Blogging on Paper

I found the following blog entry:
Learning to Blog Using Paper - a 7th Grade Teacher's clever introduction to blogging (starting with a paper exercise) and using "sticky notes" as comments. Here are the instructions for students (provided in Scribd):
- Seventh Grade Blogging Rules
- The Art and Aspirations of a Commenter

These are great guidelines for reflection and feedback by adolescents. It also looks like a great PD activity for teachers who are not familiar with blogging. 

e-Portfolios in Developing Countries (using mobile phones)

I received this "feel good" email:

I am deeply grateful for the excellent articles you have posted on e-portfolio on your website.  You would not know the great service you are providing to less fortunate educators in Third and Developing World that are not as nearly as priveleged as people in the developed world.  At the moment I am doing a course (Masters in Instructional Technology and Design) with the Open University of Malaysia.  One of the courses, involves the preparation of a e-portfolio as a final project.  I was just about reaching a point of frustration, because I did not know exactly how to set about doing this project.  I clustermate of mine who is also involved in the program, referred me to your Website, and you took care of my problems.  You are really a genius, professor.  Your knowledge is vast.  What is even greater, is your unselfish resolution to publish make such a rish deposit available to us the less fortunate.  Words cannot expess my gratitude.  May I encourage you to keep up the good work, and never falter in the work you are doing for the less fortunate, for you shall reap a rich reward in due season.  You are truly a missionary to poor countries.

P.S:  Do you have anything on the use of mobile phone text messaging (SMS) to teach children who are functionally illiterate.  My final thesis is in this area, because the population of Jamaica is appox 2.7 million people, with 2.4 million Mobile phone users, yet they have banned its use in many schools for some of the same reasons it is banned elsewhere.  My purpose is to show that the technology or tool can be used constructively.

Of course, I am flattered by the kind comments. His P.S. raises concerns about access to the Internet in developing countries. I received this comment in a message from Trent Batson, AAEEBL's Executive Director:

...we heard a woman from Guatemala lamenting that few kids have Internet access but "everyone has cell phones."  Not smart phones, yet, but at least that's doable for places like Guatemala.

I've also been communicating with educators from Egypt to Brazil, and because of the lack of connectivity, I often write to them about implementing ePortfolios with tools we were using in the late 90s. (I read a recent report about the high cost of Internet access in developing countries compared to average monthly income.) But the universal connectivity tool is the cell phone. My granddaughter updates her Facebook status here in the U.S. from her cell phone (not a smart phone). I want to learn more about connectivity from cell phones with online generic tools used to develop ePortfolios, such as GoogleApps and WordPress. I know it is possible with smartphone apps, but most of the developing world is using SMS. I will do another post soon about the iPhone Portfolio apps I have been collecting.

K-12 and Higher Education ePortfolio Support

What is the most effective way to meet the needs of K-12 schools for supporting the implementation of ePortfolios? Is there a need to bring ePortfolio information/resources/training to events that K-12 teachers normally attend, such as ASCD, ISTE, NSDC, BLC, and other K-12 education conferences? We can spin our wheels, and not get much traction if we don't recognize the differences between the K-12 and higher education cultures. I spent eight years in K-12, six as the Staff Development Coordinator for the Fairbanks School District, and another 14 years in the Teacher Education program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I have seen both sides of education, although I didn't start studying ePortfolios until I arrived in Anchorage. Most of my work with ePortfolios in the 90s was focused on K-12, but with the PT3 grants, my focus shifted to higher education in 2000. In 2005-2007, I conducted a research project on implementing ePortfolios in secondary schools, sponsored by Taskstream. Since that time, my consulting time has been more focused on K-12. Perhaps some of my more recent experiences can illustrate some of the differences between K-12 and Higher Ed.

I did make a connection with one of the few K-12 educators attending AAEEBL's July 2010 conference (which was co-located with another higher education conference), and I will be working with her organization on some K-12 ePortfolio activities, still to be developed. (But they have little or no funding... another problem with K-12.) I am also continuing my self-funded research on how ePortfolios are being implemented in K-12 schools: In October, I am planning to visit several High Tech Highs in the San Diego area, where they have been implementing digital portfolios with every student since the first school opened in 2000. In mid-October, the students are leading student-led conferences, so I am getting permission to observe and to conduct some short focus groups with students and to talk with the lead teachers.

Earlier this week, I conducted a two-day planning/training session with a small school district in North Dakota that wants to begin implementing ePortfolios over the next two-three years. I met with a committee of teacher leaders for a day, then made a presentation to the entire district (60 teachers!) for a couple of hours, followed by an activity where I led the committee through the Change Game (a simulation to move a school district through the stages of change). I also had both principals and the superintendent participating in this two-hour simulation. The district is planning two more early release days before I go back in January for a two-day hands-on workshop. So the committee and I planned how they could best use that time. We also set up a Google Group to maintain communication between face-to-face meetings. This is similar to the work that I did for the last two years with a small school district in California.

I did 10 days of face-to-face workshops under a Title IID grant (No Child Left Behind) for New York City Schools last spring. I am working via Skype with an individual high school in Manhattan, where the lead teacher is a Google Certified Teacher, so I am learning a lot from how her teachers and students are beginning to implement ePortfolios across the school. I hope to visit that school when I am in New York in December, to see how the process is going.

Last spring, I visited the American School of Bombay, after conducting monthly 45-minute teleconferences for them (over their lunch hour or before school). While in the school, I had appointments to meet with individual teachers or groups of teachers. I saw some wonderful examples from their third grade students! In June, I visited a private school in Barcelona, and with simultaneous translation, introduced them to using GoogleApps for ePortfolios over three days. I also provided a full day workshop at a private school in California after school was out in June.

The K-12 culture is very different from higher education. Professional development is very different, their reasons for implementing ePortfolios are different, and the tools/strategies they use are also different. Most schools don't have the level of technology support that you will find in most higher ed institutions (unless they are a private or international school). The time constraints are also very different. They squeeze in PD in one- and two-hour blocks. But from my observations from the Intermediate (middle) school that I visited in New Zealand, it is the small incremental trainings on a regular basis (before and after school) that makes a difference in how well teachers implement technology in teaching and students' learning.

That's what I am trying to document in my book! It is slow work, but I am gathering lots of good observational data and lots of resources along the way. Any other examples of success stories of implementing ePortfolios beyond a single classroom? For those with experience in both K-12 and higher education, what do you see as the differences?

GoogleApps Education and Blogger

The message was posted to the Google for Educators Discussion Group:

Blogger has been added to the Educational Edition but the transition won't occur enmass until later this fall. Your GoogleDomain administrator can transition people to the new apps by going in the admin dashboard and "transitioning" users. I love it, I can now embed my Picasa3 slideshows and create an iGoogle page with RSS feeds, this will make school portfolios so much richer. 

I totally agree! When will Blogger be universally available in Google Apps Education Edition?

Kindergarten Portfolios with Blogger

I'm doing online research for my book, and found some great examples of using Blogger to create ePortfolios in Kindergartens. Here are some links:
http://kdgroom102.blogspot.com/ (Carol Stream, IL) - written up in a local newspaper
http://hunterparkkindergarten.blogspot.com/ (NZ - with links to 2 public blogs) It is obvious that the students are not posting to these blogs, and most of them are private, requiring an invitation to view. The two public blogs:

- http://hpkgtn09abigail.blogspot.com/  (NZ = public student example in Blogger - lots of embedded images+video) - The teacher added Labels (Tags) that can be selected under Quick find
- http://bennybee.blogspot.com/  Quote from profile:
This is my E-profile all about me!
Mum and Dad have decided to leave it an open blog as an exemplar of how e-profiles can be used to document and assess my learning and life as a partnership between my extended family, my teachers at kindergarten, my dance teachers, and when I get there my school teachers too.
Please enjoy and respect my E profile.

I have emailed the school to communicate with the teacher who put together these portfolios. I would love to have a conversation with more Kindergarten teachers who are implementing this process with their students.

Tech Talk on Learning Portfolios at BBI

I just listened to an Eluminate session conducted by LearnCentral and TechTalk Tuesdays. The guest presenter was Lenva Shearing, Deputy Principal at Bucklands Beach Intermediate School (BBI), in New Zealand, where I was privileged to spend a couple of weeks last March. A summary of the webinar:

Look at the pedagogy, vision, implementation and effects on learning that personal reflective portfolios can provide. This session will not discuss the tools that might be used, but the pedagogoy  behind personal reflective portfolios.

It was fun to see how the ePortfolio process at BBI has evolved over the last few months. What I appreciate about their approach is the emphasis on goal-setting, learning and feedback, and their inquiry model of teaching, based on the EYP philosophy. Even though there was not an intention to discuss the tools used, questions can't be avoided when ePortfolios are being demonstrated. I see that BBI has moved from the Ning platform to store their video, to using divShare, one of my favorite online storage sites. Lenva demonstrated how teachers are using this tool to store and embed their audio feedback on student work. Even though the demos of student portfolio videos were difficult to follow, Lenva's description of BBI's philosophy and practice is a worthwhile contribution to the larger ePortfolio dialogue.

Top 5 Back-to-School Tech Tools

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

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

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

ePortfolios: Concept, Process, and Product

I believe ePortfolios are CONCEPT, PROCESS, and PRODUCT.

I have lately been presenting about the CONCEPT of "Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolios": (process vs. product, workspace vs. showcase, learning/improvement vs. accountability). The international community is recognizing this perspective, since my concept map/diagram has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, Japanese and Mandarin! Unless we recognize the importance of both approaches to ePortfolios, I believe it will be more difficult to realize the practical contribution of ePortfolios for supporting reflection and lifelong learning. As an ePortfolio community of practice, we need to be clear about the multiple purposes for developing portfolios, and the multiple strategies that can be used... and not constrain our thinking by specific tools or products or narrow purposes. The development of ePortfolios can help build lifelong habits of reflective practice, but I fear that the process is in danger of being hijacked for accountability purposes (see The Accountability/Improvement Paradox:  --a higher education perspective, but there are comparable viewpoints in K-12).

My working portfolio, that documents the PROCESS of my learning/growth over time, is my digital footprint through my website, my blog, my Facebook account (mostly "friending" my family members), my Twitter posts (@eportfolios), etc.: my personal learning environment (PLE) that I contribute to and learn from on a regular basis. This "portfolio-as-PROCESS" is a powerful environment for lifelong learning and reflection, with digital media adding a contemporary boost to an ages-old process. I also agree that smart phones and other mobile technologies (i.e., iPad, tablets) are going to be an important direction for more widespread adoption. This aggregation of my online presence is how I construct my digital identity, using tools across the Internet, where I store videos in YouTube or blip.tv, images in Picasa or Flickr, presentations in slideshare.net, documents in scribd.com or googledocs, etc. (What I am missing is some type of database or tool where I can keep a record of links to all of these resources with meta-tags -- right now, I use a googledocs spreadsheet.) It is this process paradigm that constitutes the "everyday-ness" of ePortfolios in a highly interactive environment.

Every once in a while, I add an entry to one of my presentation portfolios (organized in one of many tools that I have explored) which represents a significant accomplishment in my professional life. This "portfolio-as-PRODUCT" has a specific purpose and audience, organized thematically using a specific authoring tool, such as Mahara, Google Sites, eFolio, or any one of the commercial tools. I spent years studying many of these tools for creating presentation portfolios, and I came to the conclusion that many of these systems are often institution-based, created within a finite time frame (i.e., a school or university program). Once a learner leaves the institution, with a few exceptions, the presentation portfolio remains behind or unchanged in an HTML archive: frozen in time as an artifact of that institutional experience (much like my tenure portfolio in PDF on a CD-ROM from 2002). I wish I could find data on the percentage of students who continue to pay subscription fees on commercial systems; my assumption is that it is fairly low. That is why I am an advocate for learners to own their own online spaces to publish their own presentation portfolios (i.e., Google Sites, WordPress, Weebly), or for the commercial providers to adhere to one of the standards, such as LEAP2A to allow portfolio content to be migrated between compatible systems... another argument for open Web 2.0 systems.

I am trying to finish my book over the next two months, so these ideas are front and center in my consciousness. I am looking for more stories of using Web 2.0 tools to create ePortfolios across the lifespan, in and out of formal education. I also maintain a couple of Google Groups that focus on Researching Web2.0 Portfolios and Using Google Apps for ePortfolios in K-12 Education.
(My post to eportfolio_conversations@googlegroups.com, facilitated by Coach Carole in Australia)

Another digital storytelling workshop

Back from my European vacation (Amsterdam and a Baltic cruise with my mother and daughter... three generations in a standard stateroom... at least we had a veranda for extra space!). On Monday and Tuesday this week, Erin and I conducted a digital storytelling workshop with more than 20 teachers, counselors and the principal of a middle school/high school in a small town in Washington state as part of their Navigation 101 program. This is the third Nav 101 school in Washington where we have provided this training. The size of the workshop, and the diversity of the group meant that we were training on Macintosh (iMovie6HD), and several versions of MovieMaker (XP, Vista, 7). Erin took the Mac group and I stayed with the Windows group, who were actually using iMacs that booted to Windows XP (as Erin said, it just didn't seem right!). But the tech person said that the Mac hardware was the most reliable!

Despite the fact that the teachers accounts were blocked from access to Flickr and websites for royalty-free music, they were able to produce some very moving stories, many of them about family or friends. I was most impressed with their very tech-savvy principal who was a full participant in the workshop at the beginning of a very busy school year! She shared her story in her blog. I hope they will get students producing digital stories during this school year to support their student-led conferences. Here is the blog of a teacher in the school, with his digital story about the life cycle of a salmon! This is the first digital storytelling workshop that I have conducted where not only one but two of the participants posted their stories to YouTube on their own, even though I encourage individuals to publish their own stories when the workshop is over.

Assessment in Race to the Top

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

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

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

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

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

The Future of mPortfolios

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

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

M portfolios

View more presentations from Helen Barrett.

AAEEBL Conference - Days 1 -3

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

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

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

AAEEBL2010 web2

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

AAEEBL 2010 Keynote

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

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

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

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

Models of Reflection

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

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

Keynote at EIFeL 2010

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

Eifel2010

View more presentations from Helen Barrett.

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

ISTE 2010 Presentation

ISTE 2010

View more presentations from Helen Barrett.

I just did my presentation at ISTE 2010 today. It was scheduled to start at 12:30, and I went to the room at noon, walking past a long line (wasn't sure what they were waiting for). It turns out, they were waiting for my session! The room was full at 12:15 and they closed the door, so I spent the first 10 minutes just fielding questions. Then I did my presentation during the normal time (slides above). I forgot to audio record it, but the slides pretty much cover the content. I incorporated a lot of the content of my TEDxASB talk.

I would love some feedback from the participants.

Google Announcements

Google announced today at ISTE 2010 two more states, Colorado and Iowa, are joining Oregon to make GoogleApps available to all schools. In my opinion, soon schools in these states will have a ready-made environment to support e-portfolio development using this rich toolset.

Google also announced a set of training solutions for schools through a new online Google Apps Education Training Center.  They also announced a new Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer and Partner program to "provide a formal structure for certifying individuals and partners who lead workshops or trainings about Apps, and provides schools with an easy way to find the best partners in their area."

iPhone ePortfolios?

From a listserv post by Trent Batson, founder of AAEEBL, a professional organization supporting electronic portfolios primarily in higher education:

See this URL: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/eportfolio-for-iphone/id361277520?mt=8
From the person, Paul Treuer who was IP owner for the first OSP code set which is now -- a few new code sets later -- part of Sakai.

My response:
The UMN software only uploads pictures to a UMN portfolio, so far, although a comment in iTunes said, "Soon to follow, I've heard a voice recognition-to-text feature will allow you to dictate into your ePortfolio. How cool is that!" I agree. It would be powerful to be able to reflect by voice, and have it go directly into my reflective journal/blog. I can do that using Dragon Dictate in my iPhone and send the text online by email.

There are several other portfolio tools in the iTunes store. PebblePad has an iphone app. Also an app for physicians in U.K. for "Effortless recording of learning and reflection and access to reference materials." Right now, it is only by typing, but these are a start!

There is also a WordPress App. I just can't really edit my GoogleDocs artifacts or my Google Sites portfolio from my iPhone/iPad, and I can only blog by email. But, it's beginning to happen! Anyone have other examples?

Sent from my iPad

EduBloggerCon at ISTE10

I made it back to another EduBloggerCon prior to ISTE 2010 in Denver. It is very important for me to listen to teachers who are working with K-12 students and implementing Web 2.0 tools, although these were very advanced users! Lots of discussion of the iPad, and quite a few of them in the room. I took both my iPad and my laptop to the workshop, because I wasn't sure which one I would want to use. During the Smackdown (showcase of new Web 2.0 tools), I ended up using my laptop. Also, editing my Google Site... not possible with the iPad.

There were several sessions on the iPad: one led by a teacher who was really pro-iPad, another led by Scott McLeod, who brought up some serious questions about the trade-offs between consumption of data vs. production capabilities of the iPad. Lots of great discussion, documented in tweets using #ebc10ipad tag. No conclusions, because it is too soon, but some schools may be ready to replace laptops/netbooks with iPads, perhaps a premature decision. I said to wait until the Android tablets come out, and then compare the capabilities. I can still do more production on a laptop/netbook than my iPad. But there are advantages with battery life and instant on. Some educators are also impressed with the engagement of young students with reading on the iPad.

There were also good discussions on blogging with students, including Blogs as Web-Based Portfolios (PDF) from Jeff Utecht, International School of Bangkok. I also figured out how to organize my apps on my iPhone with iOS4, and touched an iPhone4. I'm trying to figure out when I will be home long enough this summer to buy mine. I want multitasking and iMovie for iPhone! (After updating my iPhone 3G to iOS4, it seems to run slower.) Dinner out with some teachers and more great discussion! Great Day!

Barcelona Beginnings

Today, I began a 2.5 day ePortfolios with GoogleApps workshop with secondary teachers at Colegio Montserrat in Barcelona, Spain. To help me adjust to jet lag, we started today's workshop at 3 PM. For the next two days, we will start at 9 AM.

Today, we started with a version of the presentation that I did at Castilleja School in Palo Alto two weeks ago, but because I only had a half day in that workshop and here I have 2.5 days, I only covered part of the presentation today...  I was conscious that I was being simultaneously translated, so I slowed down my pace. After our coffee break, all the participants logged in to their brand new Google Apps Education domain and I introduced many of the teachers to GoogleDocs for the first time. They wrote up a few notes about what they learned from my presentation, and then I showed them how to share their document with a partner. Their assignment before tomorrow: upload some of their professional teaching documents into GoogleDocs to build their digital archive. I discovered that now GoogleDocs will convert .docx and .xlsx files from MS Office 2007+, but not .pptx. You are still able to upload those newest Powerpoint file types, but they were saved in the original format, not converted to GoogleDocs.

I thought it was a pretty successful short first day. Tomorrow we will begin to use Google Sites to build their professional teaching portfolios. All of the teachers have laptops (mostly Windows Vista) and the secondary students will have netbooks next year. For the school this is the ideal time to convert their existing student Powerpoint portfolios into an online format. The school received training from my colleague Evangeline Harris Stefanakis several years ago, so they have a good grounding in portfolio theory. Tomorrow, I will be sharing strategies for developing Interactive Portfolios using GoogleApps. It was good to start with GoogleDocs today, since it follows my three-level process, beginning with a collection of digital documents. (A version of a journal article discussing this 3-level process was just published in English in a Portuguese Educom journal in PDF.)

Working in two languages is interesting... slows me down and simplifies my vocabulary. The translator told me I was doing fine. Reminds me of the workshop I did in Japan over 3 years ago... the first time I used GoogleDocs to develop ePortfolios. Since that time, I have seen major changes to GoogleApps, into a very rich toolset for developing student-centered ePortfolios, especially in schools and colleges adopting GoogleApps Education Edition for GMail. I can hardly wait until Google releases additional tools inside all versions of GoogleApps. I am hoping that Picasa, Reader and Blogger are available by September; I am also hoping that a protected version of YouTube will also be available soon, since video storage is a major issue in schools. Through the GoogleApps Marketplace, there are other great add-ons inside GoogleApps, some of them free, such as the Aviary Tools for image editing, voice recording and music creation. I wonder if Aviary is also working on a video editing tool? That would almost complete the toolset!

Part 2 of the workshop tomorrow. Should I introduce these teachers to digital stories in ePortfolios? I'm told they all know MovieMaker. Hmmm... Erin, my workshop assistant/daughter, isn't with me. I'll have to ask them tomorrow after we get through Google Sites. I'm not sure I can handle more than 20 teachers doing digital stories, while I am fighting jet lag! Stay tuned!

UPDATE: I introduced them to Digital Storytelling for two hours in the late afternoon, using my hands-on activity using seven images and a single audio file. They were excited to explore further on their own! On the last day, we explored more on reflection and feedback, and I introduced them to ietherpad. Then they used that tool to begin writing a vision statement for ePortfolios in their school.

Fruits of my Work

Today, I received the following email from Scot Hoffman, a teacher I worked with in Mumbai:

... I’ve been reading your blog and can see that holding space for a ePortfolio to be a student owned space is becoming important to define.  We had a great year with the ePortfolios.  They were so successful that we couldn’t really get away from them all year.  We ended up the year showing 35 teachers how to start their own professional portfolios.  I’ve also been busy with a Master’s Program through Boston University.  Hopefully my involvement in the program will give me opportunities to continue to build my practices and maybe even do some research to find out their effect.  Here is a blog post on Shabbi’s new blog that I wrote about ePortfolios.  Shabbi’s new blog is going to be worth following. I suppose that you’re probably the last person in the world who could get anything from it, but I did want to share it with you as a fruit of your work with us.  http://paradigmshift21.edublogs.org/2010/06/16/eportfolios-a-thread-through-the-21st-century/ 

...it seems like you’re continuing to gain momentum, reach, and foment in pursuit of giving students the keys to their futures.

I was very impressed with the work of the 3rd Grade Teachers at ASB in Mumbai. As you can see by this posting, they are preparing their students for the future in very profound ways using ePortfolios. They will be the third grade/primary case study in my book.