as "learning brokers" while today we could look to the Internet to fill that role. Is it possible to create such an online environment to go beyond the minimal goal-setting function of 43Things.

Here are a few websites that I found googling around the web:
Knowledge on Demand, an EU-funded project from Greece around 2002 (pre-Web 2.0)
Teachers Pay Teachers and the CNN.com article that says it aims to be the eBay for educators
Web 2.0 has hit Business Week.
Edu 2.0 just recently launched.

All of these sites contain a piece of the puzzle, but nothing rises to the level of those other websites that I mentioned above. So what should be part of an online environment to support lifelong self-directed learning. What is the "killer app" for lifelong learning?

Wikis in Education

I am starting to explore more of the uses of Wikis in education. This web page came from the WWWTools for Education listserv, which originates from Australia. This website provides a wealth of great resources. Here is another article that just came out by David Jakes, Wild about Wikis.

Comments from eMail

I received the following comments recently from Mechelle M. De Craene, a Special Ed./Gifted Ed. Teacher in Florida, and graduate student. She recently published this article on Digital Storytelling: A Practical Classroom Management Strategy for working with middle school students.

I think portfolios are so important for educators, especially for special education teachers because so much information can be gleaned from portfolios that just doesn't show up on standardized testing.

In special education, so many life changing (e.g. regular or special diploma track) decisions are made by age 14, which are usually based upon state test, grades and IQ scores that don't truly capture the essence or potential including the uniqueness of every learner. I've used portfolios in the past to advocate for students with special needs to be mainstreamed into general education course so that my students may graduate with a regular diploma.

Additionally, equally important is the student participation in the portfolio process. It's a great way for students to self-reflect and see their growth. Plus, parents love portfolios of their children's progress.

And from another e-mail after she read my Web 2.0 article:

read your article and it is excellent!!!!! I especially like the comparison sections...especially Assessment of Learning vs. Assessment for Learning. It shows the evolution of the web and it is clearly defined. It is a great resource...especially the tool choices. Thank you for sharing that with me. : )

The great thing about Web. 2.0 is it fits more in line with our natural interactive nature. As machines become more and more intelligent they will compliment man's natural hierarchical (cognitive) and social needs systems. Have you read the book On Intelligence? It is an amazing book.

Hence, eportolios are great because they are not stagnant. They are dynamic. Also, wouldn't it be cool if students could take their eportfolios with them from teacher from year to year (ie..grade to grade)? That way teachers could look for various learning patterns in work presented though out a child's school years and build upon it. It would also be wonderful if we could access eportfolios via the web for each student, this would be especially useful for migrant children who move from town to town. Wow! There are so many wonderful things that are evolving. The pedagogy is truly in exciting times

Well said, Mechelle!

Web 2.0 Tools for ePortfolios

Picking up again, after my blog entry while in Salzburg, I started working on a new web page (and potential workshop) that would focus on using Web 2.0 tools for ePortfolios. This web page started initially as a handout for a workshop at the KIPP conference in New Orleans earlier this week, that I co-facilitated with one of my REFLECT teacher leaders. In this workshop, we provided an audience of primarily middle school teachers with an overview of authentic assessment and hands-on experience with two different approaches to doing electronic portfolios, first with Word/Excel and then with TaskStream. The experience gave them two ends of the e-portfolio spectrum: the most basic tools, and the highest end tool. We then provided them with resources to continue exploring these options, including information from Think.com and a 30-day trial account with TaskStream. We got very good feedback on the form that we built into TaskStream (modeling its instant data collection and aggregation features). I was pleased with this workshop, even though I thought it should have been a full day with the hands-on activities. Working on the agenda, I learned from my co-facilitator about WikiSpaces and Think.com, which I have already written about in this blog!

While researching this entry, I came across some more interesting articles about the impact of social networking sites (like MySpace) on college admissions and employment. I have written about this issue in a prior blog entry. I recently heard about 6th grade girls who were suspended for posting negative comments about their teacher on MySpace. As mentioned in the Business Week article, "there is no such thing as an eraser on the Internet." Perhaps instead of ignoring (or blocking) these websites, schools have a role in educating students about the long-term consequences of their actions (or postings). At the very least, parents should be educated about both the positive and negative implications of some of these new online services, that are attracting adolescents by the millions. (I just found Wired Magazine's MySpace Cheat Sheet for Parents.) In the last month, I heard that MySpace is now the #1 website on the Internet in terms of visitors. How can we replicate the intrinsic motivation of these social networking sites in the service of learning, while protecting students from the negative impacts?

WikiSpaces for ePortfolios

This is the 20th tool that I have used to create my electronic portfolio. After I figured out that the new pages that I created did not automatically appear in the Navigation Menu (and that I needed to manually construct that menu on the left side of the screen), the process moved pretty smoothly. All URLs are automatically converted to weblinks. The tool allowed me to reconstruct my portfolio in less than an hour, copying the information from various online portfolios, including my Mozilla portfolio, where I had the URLs on the page (not just links). I easily uploaded my only file artifact (on the Portfolio-at-a-Glance page). All of my other artifacts are web links. The program gives the capability of uploading any type of a file, and then linked from any of the pages. This is a type of digital archive, where student work can be uploaded for later use. Their website says that they allow 2 GB of online storage (the largest I have seen) but it does not appear to allow organizing files into folders.

This system has the potential to offer interactivity, since each page can be edited by members of my WikiSpace. Therefore, I added a few ideas at the bottom of most pages that could be used to offer feedback on the artifacts and reflections listed on the page. Each page can also have a discussion attached to it. When I forgot to save the changes to a page, when I went back to that page, the program gave me the choice to reload the draft. Nice feature.

The tool has the ability to "Embed Media" but I have not implemented that feature. It looks like you add a link to a piece of media that is posted to another website, like youtube or odeo. I was able to add links by simply including the full URL but when the links are followed, they stay in the same browser window. I prefer to have the links open a new window (and the portfolio remains open) so that when an artifact is opened, the reader can close the window and easily return to the portfolio, rather than using the Back button.

A feature that I really like is the ability to backup the most recent copies of the pages in a space in HTML (or wikitext) and save the archive to my hard drive. That is a feature that I think is a requirement for an ePortfolio system. It backs up all files to the desktop computer, and maintains hyperlinks but not the navigation menu.

There is also no data management tool, to aggregate assessment data. Therefore, this tool would work for formative assessment (providing teacher and peer feedback on student work) but not for summative assessment. But the process for adding comments and feedback would need to be agreed upon with the readers, just as I have placed suggestions at the bottom of some of these pages.

WikiSpaces is offered free of charge to K12 teachers. This tool is not as easy to use or intuitive as Think.com, nor as elegant as iWeb. However, it is accessible to individuals as well as schools. The very nature of a wiki is shared writing, so this tool might work well for collaborative development of ePortfolios.

Using Think.com for K-8 Portfolios

Think.com, a free service for K12 schools by Oracle, is the 19th tool that I have used to re-create my electronic portfolio. I am impressed by the ease of entering data. All URLs are automatically converted to weblinks that open in a new window. The tool allowed me to reconstruct my portfolio in less than an hour, copying the information from various online portfolios, including my Mozilla portfolio, where I had the URLs on the page (not just links). I easily uploaded my only file artifacts (on the Portfolio-at-a-Glance page).

This is the first tool that I have used that adds Interactivity to the portfolio (other than the blog tools). The software allows these forms of Interactivity:

• Message Board - Invite people to post a message on a page
• Ask Me - Answer questions (about anything)
• Debate - Pick a topic and have a debate with others
• Vote - Have an election or poll on a page
• Brainstorm - Invite others to share their ideas on a page

I am very impressed with this interactivity, since it makes an electronic portfolio a socially-constructed document. The tool also allows the addition of "Stickies" that can be added by anyone and deleted by the page owner. The Stickie can be used for providing formative feedback as a portfolio and its artifacts are developed.

There are also five types of "Media and More" that you can add to a page:

• Pictures - Upload your favorite GIFs and JPEGs
• List - Make a list of assignments or other things
• Mini Pics - Add artwork to a page from the Mini Pics gallery
• Multimedia - Upload Music, Movies and Animations
• Files - Upload files from Word, Claris Works and other programs

I noticed that when I used the List tool, I was able to add external web links (which turn the title into a web link), but when the links are followed, the site is opened in the same browser window. When a URL is added to a page, the link opens a new window (and the portfolio remains open just behind). That is my preference, so that when an artifact is opened, the reader can close the window and easily return to the portfolio, rather than using the Back button.

The only downside of this tool is the ability to export the data for use outside the system. All readers must be members of the Think.com community to be able to read the portfolio, which is very appropriate in a K-8 school environment (and why I don't have a link to the portfolio here). Think.com is available as school accounts only and the principal has to sign the AUP agreement with Oracle. There is also no data management tool, to aggregate assessment data. Therefore, this is a great tool for formative assessment (providing teacher and peer feedback on student work) but not for summative assessment. But that's not a bad thing in K-8 schools, where we have plenty of accountability measures, but need better online tools to facilitate formative assessement strategies.

WebCT Conference

I just left the WebCT Users Conference, where I provided the closing keynote address. The feedback was good. I was told by one of the executives (who shared a ride with me to the airport) that it was the best electronic portfolio presentation he had seen, because I dealt with a lot of content. At other conferences I have received feedback that perhaps I put too much content into my presentation, but this was a higher education audience and I heard a lot of appreciation for the books I referenced. In the airport, I bought Friedman's latest version of The World is Flat, and skimmed it for the updates that he made since the book was originally published a year earlier. I also added a couple of new slides to my presentation, about his impression of skills needed for a "flat" world.

I attended most of the conference, sitting in on all of the presentations about their newly-released electronic portfolio product, that is integrated with their course management system. While they have not provided me with a demo account yet, to be able to add that system to my "Online Portfolio Adventure," from the literature and the demonstrations, it appears to be student-centered and allows individuality and creativity. They are keeping the assessment management separate from the portfolio, developing another product called Caliper which is designed as a comprehensive assessment system. Caliper is not available this year, and it was not clear when it would be released, but the portfolio is available now for the more current installations of WebCT.

The man who presented the Caliper tool talked about the "positivist" (Caliper) and "constructivist" (Portfolio) versions of their tools (institution-centered vs. student-centered)! I was asked by one of the leaders from one of the pilot sites whether I worked with them on their portfolio development, since it seemed to represent my philosophy. I told him that I did not, but that my philosophy is published on my website for anyone to read! And I base my philosophy on some of the early portfolio literature, where the positivist/constructivist tension is introducted by Paulson & Paulson in 1994.

Since WebCT has been acquired by Blackboard, I am wondering what will happen with the original Blackboard portfolio. It was obvious at this conference that every WebCT product was being re-branded with the Blackboard name. Next year's users conference will be a combined WebCT/Blackboard conference in Boston.

The new WebCT portfolio only allows students to have a single portfolio, although they can create different views for different audiences by turning sections on and off. The tool has a blog and appears to seamlessly save any work created in a course into the portfolio, where it will be preserved after the course is over. If discussions are saved, the entries (other than the portfolio owner) are made anonymous. One feature that is not fully developed appears to be the export function. I understand that the tool will allow students to export their work, but not the structure of the portfolio, something that I think is essential.

I also got a peek at the new version of the TaskStream WebFolio builder that will be released next Tuesday, July 18. I am impressed! I will provide more details after I have a chance to update my portfolio with the new version.

NECC06 Conference

NECC 2006 is being held in San Diego. I worked with two of my REFLECT site coordinators to make a presentation during the first session on the first morning. We were impressed with the number of people present during that early hour, on the morning after the fireworks. We were also impressed with the types of questions being asked. After the presentation, I ran into other people who were there, and the dialogue continued.

This morning, one person asked me the usual question about my recommendations about free or low cost tools. Of course I said that was not the first question to ask... determine the purpose first, and then look at the tools to best meet those goals. He asked about Elgg, an open source ePortfolio tool. I told him that this software had a lot of promise as a blog, archive and social networking tool, all important components of a working portfolio. However, it is still missing the presentation builder that allows a learner to organize presentation portfolios for different purposes or audiences (a component that is part of their development plan). Of course that is one problem with open source software... without a business model to support the development, it can take longer to implement changes unless there is a regular funding stream. My experience with commercial tools shows that the companies are very responsive to their customer base, and have the resources to support ongoing support and development. Educators in schools need to recognize that they often get what they pay for, and the commercial market needs to look at how to make their products more affordable for schools. Somewhere in between free and $?? there is a sweet spot. I'm not sure we are there yet.

In the Open Source resource area, I found an electronic portfolio being designed to link with Moodle. When I looked at a demo it became apparent that this tool is being created as a digital archive of student work, with reflection on each artifact as it is uploaded. However, it does not have a presentation builder, so that a learner can construct a reflective story about a group of artifacts. While talking to the developer, he indicated that the Open University in the U.K. was building an electronic portfolio that they are tying into Moodle, that has five developers and so they are planning to include a presentation builder with templates. This open source software will supposedly be available in 2007. I hope I will see it at the EuroPortfolio conference in October in Oxford. I also learned that the University of Denver is thinking of modifying their portfolio system and making it available to the public for free.

I just heard Nicholas Negraponte talk about the $100 laptop that is being designed primarily for students in third world countries. Fascinating project. Their website says that they are not marketing to individuals or to school districts in the U.S. Their primary target groups are national governments in the developing world. But I think I have seen a vision of where laptops will be in the next decade. What I like is the low power requirements (>2 watts) and the ability to charge the NiMh battery by human power. I also like the simplicity of the system. I agree with several of his points: we don't need Caps Lock keys, and the software today is very bloated. When I think about what features I currently use in the software I have, and the time it takes to load the system, I long for the days when I could turn on my Radio Shack WP10 and just start writing!

I sat in a presentation on the University of Vermont's Portfolio Connection, a research project on electronic portfolios in teacher education programs throughout the state of Vermont. I was impressed by Joyce Morriss's Webquest on electronic portfolios. Their findings are very interesting: the student assessment portfolios built for accreditation are deadly dull; the professional portfolios that the student construct for showcase and employment are diverse and show the students' authentic voice!

2007 ePortfolio Conferences "Down Under"

I have just been invited to participate in two more ePortfolio Conferences, one in Melbourne, Australia on March 26-27, 2007, and the other in Wellington, New Zealand on April 2-3, 2007.

New ePortfolio articles

I just came across a few new articles on ePortfolios, mostly from the U.K. and Canada:

E-portfolios in post-16 learning in the UK: developments, issues and opportunities - A report prepared for the JISC e-Learning and Pedagogy strand of the JISC e-Learning Programme by Helen Beetham, e-learning consultant.

The report provides a brief overview of current e-portfolio developments in relation to both the management of assessment evidence within programmes, and the development of a repository of evidence of lifelong learning progress and achievement.

Engagement with Electronic Portfolios: Challenges from the Student Perspective by David Tosh, Tracy Penny Light, Kele Fleming and Jeff Haywood in the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology -

Abstract: Much of the evidence and research available on the use of e-portfolios focuses on faculty and institutional perspectives and/or consists mainly of anecdotes about how useful the e-portfolio has been to learners. While it is generally agreed that e-portfolios have great potential to engage students and promote deep learning, the research that has been conducted to date focuses very little on student perceptions of value of the e-portfolio for their learning. If students do not accept the e-portfolio as a holistic means with which to document their learning in different contexts and more importantly, agree or wish to use the e-portfolio as an integral part of their educational experience, then the potential impact the e-portfolio will have on learning will not be realised. This paper highlights four themes arising out of research that is underway within an international framework of collaboration between the University of Edinburgh, the University of British Columbia and the University of Waterloo.

Electronic Portfolios for Whom? - an Educause Viewpoint by Javier I. Ayala, Portland State University

The literature doesn’t discuss e-portfolio use to meet student needs and concerns but to support administrative efforts to solve long-term curricular issues

Becta's View: E-assessment and e-portfolios (pdf)

This document provides a short introduction to e-assessment and e-portfolios, how they might develop, and why Becta strongly believes that they will support engagement and achievement in learning.

My iWeb Portfolio

I am in the ePortfolio development business again. I wanted to try Apple's iWeb software (part of the iLife06 software suite), since I had so much fun creating my travel blog with it. I have lots of complaints about the process of uploading the site directly to my .Mac account from within iWeb, but the process of developing the site was very easy. Once I saved the portfolio to a folder, I was then able to upload the folder to my .Mac account. I used a few of the pre-formatted pages, but also set up a few blank pages. I also used a blog template to highlight different competencies. I have two separate sites set up, but when I save the files and upload them, it is all or nothing. Still, this is the most creative tool I have used so far in my Online Electronic Portfolio Adventure. Since iWeb is so tightly integrated with the other iLife06 tools (iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand), it made it so easy to include images, size them, apply a mask, etc. It would be nice, though, if iWeb had a portfolio template page that was more than images or podcasts.

More eMail Responses

I've responded to a few more eMails about ePortfolios, one in higher education (medical school), one from a secondary school teacher, and another about using iLife/iDVD for ePortfolios. My responses are also too long to post in a blog entry, so I have linked them below.

1. Medical School Faculty Member
2. High School Teacher
3. iLife/iDVD for ePortfolios

High School Portfolios in the Pacific NorthWest

How do we create mandatory high school portfolios and still keep the qualities that make a portfolio a portfolio (and not something else, like an assessment management system)? How to we create student-centered portfolios within an institutional context? I recently received an inquiry from a student teacher in British Columbia which made me think about these issues. I have posted my response (too long to include in a blog entry).

In addition to the high schools in British Columbia, where high school students begin a portfolio in Grade 10, the State of Washington will be providing access to an electronic portfolio under a Student-Centered Planning program funded by the 2006 Washington Legislature. In this context, it looks to me like the portfolio is both for helping implement the Franklin Pierce School District's Navigation 101 model curriculum as well as to document student achievement.

Me Publishing

In the May 26 edition of Eliot Masie's Learning TRENDS newsletter, he told a story of a young man who went to work for a Fortune 100 company and on the first day of orientation asked where he could publish his profile. Not satisfied that his profile was only in the HR system, he replied, "But, where do I post my profile so that everyone else in the company can see what I am about?" Apparently he had been a daily user of the Facebook and MySpace social networking systems and he just assumed that a big corporation would have a similar system.

As Masie went on to say:

His model of learning and "belonging" involved a degree of "me-publishing" and social networking. He was amazed that people could work for a 50,000 person company and not be able to self-publish their profiles and experiences.... One week later, he resigned and went to a company that gave him the tools and permissions to keep a daily work blog and access to an internally secure social networking system. By the way, he took a 15% reduction in salary in order to be in a better topography of knowledge sharing.

Don't do this just for your NextGen employees. The age of me-publishing and social networking is upon us and will be leveraged by every generation of our workforce. We can create models that protect the company's interests while deeply fostering the power of the network and the wisdom of crowds.

This is a powerful story of the role that Web 2.0 technologies can have on social learning. I see the portfolio as another example of "me publishing" where individuals can share their profiles in a highly engaging environment. I've written before about the popularity of social networking sites, like FaceBook and MySpace. Masie doesn't mention portfolios, but I think that is the natural extension of "me publishing" and personal profiles.

ePortfolios and Web 2.0

I am at a conference in Salzburg, sponsored by Salzburg Research providing a keynote address at a conference on Social Skills and Social Software. Most of the conference is conducted in German, but with simultaneous translation. The keynote speaker before me talked about the differences between Web 1.0 (mostly static web pages) and Web 2.0. According to Wikipedia, Web 2.0 is defined as follows:

Web 2.0 generally refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages... Web 2.0 applications often use a combination of techniques devised in the late 1990s, including public web service APIs (dating from 1998), Ajax (1998), and web syndication (1997). They often allow for mass publishing (web-based social software). The term may include blogs and wikis. To some extent Web 2.0 is a buzzword, incorporating whatever is newly popular on the Web (such as tags and podcasts), and its meaning is still in flux.

My keynote address was entitled, "Electronic Portfolios: Digital Stories of Lifelong and Life Wide Learning." In addition to some of my new thinking on the multiple purposes of digital stories in ePortfolios, one of the ideas that I presented was the concept of the "Lifetime Personal Web Space" (LPWS) introduced by Cohn & Hibbitts in Educause Quarterly, 2004. Following my presentation, Lee Bryant (CEO of a leading social software company in the UK) talked about Social Software and the opportunities for linking together a lot of free or low cost "low threshold" applications, or "small pieces, loosely joined" which is David Weinberger's unified theory of the web. I am intrigued about the potential for using a variety Web 2.0 applications to build ePortfolios: blogs, wikis, photo blogs (like Flickr), podcasts, RSS feeds, social bookmarking (i.e., del.icio.us).

I am intrigued by the potential for allowing learners to incorporate a variety of Web 2.0 services into their portfolios. The challenge is ease-of-use of these various tools. When I conducted my own "Online Portfolio Adventure" in 2004, I did not upload many artifacts; instead, I used URL links to documents that I had already stored on one of my own web spaces (LPWS). I can see a lot of potential for taking the next step, incorporating Web 2.0 technologies, both as the organizer as well as access to portfolio content.

Linking ePortfolios and Student Achievement?

I received the following request by e-mail:

Recently I became interested in e-portfolio and its implementation in my Small Learning Community (SLC). However, I need data/research that can support my belief that e-portfolio can improve student achievement in all areas. I have visited your sites and others and done some researched but the info i have attained is not specific enough to persuave my colleagues. If you could, please provide me with some specific research regarding student achievement. Thank you.

Here is my response:

You did not mention the educational context for your question. Elementary school? High School? College? In any case, I am not aware of any research that specifically ties e-Portfolios with improved student achievement (assessed, I assume, with standardized test scores). However, there is substantial research that supports the use of formative, classroom assessment (assessment FOR learning as opposed to assessment OF learning) with increased student achievement. Look at the meta-analysis conducted by Black and Wiliam in the U.K.: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kbla9810.htm
Also, the Assessment Reform Group: http://www.qca.org.uk/7659.html

That type of formative assessment is well facilitated using a portfolio for that purpose; a portfolio used in classroom-based assessment is more of a communication tool about student learning than an instructional strategy.

I am doing a research project right now on using portfolios in high schools, but we are not looking specifically at student achievement. Rather, we are looking at student engagement, motivation and collaboration using technology, which should impact on student achievement. I think it is problematic to tie student test scores directly with the use of electronic portfolios, since you are really crossing different pedogogical paradigms. And there are too many other intervening variables in the process. You really need to look at other effects of electronic portfolios. Standardized testing only addresses a limited type of student learning; portfolios can be used to document a broader range of student learning.

There may be other research being conducted at this time, but it is too early to make any conclusions. I would be interested if anyone knows of any of these studies.

A new blogging tool

I am trying out the new iWeb software, part of Apple's iLife06 suite of tools. I am traveling in Europe, and so am posting a Travel Blog for friends and relatives to keep track of our journey and share a small sample of our digital photos. I made a specific entry about doing Travel Blogs with different software tools.

Live Television!

On Wednesday, April 19, I did a live satellite broadcast for the Minnesota Schools & Colleges (MNSCU), entitled "The Electronic Portfolio: a Mirror and a Map." My part was only about 15 minutes, including two digital stories (my Choices story and my granddaughter's second grade autobiography). My interview was actually pre-taped and then broadcast an hour later, and the only live part (for me) was the Q&A. It was pretty nerve-wracking. I know why I like to pre-record my audio, so that I can edit it. But it was still an interesting experience.

As a result of the Q & A, I added links to some of the most recent research on electronic portfolios.

New web links

I am getting caught up from my travels, and wanted to post a couple of interesting weblinks that I came across over the last couple of months:

USA Today article ("What you say online could haunt you") on the perils of posting personal information into social networking spaces, and how it can impact on future employment, etc.

Tennessean article ("Study monitors students' work") about the REFLECT Initiative project in the State of Tennessee. This is the research project that I am leading for TaskStream. Great quotes from high school students.

Another tool for digital storytelling online, BubbleShare. I'm not sure how I feel about these sites that require Internet access to share these multimedia photo albums. Just like Flickr and PhotoJam, you have to be connected to the Internet to share these files. I'd like to be able to ALSO create a DVD that I can play on my HD TV, as well as archive in high quality format. Video on the WWW is still low quality compared to DVD.

eMails about ePortfolios

I continue to receive e-mails about electronic portfolios from around the world. From England, an educator inquired about the differences in terminology between the UK and US. He commented: "All sides seem to want something different...with your experience of international standards and ePortfolios do you think the definition of an "ePortfolio" is the same across the world?" I responded with the following comments:

I find that a lot of people use the term "eportfolio" and they mean many different things. I have blogged about this issue on many occasions. Many institutions see portfolios as "bean counting" for accountability purposes, especially here in the U.S. Why can't educated professionals keep the assessment management system (bean-counting) functions separate from the reflective storytelling (deep learning) functions of portfolios? Perhaps because the latter is less understood or experienced in our education system... hopefully not less valued. I often assert that the assessment/content management systems have lost the heart and soul of portfolios.

Another K-12 educator was involved in a process of developing a school reform model focusing on the portfolio process at the elementary level. She noted that the majority of the research for the K-12 setting was conducted in the 90's with the focus today on the college level. She asked my opinion on why there hasn't been much research conducted at the K-12 level since the 90's. Do I think portfolios have fallen out of favor in K-12 education, or is it because the large organizations such as NWEA were wanting to use them for large-scale assessment and we haven't yet made the shift back to the classroom and student growth? My response:

You are correct that most of the effort today is in higher education, for a variety of reasons, but for a lot of teacher education programs electronic portfolios are related to gathering information for accreditation...

In my opinion, the No Child Left Behind legislation took the wind out of the sails of portfolios in K-12 schools. So much effort has been put into helping schools meet the testing mandates and "adequate yearly progress" as defined by testing, that there isn't a lot of attention being paid to portfolios, nor enough time left in the curriculum.

Another issue we have is the type of assessment. If you are familiar with the work of Rick Stiggins and the ATI, you know that he focuses on Assessment FOR Learning, rather than Assessment OF Learning, which is most of the focus of large scale assessment. I recently wrote a couple of papers on my website about the differences between portfolios used for these two different types of assessment. My REFLECT White Paper addresses those issues.

So those are the issues in K-12 schools. I'm not sure electronic portfolios will work well in elementary schools until we get systems that are BOTH easy to use and allow student creativity in presentation, something that doesn't exist today. I've often said that e-portfolios will only happen if elementary teachers have partners in the process, either parent involvement or older students to assist the younger students to digitize their work, and to upload it to a program.

I guess my question to you really focuses on WHY you want to implement portfolios in elementary schools. If it is to support student learning more about themselves through a reflective process, I am 110% behind you. But if it is for large scale assessment, for purposes of reporting to external audiences (primarily administrators, politicians and the general public), or quantified just like traditional testing, then I am not as supportive. I think high stakes accountability is killing portfolios for learning. I also think teacher education programs who are only creating accountability portfolios are "poisoning the well" by turning off a whole generation of teacher candidates to using portfolios with their own students. I have anecdotal evidence that students who create these Teacher Ed portfolios don't know how to create learning portfolios with their own students. That tells me that there is no authenticity in the accreditation/accountability portfolio process.

Research (and Finally Home!)

I've been traveling since I returned from the trip to Italy: from a meeting and the CUE conference in Palm Springs, to school site visits in Arizona, New Jersey, Maryland, and California, to the SITE and FETC conferences, a dissertation defense and a meeting in Orlando, to the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference in San Francisco. It is good to be back home, even for a few weeks. I've seen a lot of classrooms (as part of the site visits for the REFLECT Initiative) and I've talked to a lot of educators, both in schools and at the conferences. A few of my impressions:

In Florida, it seemed like the role of digital storytelling in education has become more prominent. The FETC conference had many workshops on digital storytelling. The SITE conference hosted a keynote address by Joe Lambert (see my last entry and the new SITE Digital Storytelling blog). I led a roundtable on Researching Digital Storytelling and attended several other sessions throughout the conference. I also saw a new tool that was under development at the University of Virginia, to use primary source images in constructing online digital stories, primarily in social studies classes. The tools are becoming very interesting, and varied.

AERA is always a very enlightening conference, giving a glimpse into the current state of education. I attended sessions over the weekend, and led my own roundtable on the REFLECT Initiative Research project. A session on the role of technology in portfolios in Teacher Education gave me more concerns about the lack of authenticity in the accreditation portfolio process. I was impressed that a paper presented by an educator from Australia, that reported the real value of the portfolio process happened when teachers actually developed portfolios with their own students. I also heard Larry Cuban talk about the problems with researching educational technology in schools. He emphasized the importance of collecting data "on the ground" in schools, and not to confuse correllation with causation. He is rarely invited to speak in technology meetings, because of his book Oversold and Underused and his presentation reinforced the need for triangulation of data in educational technology research, which made me comfortable with the multiple methods that we are using to gather data in the REFLECT research. I also had an opportunity to re-connect with Evangeline Harris Stefanakis, whose book on Multiple Intelligences and Portfolios is one of my favorites.

I also had an opportunity to hear the latest presentations by Neal Strudler and Keith Wetzel about their sabbatical study on electronic portfolios. They have published their papers and presentations online, and their study provides an interesting picture of the status of six Teacher Education programs who are "mature" users of electronic portfolios. Their latest article, "Costs and benefits of electronic portfolios in teacher education: Student voices," is especially interesting, focusing on student views of this process. I heard from them, anecdotally, that for some of the students they interviewed, the term portfolio was a dirty word, or at least the experience was too much work for the benefits. Their paper outlines the benefits of the reflection that is central to the portfolio, but also outlined the disadvantages as well.

I also attended a session at AERA on the impact of high stakes assessment on technology implementation in laptop schools (ubiquitous computing). The study was conducted at the University of Virginia. It should be no surprise that the middle school teachers in the study had to focus more of their time on preparing students for the testing than providing the types of rich experiences that could be gained from the available ubiquitous computing. That study was very depressing.

A new Digital Storytelling blog

There is a new blog on Digital Storytelling, started by the SITE conference. I was especially interested in the podcast that Mike Searson produced, which features Joe Lambert from the Center for Digital Storytelling. Joe will be providing the keynote address at the SITE conference next Wednesday, March 22. Joe talks about the role of digital storytelling in our society and around the world. He also mentioned my work in portfolios, and the power of digital stories to document student learning and growth. Thanks, Joe!

Conference in Florence

I have just participated in a conference in Florence, Italy, which had a focus on the future of education, sponsored by Indire, an Italian educational research organization in Florence. It was an old model for a conference where we sat and listened to presenters all morning (the traditional process did not match the evolutionary content, but I guess you have to start with a process where people are comfortable). The afternoon program was another three hours of presentations, no breaks, no interaction. At the end of the day, there was an interesting performance by a mime, and in between different session, they showed a silent video on the wall in the auditorium, with different people walking by and peering into the camera. In many ways I felt like I was in the middle of a Fellini movie! It reminded me of the experience I had in college, watching La Strada, and not understanding the movie or the culture. This movie and mime performance seemed like the same experience.

I provided the last presentation on the second morning and I included a little group interaction at the beginning. After I was done, they allowed 30 minutes of questions from the audience, but most of the questions were really speeches, all in Italian, of course. We all had wireless translation devices with earphones, they could hear the translation from English (most of the presentations) and we could hear the introductions and discussion by the presentation chairs (all in Italian). Actually, I was surprised at how well the bilingual translation worked for me.

We were told that this was actually the first International Education Conference held in Italy in quite a few years. All of the presenters were from outside of Italy, although I was the only one from the U.S. Other presenters were from Iceland, Holland, France, Australia, England, and Spain. There were about 400 educators present. But I could tell that they had little experience with this type of event: no coffee breaks, all sitting in one room, no interaction until the very end. But it was an interesting experience. I met some great people, and I still have a workshop to do on Monday afternoon for a smaller group at the Indire office. I think they want me to teach a distance class for them on electronic portfolios (no traveling, they said!). We'll see what happens and how it would work.

I'm glad I made the decision to come to this conference. I now realize that my initial impressions about this event was from their relatively inexperience with this type of event. I think I added a different dimension to the event, especially after I showed my granddaughter's 2nd grade portfolio and autobiography as an example of an electronic portfolio with a digital story. They applauded after her story was over. The Italian version of the portfolio is more of an assessment record kept by the teacher, not owned by the student. Teachers resent the additional effort (no wonder!). This is another example of the perversion of the concept of the portfolio, co-opted by a government for large scale assessment. My perspective provided a very different definition for them. One gentleman held up his wallet: that was his portfolio to keep valuable little items inside. I said that was very similar to an educational portfolio, containing valuable items for the learner to keep.
[posted from an Internet cafe in Florence]

A dry spell

I realize that I have been silent for the last two months. It is not that I have not been learning a lot about electronic portfolios. I have just been traveling a lot with the REFLECT Initiative, visiting the sites and writing up site visit reports, which are not appropriate for publishing in this blog. I made a presentation on the project to the Electronic Portfolio Research Consortium at their meeting in Portland, Oregon at the beginning of February. I also provided a keynote address at a conference in Chicago a week later. . Today I had a short discussion on ePortfolios with a school district near the Seattle airport. Finally, a presentation where I could drive my car, not take an airplane!

Holiday Gifts and Letters

After returning from New Zealand, I became consumed with Holiday preparations. I received one of my favorite Christmas present in years: an iRobot Roomba... yes, a robot that vacuums my floors. This is an example of a technology that can have a positive impact on our lives! It is interesting to observe it exploring the nooks and crannies in my house, getting stuck under the Christmas tree, going places it isn't supposed to go... just like a toddler. I even catch myself talking to it like a child. We haven't given it a name... yet! Interesting how a single purpose intelligent device can take on human characteristics, and quickly become part of our lives. My floors have never been so clean. It even gets under tables, buffets, navigates around chairs. Way cool! What does this have to do with ePortfolios? I guess this device is an example of an empowering environment, giving me more time to do the things I really enjoy doing. It also motivated me to reorganize my environment, accomplishing more in a few days than in the last few months. The motivational aspects of technology are well known, and this is another example, even if the outcome is a more organized and pleasant physical environment.

The Holidays also brought the usual Christmas cards, many with the annual Christmas letter, giving updates on the events of the year. It occurred to me, as I was reading these letters to my legallly-blind mother, that these were her generation's family stories... that annual missive that documents the important experiences of family life. Some letters were a litany of events or accomplishments of family members, others included amusing anecdotes that made them more interesting to read. As I reflect on these annual Christmas letters, I realize how much technology (and blogs) could change this experience. Perhaps there are some more technologically-savvy, who send a URL in their Christmas cards. In our card, my husband just printed out a collage of key photos from the last year... I haven't written a Christmas letter since our children left home.

In terms of digital family stories, these annual Holiday letters provide a personal history that, when collected over a lifetime, can provide rough biographical details of a family's life. But I wonder how many families save their letters. This collection process is a challenge for many families, most often a paper filing system with physical storage problems. One solution would be a digital preservation process that I intend to research over the next six months.

Conferences "Down Under"

I am now stateside, after spending more than two weeks in Australia, ending with the ePortfolio New Zealand conference in Auckland. The ASCILITE conference in Brisbane was an interesting experience. I led a "Learning Circle" at the end of each of the first two days of the conference, focusing on ePortfolios and Digital Storytelling. We asked the participants on the first day to do a "fast write" with their reflections on the conference themes. After collecting their brief jottings, a few came up right away and audio recorded their reflections. The next day, we shared what had been collected so far, recorded a few more, and talked about illustrating the reflections with images. On the last day, we recorded the last of the audio clips, gathered as many images as we could, and then constructed most of two different digital stories in about three hours. In the plenary session on the last day, I showed both stories, even though one was not quite complete. While not the way I would prefer to put together digital stories, I learned what could be done under pressure!

On the following two days, I led workshops at QUT, including a half-day digital storytelling workshop. I was surprised that quite a few of the participants developed one-to-two minute stories that they recorded, after our very short hands-on activity. At least eight people had time to write a brief story and have it recorded.


On Monday, I was in Auckland, providing the opening keynote to the ePortfolio New Zealand conference. This meeting was organized by Eifel, as an extension of their conferences in Europe and last year in Melbourne. Although there were about 60 participants, and the conference only lasted a day and a half, it was a very good conference, one of the best ePortfolio conferences that I participated in. I thought there was a lot of opportunity for dialogue, built into the program and during breaks. On the second day, I shared a session on Digital Storytelling with a professional developer from Australia.

We decided to make the session somewhat interactive and hands-on. After demonstrations of a few digital stories, we asked the participants to spend five minutes doing a short reflection on the conference so far. We then had about a half hour to record their reflections. I have five people who recorded 30 second to one minute reflections. The other person recorded directly into PhotoStory. We played the clips at the end of the conference in the plenary session.

I was skeptical when we planned the ASCILITE activity, but it worked so well that I did a briefer version at the ePortfolio conference. Now, Eifel has some audio to add to their website about the conference. I think it also helped the participants see how the process works within a reflective portfolio framework. Oh, yes, and my new microphone was a great hit and worked beautifully with Sound Studio and with the one Windows computer I hooked it up to during my hands-on workshop in Adelaide. However, it did not work with my version of Audacity for the Mac. Hmmmm....

Message from "down under"

I had a great 3-way Skype conference this morning with my husband and my daughter connecting us across two oceans and three different continents! I was just getting up (7 AM on Wednesday in Melbourne), it was lunchtime for my husband in Seattle (noon) and my daughter was going to bed in Budapest (9 PM) on Tuesday! The audio was awesome! I am so excited about this technology, that allows any groups to communicate over the Internet for free. The impact on relationships is powerful.

I'm writing this entry from Adelaide in South Australia, near the beginning of a tour "down under" beginning with a private school in Melbourne for two days, now working with the Government of South Australia, Department of Education and Children’s Services, at an ePortfolios for Professional Development conference. On Saturday, I head for Brisbane where I will work with Queensland University of Technology and the ASCILITE conference (more on that to come). I will then go to the ePortfolio New Zealand conference in Melbourne.

I was just blown away by a digital story told by a teacher here in Australia, who reads this blog. He bought the microphone that I recommended in an earlier blog entry. And his digital story about his ePortfolio journey was heartwarming and engaging. A wonderful surprise! I know this blog is being read, at least by a few people. When I explored David Tosh's Elgg blog, he mentioned that this blog was listed on some list of the top 20 educational blogs. I must resolve to make more blog entries, not use my travel schedule as an excuse!

Motivation, Social Networking and ePortfolios

While at the NERCOMP ePortfolio Users Group meeting earlier this month in Poughkeepsie, one of the participants brought up the issue of student motivation and the popularity of Facebook on his campus. He wondered how to make ePortfolios as popular as Facebook. The value of this site, as well as its competitors, MySpace and Friendster is that they are social networking spaces. They are also voluntary, and Facebook accounts are available through many universities. They are just starting to move into high schools, but the privacy issues are very different because of the age of the participants. The Facebook concept is somewhat unique. According to Facebook's founder, audiences "want to build community around what they're consuming." According to an article in MarketSense:

"What drives the site is an offline dynamic and culture around it." What he means is that the Facebook communities revolve around a particular school. He can walk out into the school grounds and see everyone he knows in the Facebook. It's a closed community in some sense.

I also wonder how we can make ePortfolios more intrinsically motivating... more of a "want to" rather than a "have to" experience. The interface has to be engaging, and easy to use. Perhaps the environment needs to contribute to building community. There has to be a reason to return on a regular basis. Facebook claims that 70% of its users log in daily! The founder of Facebook is a Psychology drop-out from Harvard, not an IT major. Maybe that's what we need in the ePortfolio community: more developers who understand human nature than those who understand technology. My recent experience tells me that the technology can get in the way.

One of the principles I found in my dissertation research over 15 years ago is a simple equation: the benefits of any change must exceed the cost of that change. With the Internet, the benefits have become obvious and motivated a lot of the population to learn a whole new set of skills... and spawned a whole new way of life and conducting business. We are glimpsing the benefits for learning and schooling (I purposefully separated those two terms), using ICT to facilitate the teaching and learning process (another purposeful distinction). But learners need to see the benefits for developing an ePortfolio. We need to look at human nature to find that motivation. That's why I think these social networking tools, including blogs, have motivated young people to get engaged with them, but the goal isn't the use of technology... it is the connection to other people. That is the challenge for the ePortfolio movement today...

Assessing Personal Portfolios

Today I received the following e-mail message:

Our Teacher Education dept. is having students keep one portfolio according to INTASC standards and then a second one that the students will organize and create for themselves. We have rubrics created for the first portfolio, but are wondering what you would recommend concerning how we would assess the portfolio they create for themselves.

Here is my response:
Why would you need to assess a portfolio that the students create for themselves? Why not have the students self-assess their own portfolio? They should have set some goals for their own portfolio. Did they meet those goals? How would they improve it? How will they update their portfolio as their "living history of a teaching/learning life?"

You know, then we treat a personal document, like a student's own portfolio, like any other assignment (such as assessing it), then they tend to have that same type of attitude toward it... just another assignment, or hoop to jump through (like their INTASC portfolio). Their own portfolio should be theirs to assess. If anything, you assess their self-assessment. Of course there will be some students that only work for a grade, and won't put much effort into anything that "doesn't count." Sadly, they are a product of our extrinsically-motivated education system. So if you must, only assess it as completed (Pass or "Not Yet"), with no quality indicators, other than those determined by the students themselves. Hopefully, they can be shown that their portfolio is meant to be their own "story" of their journey to become a professional educator. And we hope that in their own portfolio, they are modeling a lifelong learning strategy that they will share with their own students.

The "e" in ePortfolio stands for "exciting"

I've just left EIFEL's EuroPortfolio conference, this year held in Cambridge, England. The first day was billed as a "PlugFest" which focused on the IMS technical specifications and showcasing interoperability between different systems. I wrote the following slide for my presentation the next day:

If we build it, will they use it?
And HOW will they use it?
What about the users?
What is the relationship between the capabilities
(and interoperability) of the tools, and the extent to which
they are used for lifelong and lifewide learning?
Why would learners want to use an ePortfolio?

I am concerned that more effort is going into tool development and not into the important human dimensions of this process.

During my opening keynote presentation, I emphasized:

• Context: 21st Century Learning (Partnership for 21st Century Learning, Friedman & Dan Pink
  
• Product: Digital Archive for Life (mostly the contents of my blog entry on 9/24 plus Educause Review article)
  
• Process: Portfolios and Reflection
  
• Digital Storytelling - In a half hour keynote, I only had time for one example of a reflective digital story. I also made sure that I only re-used a few slides from my speech last year.

I had a lot of fun talking about the progression of e-portfolio technology, starting on computer desktops, moving to CD-R, the Internet, DVD-R and now "pocket tech" pulling lots of items out of my pockets: iPods, flash drive, and three cameras - my new small Casio, my cell phone, and my Palm Zire 72.

I find these Eifel conferences very interesting, since they bring together people with many interests in e-portfolios from around the world. The proceedings document also provides many new perspectives to add to the literature on ePortfolios. I appreciated the paper by Simon Grant from CETIS that clarified a lot of the language/definitions around ePortfolios. There were also a lot of papers presented by a group from the University of Wolverhampton, and their PebblePAD system. I hope to get an account on their system so that I can see how it works, as well as a couple for my grandchildren on the version that they are adapting for primary school students. I really need to revisit my study of online portfolios, and add a few more: Carnegie Foundation's open source KEEP Toolkit, PebblePAD from the UK, and Interact's new ePortfolio add-on.

The focus on reflection this year was also encouraging. One of the plenary speakers on the second morning showcased her reflective portfolios with her student teachers, and was very emphatic about the role of reflection is critical thinking and analysis. I am really looking forward to the next Eifel ePortfolio conference in Auckland, after my two weeks in Australia. This will be an opportunity for me to reconnect to my friends in New Zealand, and continue the dialogue down there.

Oh yes, the title for this entry came from one of the participants in the Cambridge conference, who made that statement after the opening plenary session on the second morning. "Exciting Portfolios!" Sounds good to me! I hope we implement them in a way that the users agree!

Working with 2nd grader

I spent a few wonderful hours this weekend with my younger granddaughter, digitizing the documents for her first grade portfolio. She was able to scan her documents with PhotoShop Elements. She even remembered where to Import and which menu item to use. She knew how to name her files so we knew what was in them. We also played with my brand new USB microphone. It is a commercial-grade condensor microphone that only needs a USB connection. We had fun recording her reading and talking. We now have almost all of her Kindergarten and First grade work digitized, but all of the artifacts are in JPEG format. I still need to convert them into PDF and then we still need to find the right authoring tool for the presentation portfolio. But that will need to wait until I return from Europe.

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!

Online ePortfolio Research- elementary version

After focusing on higher education for so many years, the REFLECT Initiative is letting me work in secondary education, mostly researching high school e-portfolios. But finding tools that work with elementary students is a personal passion of mine. I just spent the last two days helping my granddaughters work on their electronic portfolios. The older one is in 5th grade now, the younger one in second grade. I was very actively engaged with the older one when she was in Kindergarten, first and second grade, partly because we showcased those portfolios at three different conferences, including NECC 2002 in San Antonio and NECC 2003 in Seattle. So the deadlines helped us get those projects finished. But with my increased travel in the last two years, and the fact that I now had two granddaughters to work with, we have not finished their e-portfolios. In the summer of 2004, we scanned all of their 2003-2004 work (third grade and kindergarten, respectively), but never organized it into any type of presentation portfolio. Since the girls had two days off school last week, and I was home, we decided to devote some time to the project.

In the past, we have used desktop common tools to construct these portfolios. The first Kindergarten portfolio was constructed using PowerPoint, converted to PDF, with lots of video inserted. The first and second grade portfolios were constructed with iPhoto and also converted to PDF. Because of their ages, most of their work was NOT created on computer, which meant we needed to do a lot of digitizing. That's why iPhoto worked well in the past to organize an entire presentation portfolio, and may work well to construct smaller pieces of these newer versions. But with the older girl now in 5th grade, she can handle major components of the work, and it just might get done! But now the task becomes finding the right tool so that she can work on her own portfolio!

We spent a lot of time scanning and taking digital photos of their work (the 5th grader scanned all of her own work, but I'm going to put a lot of the larger artifacts together into small PDF files using iPhoto books to group the separate scanned pages into single documents). We have a lot of individual images that need to be combined together into single multi-page documents, and PDF is the best format for the final versions of science fair projects, poetry books, etc. My mother gave them her old blue clamshell iBook with 284K RAM, 2 GB HD, OS 8.6, with Internet Explorer and an Airport card that I added to make it useful. Not sure I want to upgrade it any more, so it would only work for basic Internet access, not constructing a portfolio with desktop tools. I also took my daughter's old first-generation white iBook out, which I had just reformatted and installed Tiger. We used that computer for scanning with a small, cheap Canon (very slow). I sat with the 5th grader and showed her how to use TaskStream, thanks to their generosity providing me with two accounts, and she set up her first web page with little problem, using the oldest iBook (hers) connected to the home wireless network. She also uploaded some files from her parents' PC to a folder in her TS account, a much faster way to transfer those files from home or the PCs at her school.

I'll see how independent she can be without me sitting next to her. Her younger sister is another issue. As a 2nd grader with a lot shorter attention span, I'm not sure this program will work for her. We didn't get all of her work scanned today, but it leaves us something to do the next time I go out there. I will be experimenting with other tools over the next few months. This blog may be documenting another "online portfolio adventure" but focusing on early childhood-appropriate tools. One contribution that I made to their process was to donate my old 2 megapixel Sony mini-Cybershot camera to their family (the one that is the size of a Snickers candy bar... I have decided to move to a smaller credit card-sized camera). Several years ago, we gave them our old Mavica, that uses floppy disks, which worked OK, but the younger granddaughter has taken more pictures with my Cybershot, and knows how to work it very well.

The real challenge has been what I remembered when I set up my first e-portfolio: gathering all of the artifacts from different storage places. Another reason for an online digital archive. But I thought this picture, documenting the production stations, showed our progression in technology: my current G4 latest generation Powerbook, a first-generation white iBook, and a first generation blue clamshell iBook. All of them did their job in getting this project re-started!

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.

Digital Archive for Life

I must admit it: I'm a CNN junkie! The news in the last three weeks has been riveting! I was in a hotel room in Minneapolis with CNN on all last night, and I woke up around 3 AM as Hurricane Rita was making landfall. The reporters all seemed to be saying the same thing, but they were in the middle of the action, although I often tire of the repetition of CNN's schedule (in the evening, wait three hours, and you'll hear Larry King, again!). But still, when reporting a live event, I'm hooked... even at 3 AM. I am relieved that Rita was not as destructive as Katrina. But with the triple blows to Florida last year, and the devastation so far this year, it makes you wonder about the impact of global warming... but that is a discussion for someone else's blog.

I mourned for the devastation of New Orleans. I have many fond memories of that city: my first trip there for ISTE's last Tel-Ed conference in 1998, over a Halloween weekend, where we gaped at the antics on Bourbon Street; the two weekends that my husband and I spent there before and after a Caribbean cruise that left from the dock behind the RiverCenter Mall; the NECC conference in 2004, held in that infamous convention center; my PT3 visit to the University of New Orleans to talk about ePortfolios on their Lake Pontchartrain campus; another PT3 keynote address to another group of student teachers at a conference at Loyola University; and at least one AERA conference held there. It was such a good conference city; I hope New Orleans returns to its vibrancy. I've heard of several education conferences that were scheduled in New Orleans that are being moved to other locations. It makes me sad. The city needs the revenue more than ever!

But on a less personal note (for me), what I found especially poignant about the Katrina news stories were the pictures of the "lost" children that CNN showed last week. They say that showing those pictures resulted in at least a dozen solved cases. But I was also concerned about the devastation that the citizens of Louisiana endured. In addition to the tragic loss of lives and homes, hurricanes also wipe out family artifacts, physical memorabilia including family photographs and videos. I remember the story of the man who kept a diary every day of his adult life, only to have it wiped out when his New Orleans home was flooded. I remember all of the silhouettes on CNN after Hurricane Katrina, where families no longer had the photographs of their missing children to post online. However, in a few instances, teachers who saw student names listed on TV, sent in their photos to the CNN website. This anecdote illustrates the central role that schools can play in the preservation of these artifacts. How can schools help families to preserve these artifacts in multimedia formats, and post them online in free websites like OurMedia.org?

There is a movement in Canada and Europe to establish an electronic portfolio for every citizen by 2010. As I wrote in an earlier blog entry, the potential of e-portfolios to support lifelong and life wide learning is limited only by our current technologies, limited experience, and narrow vision. Instead of an e-portfolio, a concept that is not widely understood, what would happen if every citizen was issued personal web server space that they would own for a lifetime? Like a virtual indexed filing cabinet, this Digital Archive for Life (DAL) would provide space to store the raw materials for e-portfolios, archives of family records, genealogy and digital stories, autobiographies, child development data (such as digital versions of New Zealand's "Plunket books"), evidence of personal and professional accomplishments, and all kinds of personal information. From cradle to grave, we could store and celebrate the results of lifelong and life wide learning. And in cases of tragedies, like hurricanes or floods or the isolated cases of home fires, or the more likely catastrophic hard drive crash, we would have our memories preserved.

The other issue that the victims of Katrina faced was the loss of personal records: health records, financial records, the documentation of our lives that we all take for granted... until it is destroyed. I remember the stories of the doctors who had to use their best professional guesses as to prior health history while practicing what they said was worse than 3rd World medicine! Who knows if they would have access to the Internet in a disaster, but what if we had a smart card that we could carry in our purses or wallets, just as we usually never leave home without our credit cards, where our medical history could be stored for just these types of emergencies. I understand that these cards are used in Germany to store medical history and health care information. In the richest country in the world, why don't we have access to this type of information? This subject was briefly mentioned tonight on CNN, of having more electronic medical records. Perhaps that is a deficit of our decentralized health care system, but that is also a topic for someone else's blog!

But the point of this blog entry is not to advocate for more cards to carry in my purse. This information needs to be stored online, in a server bank that is built like the Internet, to be able to withstand a catastrophic event, with redundancies and security, as a place to store our personal information, artifacts, memories. I pay $7.77 a month for 5 GB of server space to store my electronicportfolios.org website (and I don't use 20% of it!). I just received notice that .Mac accounts have increased storage space to 1 GB for $99 a year (it's about time!). This is not a lot of money out of my pocket. But I'm a techie... it's what I do. Where is the easy-to-use webspace for the average citizen to store their essential information? Yahoo only gives 15 MB. The Gmail service from Google offers 2.5GB of e-mail storage! They also host the Blogger service, that I use to create this blog. That is all a good start. But what we need is that Digital Archive for Life, where we can store our most important information... so that we won't lose our favorite digital photographs due to a hard drive crash. Backups to CD-Recordable discs or even DVD aren't the long-term answer. Who knows how long that media will last, or can be read, and physical media can be destroyed in a disaster? We need reasonable online storage space, with a transparent, idiot-proof content management to organize it... our own personal archivist!

I used to advocate for portfolios stored to CD-ROM (or now DVD). I realize now that is an interim solution. Just in the last week, I've experienced the weaknesses of online portfolio systems that go down for technical reasons; I've also been frustrated when the network in a school is down, making training nearly impossible. But that is no reason not to move in this direction. What we really need are online repositories for high quality content (including DVD-quality video, not the emaciated versions of movies that individuals can stream today). Some day, we will have the bandwidth to handle that type of data, as corporations and cable companies are able to do today. But what do families do with their precious family memorabilia? That is our challenge! Anyone want to join me in this pursuit?