New Google Sites

I worked on developing two new Google Sites this weekend to support ePortfolio development in both K-12 schools and in higher education:

• GoogleApps ePortfolios - a resource on using Google Apps for Education (and specifically Google Sites) to develop and maintain ePortfolios
• WordPress E-Portfolios - resource on using WordPress or Edublogs to develop and maintain ePortfolios

I am inviting other educators with experience using these tools to participate in developing these two sites. I intend to use these sites as part of the research for my book, also inviting teachers who want to implement ePortfolios with Web 2.0 tools to participate in the research. I will be formulating a plan which will be announced right after Labor Day.

Google Apps/Sites updates

It just gets better and better! For a large company, Google is very responsive to making upgrades to its software. Now we can transfer Google sites between owners (i.e., from an education domain to a personally owned Google account). Now, ePortfolios created in one domain can be transferred to another! That is just what we have been waiting for! Now these ePortfolios can be transferred between accounts, making these sites as portable as blogs! They also improved the Announcements page.

• GoogleApps blog entry: Copy your site, more search options, and better announcements for Google Sites
  
• My Google Sites page with specific instructions written by Heather Stafford for transferring a site between owners
  

In July, Google also announced changes to the Navigation Bar in Google Sites, to automatically generate links to pages as they are created (the option needs to be set for sites created prior to July 2009: More Actions -> Manage Site -> Site Layout ->edit [Navigation] -> Automatically organize my navigation). They also allowed more flexibility in HTML coding embedded in Google Sites pages.

• GoogleApps blog entry: Tags in gadgets, navigation bar links and pasted HTML enhancements in Google Sites
• GoogleApps blog entry: New themes and layouts and automatic navigation in Google Sites
  

In the last entry, Google announced a new attachment section was added to the Google Sites management section for easier management of all uploaded attachments to Google Sites. Now you can see all attachments and which page they appear! Very useful for an ePortfolio. I wonder if you can generate a link to an attachment from another page?
(Thanks to Kathy Schrock's tweets for keeping me current on these changes. Her recent blog entry on how her district is implementing GoogleApps is very insightful.)

Two diverse workshops

This week I was "on the road again" to Texas and Ohio. In Texas, I worked with 3rd-8th grade teachers in a school district, focusing on ePortfolios and the three levels of implementation using a blogging platform (they are using EduBlogs which is based on WordPress). In a previous entry, I provided a link to the diagram that I developed to explain the process between Level 2 (collection+reflection in blog entries) and Level 3 (selection+reflection in thematically-organized pages). After sharing this diagram with my colleagues at Seattle Pacific University, I modified the diagram for higher education, based on how they are actually developing "bPortfolios" using WordPress.com. So I have posted both a K-12 version and a higher education version of my latest concept map. I also set up a Google Site to support my work with the district.

During the latter part of the week, I worked with a small college in Ohio to help a group of faculty members to adopt one new Web 2.0 tool in one of their classes this fall and next spring. I introduced a range of technologies, modeling the use of Google Sites and GoogleDocs. I love it when I learn something new while I am teaching: in a discussion of RSS, I learned how to subscribe to changes in a Google site (by eMail, not RSS). We also explored blogs, Twitter, networking through Google groups and Ning. I also wrapped up the workshop with an introduction to digital storytelling, with lots of higher ed examples. The participants downloaded Audacity, and explored ways that they could add audio clips to their courses in their CMS. From feedback, I hear that they want more on digital storytelling (no surprise!). I will be back there in January for a feedback and sharing session before the spring semester. I will also provide an introduction to creating digital stories (script development, image selection), so that they can prepare a digital story about their learning by the end of the school year. I will be back in late April or early May to do a hands-on workshop so that they can construct their stories. The faculty participants had new laptops (either Mac or Windows), but the experience was almost the same, since we were focusing on web-based tools. I am looking forward to working with them over the rest of this school year, to help these faculty tell the story of their Web 2.0 discoveries.

ePortfolio Conferences in 2010

So far, here are the dates for ePortfolio meetings or conferences in 2010:

ePortfolio Europe, 8th conference sponsored by EIFE-L: July 5-7, 2010, at Savoy Place (not the hotel!) in London.

AAEEBL's first ePortfolio Conference: July 19-21, 2010, in Boston. Conference co-located with and managed by Campus Technology. Co-hosted by The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). (date correction as of 9/29/09-- formerly listed as July 27-29, 2010)

Also, prior to the AAC&U conference, there will be a one-day ePortfolio Day on January 20, 2010, in Washington, D.C.

Blog Portfolio Model

I am in Texas, working with a school district, where they are implementing ePortfolios using EduBlogs (WordPress). Here is a new model that I created to help explain the process. I was reading David Warlick's Classroom Blogging book on the plane ride from Seattle to Dallas, and the concept of blogging as a conversation really resonated with me, as the left side of this diagram reflects. This model works with any blogging tool that also allows pages, such as Movable Type. I added a full size version of the graphic on one of my web pages.

What if...

This teacher's application to the Google Teacher Academy... the essence of an ePortfolio. I hope he got in!

David Warlick's ePortfolio features

David Warlick wrote about The Next Killer App? (e-portfolios!) in his blog, where he outlines a very nice list of features for eportfolio assessment. My response to his blog and the very interesting comments that followed:

I applaud your list of features, which exist in one form or another somewhere on the internet. The challenge is putting them together into one system without making it very complex. I have experience with a lot of the commercial and open source e-portfolio systems, and the learning curve/ease of use is a challenge. In my blog– http://electronicportfolios.org/blog –I am discussing a lot of the issues of e-portfolios for learning. I have seen e-portfolios in teacher education programs move from stories of deep learning to checklists of standards/competencies. There exists a lot of confusion about e-portfolios: are they reflective journals? or are they assessment management systems? I believe the current collection of commercial tools were developed in response to the NCATE 2000 Teacher Education Program Standards. The problem with ePortfolio tools today is their genesis in higher education. There are very few tools that were created specifically for K-12, and especially usable by primary students.

After the last NECC, I wrote a blog entry (http://bit.ly/LZRM3) where I discussed ePortfolios and the new Accountability Systems discussed in the Obama Education Plan. There needs to be a wider discussion of the implementation of the e-portfolio process in K-12 schools, that is not tool-specific, but provides educators with a range of Web 2.0 technologies to support BOTH student learning and institutional accountability. Right now, I advocate using separate tools to meet these disparate purposes, because I believe that the capability for student personalization and creativity always takes a back seat to data collection and aggregation in these all-in-one systems. My blog entry on Which ePortfolio Tool? (http://bit.ly/4otfoo) outlines some of these issues. I also discuss “Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolio” on my website and in conference presentations and keynotes: http://electronicportfolios.org/balance/ (I believe we need to separate the workspace from the showcase; the process from the product; the learning portfolio from the presentation portfolio.) David, your work on Classroom Blogging is, for me, the foundation of a reflective Learning Portfolio.

Let’s keep up the dialogue. I think some of the best thinking on ePortfolios is happening in New Zealand, where they have published several interesting White Papers, and they are addressing the issues from the students’ learning needs. They have developed a very interesting e-portfolio model (http://bit.ly/RjoaJ) that includes a database to store artifacts or links to documents stored anywhere on the Web. Such a database could be used to organize all of the artifacts for use in a portfolio (regardless of the tool to be used to construct the presentation portfolio). With the Internet, the process is really one of hyperlinking and, as I learned from Hall Davidson at NECC: “All you need is an EMBED code!”

Micro blogging - Twitter

I've decided to take the plunge into Twitter, to see if it is a Web 2.0 tool that can be applied to the ePortfolio process. I signed up for Twitter in early 2008, because my first tweet was about preparing for my last trip to Hawaii... then I forgot all about it until NECC 2009, where it seemed to be the social networking tool of choice this year; so I wrote a second tweet about being at NECC with my daughter. In the last week, David Wicks encouraged me to try Twitter (see my last blog entry), so I decided to start learning. I found a SlideShare Twitter workshop (with link to YouTube videos) and another tutorial presentations that are good at explaining the process and how to interpret a tweet.

I am concerned about the 140 character limit of a tweet... Is that really appropriate for reflection? Does it just encourage short, shallow writing, compared to the deeper dialogue that can be facilitated using a blog or wiki? I am able to interpret the unique language of Twitter, but also realize there is a learning curve and a protocol to be learned. I forget my early experiences with Blogger more than five years ago, so I don't know if the blogging process is easier. I figured out how to post URLs to a tweet, so I set up an account on bit.ly to accompany my Twitter account and keep track of all of the URLs that I include. Now I am exploring the educational applications of this tool. I found a cute news video about a kindergarten class using Twitter in Seattle. It seems like the power of Twitter is the critical mass of users (like Facebook for social networking), but what about privacy of K-12 students? I also want to explore Edmodo, a micro-blogging application for K-12 students and teachers, which was created to address this issue.

Conversation with Teacher Educator

Yesterday, I had an interesting conversation with a teacher educator from a college near me. Several years ago, they had adopted one of the commercial tools but just recently gave up on it. Instead they have their students sign up for WordPress.com accounts so that they would own the site after they graduate. I also pointed out the fact that blog content follows an interoperability standard that allows them to transfer their content to another blogging system, should they want to. He had read some of my website (but not this blog) and decided that student choice and creativity were more important than data aggregation! He noticed immediately a change in students' attitudes toward their blogs compared to those who used the rigid commercial system.

We also talked about confidentality and the ability to password-protect individual entries or the entire site. I like the ability to document learning over time in tagged blog entries and then construct pages around specific themes (outcomes/goals/standards). I just wish WP would automatically generate permanent pages with aggregated entries based on tags... but that is a topic for another day.

When asked about how they are managing the data aggregation, he said they are using the gradebook function of the college's CMS to collect faculty evaluation data. We are planning to meet next month to talk about their process.

This discussion reminds me of the discussion held at the NCEPR meeting earlier this week. When talking about technology challenges, more than one person mentioned "rigid" systems, either home-grown or commercial. Once again, the needs of institutions for data aggregation often overshadows the importance of student choice and voice, especially in how the visual presentation truly represents the learner's own vision and creativity. This Teacher Ed program has figured out how to balance the needs of the institution with the needs of their teacher
candidates... who just might want to replicate the process with their own students... with tools that are free and available in schools.

Follow-up: The teacher educator, David Wicks of Seattle Pacific University, gave me permission to share his FAQs about WordPress and his blog entry where he discussed their decision to adopt WordPress, a process he calls bPortfolios (b is for blog).

International Development of ePortfolio Model

In response to my blog posting yesterday, I received a link to a blog entry of an educator in Spain who adapted Derek Wenmoth's model (from New Zealand). International collaboration at work! I think the tools on the left side are only a few of the many tools that are used, and the NZ model saw the need for a database to manage the PLE "collection of atifacts" process. Keep up the conversation!

Another ePortfolio Model

Derek Wenmoth, of CORE-ED in New Zealand, published this image in his blog last year, focusing on Conceptualising e-Portfolios. I found this link in a discussion group established by the Ministry of Education in New Zealand on Managed Learning Environments (MLE), "the software and digital content that suppoort learning."

This diagram is very similar to several of my model diagrams, where the storage/repository is separate from the presentation portfolio that I might construct in different systems (as I have done in my "Online Portfolio Adventure"). In all of these diagrams, I have focused on the storage issues with ePortfolios; if we could solve the storage/management issues (a lifelong repository?) then the ePortfolio presentation issues will be more manageable. In the NZ MLE discussion, Trevor Storr made the following suggestion:

Lets assume that we have a national data store for our ePortfolio Applications (note the 's'). Different ePortfolios would access the data store (I could imagine at least one funding model for this). Now if the data store was a simple database that could be mapped to open ePortfolio standards then the data would easily be used by different applications with little user intervention.

The benefit of this approach is that to use the national ePortfolio data store vendors will have to map the database to whatever standard they choose. Secondly, the problem of portability (at a user level) is avoided. Finally, as standards evolve, database fields can be mapped to match the standard.

In summary: the data does not have to move between ePortfolio applications if applications are able to access a single data store that can be mapped to the relevant standard(s).

That is the model that I have been advocating for several years. A year ago, I explored different online storage systems for creating this digital repository. A database of artifacts that is maintained over a lifetime is the centerpiece of Derek's diagram, and should be central to our thinking about next generation ePortfolio tools. In the MLE discussion, Russell responded:

I'm with Trevor here,
I don't think interoperability is about where the components of artefacts/DLO's or artefacts themselves sit or are stored. I think its about the ability of LMS's/Eportfolio's to aggregate that stuff in a way that preserves some chronology and preserves a time stamped example of work. (along with appropriate related assessment) We're already in an age of mashups where a creative online artefact or piece of work may be sucking a component out of flickr or animoto and being combined with text in a blogger type environment. We have a whole cluster of kids in Tamaki, from Y1 -Y13 already creating content in this environment. For me, & I think our cluster, an eportfolio needs to be able to access a set of time stamped artefacts that were created on or offline, (some of the online ones being multi-sourced mashups), that the school & student identify as being part of the student's cumulative record of work. Copies of these artefacts/DLO's could sit in one central repository (as Trevor suggested) and individuals ought to be able to rearrange their portfolio's with different examples of content to suit different purposes over time. I see the portfolio as an overlay and an organiser for this content. I see a developmental continuum of teacher organisation gradually giving way to learner organisation in respect of how this stuff is managed and owned.

OK, Google, when is the Google WebDrive going to be released? The ePortfolio community is ready! What do we need? EMBED codes or drag-and-drop HYPERLINKS to our artifacts in an online data storage system!

Personal Branding and ePortfolios

An interesting article was posted this week to the PBS Media Shift blog with the title, "Personal Branding Becomes a Necessity in Digital Age." As I read this post, I found many references to processes that sounded like ePortfolios, at least for the purpose of employability.

[Scott] Karp says he built his brand at Publishing 2.0, using it as a soapbox of ideas and a forum to discuss them through comments.

"My blog became resume, business card, references, network all in one," Karp told me. "I would go to conferences, meet people, and find they already 'knew' me through my blog -- an odd but useful form of micro-celebrity."

I've had that same experience with my blog, meeting people who only knew me from this blog, but carrying on a conversation that seemed like they were "inside my head." This quote ties personal branding directly to an ePortfolio for employability:

"When you're considering switching jobs, even a personal website with a small portfolio of sample work can be invaluable," [Matt] Cutts [of Google] said. "People will search for you online, so it's important to take part in that conversation, and having your own website can be a great way to put your best foot forward."

"Grab a domain name and work on burnishing your personal reputation online. It's definitely not the case that everyone needs a blog, but having one place that acts as a face to the world can really help. There's room for a resume/CV, but also for some writing samples that show off your abilities." -- Matt Cutts, Google (from his Letter to a young journalist post)

Isn't that a portfolio? I also love this quote:

...And in this era, you need to be very careful, as search engines can log all sorts of things. Remember: Whatever happens in Vegas...stays on Google." -- Scott Monty, Ford Motor Co.

Even more illuminating are the comments that appeared from other readers of the article:

I find the whole idea of personal branding both a necessity and an opportunity to find ones true voice.

Remember MONEY magazine said in there 12/07 issue - "You're only as good as Google says you are"

Personal branding, to my opinion, is a tool to tell people who you are and what is your unique contribution to the business. It validates and manifests the inner knowledge of your being and empowers you to act freely to your full potential.

ePortfolios and new Accountability Systems

I was doing a search on Google Scholar this week, using the terms "electronic portfolios in elementary education." I came across the following abstract for an article ... the title of the article really hit a nerve with me: Will Mandating Portfolios Undermine Their Value?

Mandating portfolios on a system wide or statewide basis may destroy one of their greatest assets: allowing students to reflect on their learning and feel a sense of hope and control. Once standards are defined by an outside authority, teacher-student collaboration is minimized and the importance of students' own goals and learning assessment diminishes.
-- Case, Susan H. (1994) Will Mandating Portfolios Undermine Their Value? Educational Leadership, v52 n2 p46-47 Oct 1994

This quote underlines the challenge we have with mandating portfolios: how do we maintain student engagement and ownership? Then, again, if there is no extrinsic motivator or mandate, where is the intrinsic motivation to reflect on learning, especially when there are so many competing priorities in our students' lives? If only we could capture the motivation behind social networks to facilitate reflection on learning! That is the place where students reflect on life, albeit most often with a more social, less academic focus.

From my brief longitudinal review of the literature, it is obvious that the research on portfolios focused on K-12 schools in the 90s, and switched over to higher education since 2000. Perhaps the reason focuses on two factors: No Child Left Behind (2001) federal legislation changed the focus of assessment from the K-12 classroom to statewide standardized testing for high stakes accountability; and NCATE 2000 accreditation requirements for Teacher Education programs required establishment of Assessment Management Systems to document teacher candidate achievement and program improvement. In 2002, the Chronicle of Higher Education also declared that ePortfolios were the "next big thing" in IT... and college students provide an easily-researched population for faculty with research and publishing requirements.

While the direction for the renewal of NCLB has not been finalized, there are indications that a broader definition of assessment will allow multiple measures of achievement, supporting more formative, classroom-based assessment, which will make portfolios more popular in K-12 schools. Maybe the portfolio pendulum will move back toward K-12. President Obama made the following statement in his March 10, 2009 speech on Education:

And I'm calling on our nation's governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.

Wouldn't an electronic portfolio help a student showcase these 21st century skills... especially creativity? The Obama Education Plan contained the following statement:

Develop better student assessments that allow teachers and parents to identify and focus on individual needs and talents throughout the school year. Technology can help get information about student performance to teachers and parents in real time, and support ongoing efforts to improve student performance in an area of weakness and support student success in areas where the student shows particular interest or aptitude.

Shouldn't an electronic portfolio be one of those formative assessment tools, allowing a student to showcase their successes... and empower them to assess their own work? I advocate an ePortfolio that is student-centered, emphasizing student ownership and "voice" (as highlighted in the NZ report in my last blog entry). There are other tools that can be used as institution-centered data-collection systems. I hope these two approaches won't get confused... or combined. Otherwise, K-12 ePortfolios will look like many of the ePortfolios produced in Teacher Education programs today, which are, to quote Hartnell-Young and Morriss, "heavy with documentation but light on passion."

ePortfolios - Celebrating Learning (in NZ)

The New Zealand Ministry of Education has just posted a report that discusses these questions:

1. What are the important features of a platform to support ePortfolios for NZ education?
2. Is it possible for one system to accommodate the entire spectrum of requirements across the education sector?
3. How important is interoperability of ePortfolio data?
4. What are the key criteria for selecting a system?
   

This report was written by Ian Fox, Sandy Britain and Viv Hall, and provides a good discussion of the issues of implementing ePortfolios across the K-12 age span. I was impressed by the five case studies included in the Appendix, as well as a brief comparison of the two ePortfolio technical standards: the IMS ePortfolio specification and LEAP2A, developed by CETIS in the U.K. (hint: the report recommended adoption of the LEAP2A standard).

At NECC, I heard a rumor that ePortfolios were proposed as part of the National Educational Technology Plan. After reading this report, I am wondering whether individual states and/or the U.S. Department of Education would consider the ideas presented in this study. I am always so impressed with the implementation of ePortfolios in New Zealand, and I've blogged about them frequently. I am trying to figure out how to get down there in February or March 2010, when I am also going to conferences in India and possibly Singapore. A visit to NZ will wrap up the research for my book!

Social Networking reaching critical mass?

I feel like my social networks are changing. This last weekend, my closest family members established Facebook accounts. My daughter had an account before I did, and she uses it a lot with her face-to-face friends. She left her Budapest friends with the comment, “See you on Facebook.” Until yesterday, it just seemed like a college student and professional tool. Now, it is becoming a family tool. I’ve seen how well it works watching my daughter using Facebook and Twitter from my iPhone. Now I see my son using those tools from his Blackberry! It really feels like a critical mass is emerging. Prior to this weekend, most of my “friends” on Facebook were distant Ed Tech buddies. Now, my immediate family is involved, which makes me want to log in more often.

I also noticed that social networking at NECC changed this year. I signed up for the Ning network, as I did last year, but the traffic this year was very low. This year, it was all Twitter! I wonder how soon there will be a link between Facebook and Twitter, so that the same update doesn't need to be posted to each account. As I learned at NECC, “All you need is an Embed code.”

My 21st NECC

I just finished my presentation at the 30th (and last) National Educational Compting Conference (NECC). Next year the conference will just be called ISTE 2010 in Denver. I uploaded my slides again to Slideshare... it seems a lot easier than converting a .pptx file to .ppt and then uploading to GoogleDocs, publishing it, and then capturing the Embed code. I have a new saying that I got from Hall Davidson's presentation on digital video: "All you need is an Embed code!" (to embed artifacts into a Web 2.0 site, just as I have done here!)

NECC2009

View more documents from Helen Barrett.

It has been a lot fun introducing my daughter to this community of educators... my 21st NECC, her first. She is much more experienced with social networks and Second Life, which will be an element in my book. We are already learning from each other, as she pursues a Masters in Educational Technology and I write a book on Interactive Portfolios for Learning. I just posted a new document on my website, inviting K-12 schools interested in participating in helping me build some case studies for this book.

EIFEL 2009 ePortfolio Conference

Eifel2009keynote

I just posted my first SlideShare presentation of my keynote address at the EIFEL ePortfolio 2009 conference. I couldn't do my normal upload to GoogleDocs, since the Powerpoint file was over 10 MB. I devoted my presentation to a lifelong view of ePortfolios, and especially a new book that I am in the middle of reading: Portfolio Life. I'll have more to discuss about this book when I have time to reflect more deeply.

International Travel Scheduled

I've accepted invitations to speak at the following international events:

• September 2009: University of Rosario in Bogotá Colombia
• November 2009: E-portfolio International Conference, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain
• February 2010: ASB Un-Plugged, a conference to guide international schools towards one-to-one learning environments, Mumbai, India
  (I may try to tack on a conference in Singapore and a visit to New Zealand to that trip)

Looks like I might keep my Alaska Airlines MVP Gold membership for one more year!

Video Sharing Website

I've been exploring new video sharing services, since Google Video is now limiting uploads to either Business or Education GoogleApps accounts. I don't want to upload my videos to YouTube, partly because the site is often blocked in schools, and partly because uploaded videos are limited to ten minutes. Over a year ago, I created my own branded eportfolios.blip.tv site, which doesn't have the size limitations, but the movies didn't always play back in full screen mode. I haven't yet set up a TeacherTube or SchoolTube account, but I think they have some of the same limitations as YouTube.

For another website project that I am developing, with a lot of webinar videos that we want to embed, we found Motionbox.com. The site allows longer videos, which can be viewed in full screen mode, and allows 750 MB of movies stored for free. However, for $29.95 per year, the Premium service allows unlimited video storage, maintains the original video file, and also allows the video to be downloaded into iPod/iPhone format. When logged in, the web page includes the code for embedding the video clip into another web page, such as this blog. The digital story below was developed at a workshop in 2005, focusing on the importance of developing digital family stories. We need online spaces to store these "legacy" stories!

I set up a Premium account to share all our family videos, with a privacy setting for family only to view. The system allows setting up folders to hold the videos. My first folder was for the videos which I uploaded directly from my Flip camera. The service has a basic video editor for files stored there. If you can take movies with your cell phone, you can email them directly to: youraccountname.specialcode@motionbox.tv
Maybe when I upgrade my iPhone, I'll be able to record videos, too!!!

I've been concerned about finding online spaces to store full quality video, not the low quality videos I see on YouTube. Premium Motionbox accounts also allow storage and downloading HD videos (just requires a high speed Internet connection). The normal playback is High-Quality, Low-Bandwidth (SD). I hope their business model is profitable enough to make this service viable for years to come. It meets a real need for families to store their video memorabilia.

Two Storytelling Workshops in one week

On Monday last week, I facilitated a short, one-day digital storytelling workshop for a nearby high school in Washington, sort of scheduled at the last minute. The students took a document that they had already written in their sophomore English class, we did a quick recording, and they created very short stories (most less than two minutes). That workshop showed us that the students could create stories in about four hours, if they have their stories already written, and brought their images to the workshop already in digital formats (some of them incorporated images from a Creative Commons Advanced Flickr search). Several of the students had never seen MovieMaker2 or Audacity before, but picked up the process very quickly, most even adding music. The teachers were impressed with the speed with which these students developed their digital stories. Of course, most of their work was done before the workshop began, since we used a poem they had already written ("I Am From..."). Next year, the school intends to have these same students as juniors create a digital story from a document they will create about their "American Dream" or their goals after high school.

I just returned from West Virginia, where I facilitated two-day digital storytelling workshop for a group of school teachers and some faculty and students from a small college. Most of them did not come to the workshop with a completed script, so I added GoogleDocs to our hands-on training on the first afternoon, which let them share their scripts with me that evening for my feedback. The second day was very intense, since we had to record the narrations, and construct the stories all on the second day. Some of the participants did not have their images digitized prior to the workshop, so I am thankful that one of the workshop organizers did the scanning. Everyone finished, but the workshop ended an hour late on the second day! There were two different platforms used during the workshop: Windows XP with MovieMaker2, and Macintosh laptops with different versions of iMovie, making it an interesting balancing act. (I need to spend some more time learning the latest version of iMovie9, since I am much more comfortable with iMovie6HD.) Some of the Mac users recorded their voices with the built-in microphones on their laptops, and I was impressed with the quality of the recordings.

We had our usual problems with MovieMaker2, when people don't gather all of their images into a single folder before starting to add them to their MovieMaker collection. Since MovieMaker only creates links to the photos, rather than making a duplicate copy, when the project file is moved without the images in the same folder, then it cannot be opened and edited (with big red X's where the photos should be). I need to work out a better way to explain this process so that "newbies" can avoid this issue. But participants in both workshops produced some good stories, plus the knowledge and experience to produce more, which is even more important.

Digital Identity and EIFEL's new direction

EIFEL is moving from a focus on interoperability of ePortfolio data (document export/import, data structures) to a more flexible approach of an ePortfolio interoperability framework "where individuals are free to choose the components of their own ePortfolio system while being capable of interacting with a number of different institutions across time (diachronic interoperability) and space (synchronic interoperability)."

In response to that posting, there was some interesting discussion on the ePortfolios-and-PLTs Google Group (mostly in the U.K.) about the development of Digital Identity. I was especially impressed by some lessons on Digital Identity, "This is Me" that were developed by the University of Reading in the U.K. and can be downloaded for free. My favority response to the issue of "digital identity" was posted by Roger Neilson, where he insightfully compared it to a teenager's bedroom:

There is probably a spectrum here, at one end is the protocol driven 'me' page that an organisation will seek to control, in the interests of child safety, personal data protection etc - and at the other end the 'vanity' page where everything is permitted and the entries are a mish mash of design, font, layout, with a lot of random (to us) material. some of which will be decidely not a good idea for data protection etc.

The problem is that any web presence that is purely prescribed by a bureaucracy will have no soul or personal 'declaration' and therefore especially for the teenage user, no interest whatsoever.

When we establish our own 'digital presence' we make choices as to what we put in the 'footprint' - there are probably some absolutes that need to be there, there will be some stuff that is very inadvisable to include - and there will be a lot of 'clutter' that for us will be very meaningful, but actually a waste of time for a reader.

A very necessary part of learning is to understand that we all have this digital footprint and that we need to manage it... so there has to be both guidance, and freedom to 'decorate it as they desire.

It's their teenage bedroom, we own the house and we can say there are key things that need to be in there, but we can only stand back and watch as they decorate it in a manner that they find wonderful, and we may find hideous.

Signed a book contract today

Over the years, I have had an avoidance of book publishing... I've canceled two book contracts over the last ten years. With the #1 website on "electronic portfolios" (based on a Google search using that term), I've wondered whether writing a book in the age of Web 2.0 was an oxymoron. With the changing nature of the Internet, wouldn't a book be quickly outdated? I'm glad I didn't publish the book I outlined ten years ago, since my vision has changed radically since that time.

Well, today I signed a book contract with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) for a book on ePortfolios, focusing on K-12 students and teachers at all levels of their careers. The content will focus on creating student-centered interactive portfolios using generic Web 2.0 tools and processes. I have a lot of the components already on my website and written in this blog over the last five years. I feel like a sculptor... all I have to do is cut away all of the irrelevant stone/words and the statue/book will emerge! I intend to develop the book around themes of interactivity, reflection, engagement, and my vision of Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolios.

So, I have seven months to write the first draft of the book! I am looking for case studies from across the world on using Web 2.0 tools for ePortfolios. I am also looking for a few good teachers who would like to implement the portfolio process using "safe" Web 2.0 tools, primarily GoogleApps for Education sites set up as "walled gardens" to protect student privacy. I am also willing to work with schools who have adopted other Web 2.0 tools to implement ePortfolios. I would provide training and then regularly observe some "real life" classrooms implementing ePortfolios using these tools across the age span: primary, intermediate, junior high and high school.

I am interested in finding teachers who are already familiar with the paper-based portfolio process, and who are already comfortable with the use of technology, who would be willing to work with me on implementing ePortfolios over the next school year. I would work with appropriate IT staff and a handful of teachers in their classrooms, on a mutually-agreed-upon schedule, to establish the free Web 2.0 services, and integrate ePortfolios throughout the school year, including student-led conferences, where appropriate. We could collaborate virtually over the Internet, or face-to-face in the Puget Sound area of Washington state.

Interested? Send me an email!

New Google Tools

The Google I/O Conference last week provided a glimpse at some very exciting new tools, some available now, some in the near future.

• Google Web Elements allow you to easily add your favorite Google products onto your own website, as easily as you can embed a YouTube video. Here is my calendar:
  
• The other announcement was Google Wave, "a new model for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year." The 80-minute YouTube video on that page showing the keynote address by the development team provides a pretty nice demo of the possibilities. To me, it looks like a cross between a chat room, GoogleDocs/Sites, with a really smart spell check and real-time language translation. I can hardly wait for its release.
  

Google Sites on Reflection and Assessment

I am developing two more Google Sites with resources to support different processes in ePortfolio development. Earlier I announced a Google Site on ePortfolio Surveys, since I have been receiving requests for surveys that can be used in ePortfolio implementation studies.

The two new sites that I am developing are:

• Reflection for Learing (in collaboration with Jonathon Richter of the Center for Advanced Technology in Education, University of Oregon)
• Assessment for Learning

I have chosen to develop these pages in Google Sites, so that I could invite other educators to assist with the development of these resources. Educators may contact me to be added as a collaborator on any of these sites.

Wordle of this blog

Just for fun, I've been taking some of my digital documents and putting them through wordle.net. The Wordle above is for this blog before today... sort of looks like a footprint. Hmmm... It is fun to see the themes that come through the most-used words in a document. Below is the Wordle for my latest article, Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolios:
An interesting way to learn from a word cloud! Almost better than an abstract!

Lesson Plans for Digital Storytelling

I am pulling together a series of weblinks to support Digital Storytelling efforts in K-12 schools: http://delicious.com/eportfolios/lesson_plans+digitalstorytelling

One of the best sites I found is called Sharing Culture with Digital Stories on the Scholastic site, sponsored by Target.

I would modify these lessons to use Audacity to edit the audio track... and to remove references to capturing music from CDs... but otherwise this is a great place to start if you are using MovieMaker2 (their lessons appear to use the Windows Vista version).

Public Workshop available

I am conducting a "Bring Your Own Laptop" workshop at the National Educational Computing Conference on Saturday, June 27 (8:30-3:30):
Web 2.0 Tools for Classroom-Based Assessment and Interactive Student ePortfolios
Web 2.0 tools facilitate interaction and feedback. Evaluate free online tools to create Interactive ePortfolios that support formative assessment, focusing on academic standards and NETS-S. (We will focus on GoogleApps, including GoogleDocs and GoogleSites.)

My presentation during the conference is on Wednesday, July 1 (12:00-1:00):
ePortfolios 2.0: Web 2.0 tools to Improve/Showcase Student Technology Literacy
Learn how to implement free interactive Web 2.0 tools to facilitate classroom-based assessment of student technology literacy, including the advantages/disadvantages of blogs, wikis, and GoogleApps.

I am also doing a day-long workshop on the pre-conference day at the next EIFEL Conference in London, June 22, 2009:
Your Digital Self: Web 2.0 as Personal Learning Environment
Web 2.0 tools facilitate self-expression, reflection, online interaction and feedback. This hands-on workshop will focus on Web 2.0 tools that can be used to construct a PLE for a variety of purposes, and provide a broader look at using these tools within the context of ePortfolios and Digital Identity: Web Aggregators/AJAX Start Pages, Blogs & RSS Feeds, Social Networks, and Interactive Productivity Tools.

I will also be doing a keynote during the conference:
Lifelong ePortfolios: Creating your Digital Self
In the age of the participatory Web, popular social networks are creating new opportunities for reflection, collaboration and self-publishing. This keynote will outline a scenario of lifelong ePortfolios, from families to formal education to the workplace to retirement legacy stories. What are the common themes that support ePortfolio development across the lifespan? How can individuals and institutions adapt their ePortfolio strategies so that they are more engaging, and learners will want to maintain their ePortfolios for life?

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Postscript: This happens to be the 5th anniversary of this blog. A few weeks ago, I created a complete page of this blog (all 330+ entries...more than 250 pages) on one web page.

A message from Japan

I received the following message from a faculty member from a university in Japan:

I am writing to inform you we are using your diagram about ePortfolio with Japanese translation in my program.
http://electronicportfolios.org/balance/index.html

Our team, including me, are developing ePortfolio system. Now I am making a simple explanation about ePortfolio that will come with instruction of our portfolio system. I am planning to use your diagram in Japaneses, like the Spanish version that you have linked to. It's internal document and I will add your reference, but I would like to let you know that I created Japanese version of your diagram.

I have translated it in Japanese and almost okay but would like to be checked by others before open. If you would like to have this, I would like to send you the PPT or let you know the URI to access. The diagram helps us a lot to grasp what we have done and where we are.
Thank you very much.

I am posting a link to the translated copy on my website. Earlier this month, when I met with a team from the Center for Advanced Technology in Education at the University of Oregon, I received some very good feedback on the model/diagram in the article. It seems obvious that this conceptual model is helpful to educators implementing ePortfolios in different parts of the world.

Technology Trends and Gartner's Hype Cycle

I found this diagram of Gartner's hype cycle in a blog entry about cloud computing and the Tech Crunch blog.

Essentially, industries, companies and people go through the 5 stages of: 1) heh, this is cool, 2) yeah, we all think this cool, 3) woah, we were sold down the river, 4) no, come to think of it, used in the right way, this can be good and finally 5) this has become part of what we do." (Source: Buzz Canuck)

Where are ePortfolios along this continuum? I think Higher Ed is generally in stages 2 and 3... what needs to help move into stages 4 and 5? In my opinion, K-12 is just entering the cycle. I found a couple of online publications by the New Media Centers Consortium that outline emerging technologies:

• The Horizon Report - 2009 Edition (Higher Education)
  One year or less: Mobiles and Cloud Computing
  Two to Three Years: Geo-Everything and The Personal Web
  Four to Five Years: Semantic-Aware Applications and Smart Objects
• The Horizon Report - 2009 "First Ever" K-12 Edition
  One year or less: Collaborative Environments and Online Communication Tools
  Two to three years: Mobile Devices and Cloud Computing
  Four to five years: Smart Objects and The Personal Web

It is interesting to note that the NMC sees K-12 following higher education in some technologies that I think are going to have a big impact on ePortfolios: Cloud Computing and The Personal Web. It is encouraging that Collaborative Environments and Online Communication Tools are imminent adoptions in K-12 (already adopted in higher education), and I believe both of these technologies are essential to an ePortfolio 2.0 environment.

VoiceThread for ePortfolios

There has been a lot of chatter online about using VoiceThread as an ePortfolio publishing environment. In an online class, I became aware of the following link: VoiceThread as a Digital Portfolio - a teacher blog entry with instructions and two examples of digital stories using VoiceThread for student-led conferences in fifth grade. In the first example, the feedback is in the form of text, in the second there are several voice comments; a great way to involve parents! There are two really good examples of reflection that focus on what the students learned, the challenges, and their goals for improvement in different content areas.

I recently wrote to the teacher who wrote that blog entry, requesting a copy of the booklet that she used to scaffold the students' reflections. This is the response that I got this morning:

I'd just like to share with you this little thought too. Do you remember speaking in New Zealand a number of years ago, at the ULearn Conference in Auckland? You were one of the keynote speakers and you spoke about the power of telling stories - you shared with us one story that combined photos, pictures, music and voice. Your keynote really struck a chord with me, as you emphasised the beauty and power of simplicity and choice. I base most of my digital storytelling and digital portfolio work with students on the things I took away from your keynote.
You can imagine how "tickled" I am now to be giving back something to you. Thank you for the inspiration back then and for the continued inspiration into ePortfolios.

Wow! It is thrilling to get this type of feedback from a keynote presentation that I gave in 2005.

Early childhood technology expert Gail Lovely, quoted in an article in T.H.E. Journal, says "The power of this [tool]...is in the commenting." Here are some resources from the VoiceThread website:

• VoiceThread Manuals (in PDF) Getting Started in the Classroom and Sharing VoiceThreads
  
• A series of tutorials, created with VoiceThread

ePortfolio Surveys

I am developing a new Google Site to collect surveys on Electronic Portfolios. I invite others to share surveys that they have used for different purposes within the context of Electronic Portfolio Development.

Student Examples from Google

Last fall, Google asked teachers to share some examples of how they used Google Docs in their classrooms. I was especially impressed with Google's page on Senior year-long projects demonstrating the use of Google Sites as a process journal/e-portfolio by a couple of students doing internships at Blue Ridge Virtual High School.
Matt Dermody’s journal
Ryan Minnick’s journal

In Ryan's Google Site you will find a set of Help videos covering the process of creating a Google Site. I am also impressed with the summary of his journal embedded on his first page, linked to his journal on another page that was created with the Announcements page type. The journal is a great example of documenting a project over time using this tool (although there is no feedback or dialogue). I just want to learn what Gadget he used to embed the journal on his first page! Something to add to my page of instructions! I also noticed that he embedded Vimeo videos on the page. I thought you were limited to using YouTube or Google Video. More to learn!

Update: I figured out the Announcements... there is an Insert... Recent Posts Gadget, and you can select which Announcements page in the site and how many entries to summarize. I inserted a calendar and my demo posts on the first page of my Google Sites portfolio. Pretty cool!

Personal Brain

This is the 36th tool that I have used to re-create my electronic presentation portfolio, as part of my Online Portfolio Adventure. The process moved very smoothly; I was able to convert all URLs to weblinks (copy the link, create a weblink and the URL in the Clipboard is automatically inserted). The tool allowed me to reconstruct my portfolio in less than two hours, once I figured out the interface, copying the information from my Google Sites portfolio where I had the URLs on the page (and the links). All of my other artifacts are web links. I prefer to have the links open a new window (and the portfolio remains open). When an artifact is opened, the reader can then close the window to go back to the portfolio. However, in this tool, the weblinks opened in the lower window. Clicking on the Back arrow went back to the source of the link. That makes it very nice for keeping the portfolio navigation on the screen.

This tool would work very well for a presentation portfolio but other tools will need to be used for summative assessment. To aggregate assessment data, a spreadsheet could be created to collect quantitative data. The real advantage of Personal Brain is the dynamic nature of the mind map to organize and present the portfolio. I was able to upload a few files as attachments. I was able to create this hyperlinked set of web pages, with no knowledge of HTML. Once the "plex" was built, I exported it to HTML view, which created a folder that I uploaded to my website. However, to make any changes to the site required me to export the entire site again. There is also no interactivity with readers. So, while this is a very interesting "mind mapping" approach to developing a presentation portfolio, it lacks the ability to insert graphics except as an attachment. The software must be downloaded to a desktop computer to construct the "plex" so I used the Pro 30-day Trial version, but I'm not sure the Free Edition allows exporting to HTML.

From a student perspective

On April 1 this year, I provided the keynote address at the Sakai Conference in Rhode Island where they have implemented Sakai and the Open Source Portfolio for all high school students in that state. My presentation focused on my Balance article, and the importance of student-centered strategies that included the students' own stories, with personalization, multimedia, and creativity. There were students in the audience, and I was told that they loved what I had to say. One of them told their teachers, "Our portfolios look like our textbooks, they don't look like us!"

So, as we consider tools, I think it is important to value the capability for students to personalize their ePortfolios as much as the capability to collect assessment data. There is a trade-off in most of the ePortfolio tools, between the type of creativity and personalization that students have in their social networking websites, and the data collection for institutions to track student achievement. I also think an online workspace in an ePortfolio system should include a reflective journal (a blog) for students to immediately reflect on their learning and the work that they are collecting. The blogging process facilitates feedback for improvement (assessment for learning--Black & Wiliam, 1998). Then, when students put together a hyperlinked presentation portfolio at the end of a course or a school year, they will have the collection/reflection of work to draw upon to build a more summative portfolio.

What is Web 2.0? (online course)

I received a message today that asked about my online course (http://electronicportfolios.org/web2/class/index.html):

I am in my 40’s, and I never was too accomplished with the computer but can get by at work and home. However, I’ve noticed I am becoming increasingly ignorant on all these new apps (twitter, skype, linkedin, facebook, myspace, etc…) at a much faster pace than before. I feel this would help my career to be up on these new technologies as well...

PS. I know I’m a relatively private person, and maybe it’s my age but I don’t get this pre-occupation with young people putting their lives (pictures, video, personal business) out there for everyone to read? And who has the time to read it anyway!

So, I decided to set up a Google Group to support anyone who wants to follow my course content to learn more about Web 2.0, and to share the discussion with anyone else who joins the group. As an extra, the course also covers how to create an electronic portfolio using one of the many Web 2.0 tools.

* Group name: What is Web 2.0?
* Group home page: http://groups.google.com/group/what-is-web-2-0
* Group email address what-is-web-2-0@googlegroups.com

The course is self-paced and currently available for free (but without any structured interaction). I just set up this class discussion group, and I haven't really advertised the course except in this blog and in the Google Groups Directory. Participants may go through the weblinks, view the videos and follow some the activities. I am currently working on a book, that I call "Your Digital Self" that covers a lot of these tools and social software strategies. I am making this course accessible under an "open courseware" model and as part of the research for my book. I may offer a more formal course next fall... but that is still not confirmed.

I am inviting participants to have their friends to join them in this learning adventure! From theories in education, we know there is power in social learning! That's what these social networks are currently demonstrating with the younger generation. My answer to her second question:

I have some of your same concerns about privacy... I have accounts on most of the social networks, but I don't use them as much as my daughter. I asked her your question (who reads it?) and her answer... "my friends!" The problem is, in our generation, most of our friends are not using these tools, so it doesn't seem to work as well for us as it does for young people who adopted these tools in high school or college.

ePortfolio System Cartoon

I found this cartoon on a website in the U.K. focusing on choosing an ePortfolio system. It really shows that our underlying assumptions have an impact on the way ePortfolios are implemented... and on the tools that are chosen to meet these diverse purposes.

GoogleApps for K-12 ePortfolios

I've been working with K-12 educators on implementing ePortfolios. I am seeing more attention being paid to GoogleApps, as evidenced in an email I received today:

We are starting a “21st Century Learning Academy” in our district with our upcoming 6th graders next year and we are going to require our 6th graders and staff to create digital portfolios of their work. We have experimented with Google Sites/Apps already this year as we used it to create our school’s portfolio... As we worked on this portfolio, we learned how easily we could use this as a tool for 6th graders to showcase and reflect on their work.

I just set up a Google Group on developing electronic portfolios in K-12 using Google Apps:
* Group name: Using Google Apps for ePortfolios in K-12 Education
* Group home page: http://groups.google.com/group/k12eportfolios
* Group email address k12eportfolios@googlegroups.com
I am hoping that other K-12 educators can join the group, and share their experiences developing ePortfolios with these free online tools. I recommend that if schools decide to use GoogleApps, they establish their own Google Apps for Education site, with their own domain name, as a quasi "walled garden" where student work can only be viewed by someone with an account within that domain.

Reflective learning for the net generation student

Through one of my Google groups, I found an interesting research project conducted by Christopher Murray and Dr. John Sandars, Medical Education Unit, University of Leeds in the U.K.: "Reflective learning for the net generation student" focusing on digital storytelling! (Scroll down about a third of the way through this issue of the newsletter of the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine, Autumn 2008.) Quotes I particularly like:

Reflective learning is essential for lifelong learning and many net generation students do not engage in the process since it does not align with their preferred learning style (Grant, Kinnersley, Metcalf, Pill, Houston, 2006).The combination of multimedia and technology motivates students to creatively produce digital stories that stimulate reflective learning. Digital stories present a personal and reflective narrative using a range of media, especially photographs and video. In addition, students can feel empowered and develop multiple literacies that are essential for lifelong learning...

Why don't students spend time to reflect on the things they are learning? Our initial research suggests that Net Generation students dislike using written text, but their engagement increases when they use digital storytelling. Digital storytelling is an innovative approach to reflective learning in which pictures and sound are collected and assembled to form a multimedia story.

The digital stories created by the authors' first year medical students began as blog entries using Elgg plus images taken by many of them with their mobile phone cameras. Their digital stories for class were actually told using Powerpoint. The student comments reported were very encouraging and the authors concluded:

Overall, we appear to have successfully engaged our undergraduate medical students in reflective learning by using a range of new technologies and also by the use of mobile phones. Blogs were used as a personal learning space that combined both media storage with a creative space. Images were obtained from a variety of media sharing sites. Most mobile phones have a camera function and the “always to hand” nature of mobile camera phones encourages spontaneous image capture at times of surprise during an experience, the “disorientating dilemma” that Mezirow (1991) regards as being an essential component of transformative reflective learning.

Conclusion

Digital storytelling offers a practical teaching approach that combines multimedia and technology for reflective learning. Our work in undergraduate supports the use of this approach to engage Net generation students in reflective learning but it also appears to stimulate deep reflection. You can read more about our work and see examples at www.ireflect.org.

More Interesting Reading

Some new online articles and an updated version of a book:

• Randy Bass and Bret Eynon: Still Moving From Teaching to Learning (in the Wired Campus blog) referencing the January 2009 issue of Academic Commons. I find the comments even more illuminating, providing provocative comments from some more traditional academics.
• Electronic Portfolios: a Path to the Future of Learning (in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Marh 18, 2009) also by Randy Bass and Bret Eynon. This blog entry provides a short summary of several success stories about e-portfolios, summarizing four fundamental features:

• First, ePortfolios can integrate student learning in an expanded range of media, literacies, and viable intellectual work.
  
• Second, ePortfolios enable students to link together diverse parts of their learning including the formal and informal curriculum.
  
• Third, ePortfolios engage students with their learning.
  
• Fourth, ePortfolios offer colleges a meaningful mechanism for accessing and organizing the evidence of student learning. In many ways, ePortoflios are not primarily about technology but a commitment to a set of principles about education.
  

• Standards to Take ePortfolios Outside the Institution and into the Future, a conversation with Phil Ice about ePortfolio standards in Campus Technology, where he focuses on the use of the new Adobe Acrobat 9 to keep ePortfolio data accessible over time (something I discussed in the 90s... but now I think ePortfolios published in compliance with WWW technical standards would be just as accessible in the foreseeable future).
  
• ePortfolio: There's No 'There' There, a Viewpoint by Trent Batson in Campus Technology about how "ePortfolios mean differing things to different people."
  

  For some, an ePortfolio is an open education approach to learning. For others, it's the technologies that support open education. For others, it's the learning artifacts students create and structure. For still others, it's a way to assess student progress toward learning goals. And, finally, for others, ePortfolios are a way to record a person's professional achievements over time.

  Again, the Comments are even more interesting.
• Google Apps Eportfolio Online Rubric and Assessment Form providing an Evaluation Rubric for ePortfolio (I think this focuses on K-12).

I also received the Second Edition of The Learning Portfolio: Reflective Practice for Improving Student Learning, edited by John Zubizarreta. The new version of this book, part of the Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series, provides 14 articles under a section entitled, "Models of Learning Portfolios" and both Sample Learning Portfolio Selections and a large section of Practical Materials, including portfolio assignments and rubrics. The author made a slight change to his graphic model of a learning portfolio, which illustrates the following equation: Reflection + Documentation/Evidence + Collaboration/Mentoring = Learning. It is at the intersection of these three elements that you will find a Learning Portfolio.

A K-12 Plan

I spent the first half of this week visiting schools in the school district where I am facilitating their implementation of ePortfolios K-12. Then I facilitated a two-day workshop with the committee. On the first day, there were "progress reports" and I gave the committee feedback on my visits to all of the schools. In the afternoon, we focused on Change, and I facilitated the Change Game with the committee. I think they really saw the challenges of implementing a change across the district.

On the second day, we built a plan for district-wide implementation of electronic portfolios as a developmental process, addressing both the diverse and growing technology competency of the students and teachers, as well as the varied experience with the portfolio learning and assessment process. We identified three levels of portfolio implementation: the ePortfolio as Storage (Collection), the ePortfolio as Workspace/Process (Collection + Reflection), and the ePortfolio as Showcase/Product (Collection + Selection/Reflection + Direction + Presentation). Of course, our goal is to get everyone to the third level by high school, we also recognized that there are developmental levels of both teachers and students, and that to be successful with ePortfolios, there has to be good integration of technology across the curriculum, as well as a student-centered approach to reflection and deep learning.

I set up the framework for the plan in Google Sites, but they wrote their grade-level plans collaboratively in GoogleDocs and I linked these plans into the Google Site. We have developed a first draft, which they are going to be able to share with the staffs in their individual schools. I will be heading back in May to help with the practical implementation of this plan. Luckily, each school site has access to an xServe, so they can avoid slow Internet access, and we are going to figure out how to use the blogs and wikis in Leopard Server to store the reflections and digital artifacts. The district has implemented a 1-1 Macbook program in all secondary schools, so this is a wonderful opportunity for this Apple Distinguished Educator to see a truly creative model in ePortfolios being implemented!

CUE Conference

Due to a snow storm in the Sierras, I cancelled my plans (to visit schools) and drove down to Palm Springs to attend the CUE Conference. The first day was an EduBlogger Conference (I called it a day with fellow nerds). I loved it!. Lots of great ideas and new websites. The conference officially started the next day, and I attended a valuable session, conducted by Apple, on the Leopard Server. I am seeing a lot of potential for using this toolset for ePortfolios in K-12 schools. I'm thinking that children in elementary school could manage this interface. I'm interested in doing some research in this area.

There was only one presentation on ePortfolios (based on a 90s model of using PowerPoint). I sat in on one session on digital storytelling in primary grades using Pixie (Tech4Learning). My favorite session was a hands-on session with Animoto. Great fun! I downloaded the version to my iPhone! I am grateful for that snow storm. It gave me opportunities to reconnect with some of my California ed tech buddies! I also learned some new tools and strategies, always a sign of a successful event for me.

NCEPR Participation

I had a great two weeks. I spent three days in Eugene, working with the University of Oregon's ePortfolio Committee. While in Eugene, I also did a webinar on ePortfolios and Web 2.0 for ISTE. I went to the NCCE Conference in Portland for one day and I then drove to San Francisco. During this week there were meetings at San Francisco State on the new version of the eFolio Minnesota, and then a Day of Dialog on ePortfolios sponsored by SFSU. That was an interesting (but fragmented) day. The groups were divided into two or three rooms, and there wasn't a clear, common theme, nor an opportunity for all of the groups to gather for a common gathering. But there were a lot of good conversations because they built two times into the agenda for conversation around different themes.

On the last two days, the National Coalition for ePortfolio Research (NCEPR) had a meeting, and I joined as part of the University of Oregon team. It was a very valuable experience. We developed a del.icio.us set of weblinks related to NCEPR and eportfolios. Here were some of my reflections during the first day:

1. What connections were discussed in your group?
The balance between the assessment/summative types of portfolios for students (DU) and the learning/formative types of portfolios for faculty (Hawaii). Sharing my diagram seemed to fit well after our discussion of the other two programs and of the Oregon program. I loved what the team wrote, about the assumptions about learning... And how the piece focused the conceptual framework of the team.

2. Which of these connections is/are most meaningful to your project and why?
I really like the emphasis on learning and its relationship to portfolios. After my depressing conversation last night, I am wondering how to counteract the apparent "failure" of ePortfolios (as product) with the promise or the potential of the process approach to portfolios. I found the comparison of the two programs to be interesting... the outcomes-based program with the supportive process-based program.

3. What else did you learn in your conversation this morning that you want to be sure to share with your colleagues.
I found the focus on faculty portfolios as "engaged educator participants" to be a valuable contribution to my thinking about how to engage faculty in the process of building an ePortfolio for their own professional development. The Hawaii project provides an interesting model to engage faculty in process portfolios, in the hopes that they will adopt the process with their own students.

I hope I can stay involved with the UOFolio team as they go through the process. I find the collaboration and conversation to be such a valuable part of my own learning. I really miss this type of community of practice. Maybe I should take a recent offer to create a course that I offer online. Or maybe I should try to find a university that wants me to facilitate the development of ePortfolios with either faculty or students through an online tutorial format. I realize now how much I miss having colleagues that I can talk with, share face-to-face on a regular basis.

During the second day of the NCEPR meeting, there was an emphasis on Web 2.0 tools and social networking. Each group shared documents that outlined their students' use of Web 2.0 tools. Then the entire group discussed the question that I asked during the EPAC online chat (on Monday): We really need to look at the engagement [motivation] factors that drive the use of social networks: how we can incorporate those factors into ePortfolios?

Which ePortfolio Tool?

I've been getting more requests for my recommendations on software for ePortfolios. Here is a request on one of my listservs"

I'm heading a small group of teachers wishing to implement electronic student portfolios for about 100 students. We're looking at various options and wondered what your experiences are. We'd need something accessible from home and school (Web based?) and scaleable to approximately 2,200 students. We are not a 1:1, but may be eventually (really, shouldn't everybody?). Any guidance, lessons learned, limitations, etc... are much appreciated.

My response: Here is my answer to anyone who emails me about ePortfolio tools: "It Depends!" The first question to ask is not about what tool to use, but rather: "What is your purpose for having your students develop an e-portfolio?" A clear description of the purpose should then drive the selection of appropriate tools. [Yes, plural... integrate multiple tools into the process.]

Do you want a student-centered ePortfolio that is the student's story of their own learning, or do you want a system to collect data about student achievement for an external audience (accreditation, accountability). These are the extreme ends along a continuum, but also the major debate in the field today. In my opinion, if you say you want to do both, then pick two different tools, because when these two functions are combined within the same system, data collection/management tends to depress creativity and personal expression in student portfolios. [See my last blog entry about MySpace.]

I will be doing a webinar for ISTE on February 16 entitled, "ePortfolios and Web 2.0" where I will focus on a variety of tools to create student-centered portfolios: WordPress MU (a multi-user blog with pages you host on your own server), GoogleApps for Education, and a variety of Wikis. Google Sites is Google's version of a wiki (replacing Google Pages) and well integrated with GoogleDocs and other Google tools (except Blogger). I just recommend that if you decide to use Google, establish your own Google Apps for Education site, with your own domain name, as a quasi "walled garden" where student work can only be viewed by someone with an account within your domain.

The Electronic Portfolio Action Committee (EPAC) is conducting an online discussion on Monday, February 23, to discuss the whole range of tools that I outlined on my website (http://electronicportfolios.org/categories.html) or in my blog, where I am currently exploring what I call "balancing the two faces of ePortfolios" as mentioned above. You can read my article that is "in progress": http://electronicportfolios.org/balance/

I'm also doing a "bring your own laptop" workshop at NECC (Saturday, June 27) entitled, "Web 2.0 Tools for Classroom-Based Assessment and Interactive Student ePortfolios" where we will focus on GoogleApps, but will also discuss blogs and wikis.

There are more commercial ePortfolio systems out there than course management systems (per Trent Batson in Campus Computing, 1/7/09). Most of these commercial systems are what I call "assessment management systems" developed in higher education to meet the accreditation requirements of Teacher Education programs [or as an add-on to a course management system used primarily in higher education]... There are few commercial systems that were created specifically for K-12. With the current economic environment, most schools are looking for a free solution... I just worry about the continued economic viability of some Web 2.0 sites. That's why I tend to prefer the big "cloud computing companies" (especially Google).

Sorry this message is so long... it just seemed like a "teachable moment" and very current with my own discussions in the ePortfolio community [including my own Google Group on Researching Lifelong ePortfolios and Web 2.0... requires membership application with reason for wanting to join].

MySpace Founders on Charlie Rose

I enjoyed the video clip of Charlie Rose's interview with the co-founders of MySpace, conducted on Tuesday night. They claimed that there are 125 million visitors a month to their website. Of particular interest to me at the end of the interview was their response to Charlie's question, "Realizing that you're not a philosopher, why is it so compelling for so many people?" Chris DeWolfe's response:

A lot of it is about the ability to express yourself. So if you look at your MySpace Profile, you have your music that you're listening to, you have the colors, you have the background, you have the videos. So, I look at your Profile, if you have one, and I can get to know you pretty quickly. It's almost as if you invited me over to a dinner party and you had certain music playing, and you had certain kinds of furniture, and you invited a certain group of friends, I would get to know you very quickly. So, I think it's an online representation of who you are, which is really fascinating, and it's a great way to stay in touch with people, and it's a great discovery mechanism. And there's no other place and no other way to really do that.

Tom Anderson (the other co-founder) added: I think a lot of it has to do with timing, too; that we came out right at the right time when digital cameras were on the rise, and people wanted to come in. People weren't exactly ready for something like MySpace a year or two earlier, so timing really helped us in being there to give people what they wanted.

The issue of personal expression is the major challenge with many of the ePortfolio systems that are in use in formal education today. It is fascinating to contemplate the role of social networks to build what I call "Your Digital Self" online (EIFeL calls ePortfolios "digital identity"). There are many capabilities missing from the current social networks that we need in institutional ePortfolios. Some of the most current ePortfolio systems (Elgg, Mahara, Epsilen) have blogs and built-in social networks, but most of the commercial and open source tools lack the capability for the level of personal expression found in MySpace or Facebook. As DeWolfe described the "discovery mechanism" which is learning, it is interesting to think about creating "Academic MySpaces" (that aren't blocked on most school networks!) that would engage students as much as the current crop of social networking sites. Engagement just won't be a factor until we can incorporate those elements of personal expression.

Feedback on Diagram

I posted the diagram in my last post to my Google Group "Researching Lifelong Portfolios and Web 2.0" and received some great feedback on it. So I updated it on the list. Today, I received a Spanish version of the diagram in my email from a teacher educator in Madrid! I love Web 2.0!

As I said in one of my posts in that discussion, "This is an example of how a social network can provoke critical thinking! I have modified the diagram, because I recognize that the process is not always linear. However, when a novice begins the process of building toward some type of presentation portfolio (the "product" or showcase in this diagram), it helps to have a sequence of tasks to complete. So I took the comments into consideration as I revised the diagram..."