EIFEL Preconference sessions

I just sent the following descriptions of my workshops to EIFEL for my full day of workshops on Monday, July 9, 2012, in London. It should be a fun day!

Morning Session #1:
Title: Using "Free" Online Tools for ePortfolio Development
Description: In this session we will cover major categories of free Web 2.0 tools and how they support  the multiple portfolio processes that are identified in the JISC publication Effective Practices with ePortfolios: Capturing & storing evidence, Reflecting, Giving & receiving feedback, Planning & setting goals, Collaborating, Presenting to an audience. The tools include: WordPress; GoogleApps; free website builder & hosting tools that include blogs, such as Weebly, Yola; open source ePortfolio tools that require a server (Mahara, OSP/Sakai).
Website: http://electronicportfolios.org/eportfolios/tools.html

Morning Session #2:
Title: mPortfolios: Supporting Reflection using Mobile Devices
Description: Mobile devices (iOS, Chrome or Android) can support reflection through regular planning & goal-setting, capturing the learning moment, and metacognition (reflecting on change over time). The Learning/Reflection Process is based on a theory of Self-Regulated Learning.  This session will include demonstrations of mobile apps with supporting websites, or those that include the ability to upload artifacts to Dropbox, GoogleDocs, YouTube, etc.
Website: http://electronicportfolios.org/reflection/process/

Afternoon Session:
Title: Tell your Story in Digital Video created with mobile devices
Description: Digital storytelling can add voice to an ePortfolio. Mobile devices are becoming powerful enough to use for editing and posting short video clips that can be embedded in ePortfolios. Learn the basics of digital storytelling using mobile devices: write the script; record the narration; capture images with the mobile camera; edit the video with low-cost software, such as Avid Studio or iMovie, which can be used to post these creations to online video sharing sites such as YouTube or Vimeo.
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/digitalstorysite/tools/mobile-devices

Google Sites Navigation & ISTE Workshop

I discovered the horizontal navigation bar for Google Sites that includes a menu with drop-down links. I developed a Google Site on Using GoogleApps for K-12 ePortfolios, which was adapted from my "generic" Introduction to K-12 ePortfolios course site. I was not going to make the GoogleApps site open to the public, since I added supplemental course information on my ePortfolios with GoogleApps site. I forgot that I used that URL in my ISTE proposal, although I have been receiving requests for access to this site. So, I just opened up the website today, but with major revisions.

I recently saw a very interesting website on Working with GoogleSites, developed by an Iowa technology consultant, that incorporated drop-down menus. After a little experimentation in the Manage site menu, I was able to move the Navigation bar from the left side to horizontal tabs across the top of the site. It gives me more screen space, and longer descriptions in the sub-page links. But on the downside, I have to manually manage the menu items,  adding each new page. On the other hand, I can control the order of the menu and sub-menu links (no more being restricted to alphabetical order when I "Automatically organize my navigation" in the sidebar). I like it!

Evernote Webinar on ePortfolios this week

This coming Thursday, Rob VanNood of Trillium Charter School will be conducting a webinar sponsored by Evernote. His blog is a very good resource on using iPod Touch devices and Evernote to maintain student goal-setting, documenting their learning, and reflecting throughout the learning process.

My Philosophy of ePortfolio Development

As I work with others on the implementation of ePortfolio Development, I need to articulate my own philosophy. My doctorate is in Human Development (not computer science), so my philosophy comes from the perspective of using e-portfolios in the context of learning and individual lifelong development. Some people see ePortfolios through the lens of ICT and the underlying technologies; I see ePortfolios through the lens of human development potential in an era of social media. 

I believe:

• ePortfolio development activities can be found across the lifespan
• ePortfolio development can be an important element of a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and Network (PLN)
• ePortfolio development and social networking have many similarities
• ePortfolio development is a balance between process and product 
• ePortfolios can be created for many different purposes 
• ePortfolios can be created with many different tools
• ePortfolio development should be integrated into everyday activities
• ePortfolio development supports a process of Reflection and Metacognition that is essential to lifelong learning

I elaborated in a longer GoogleDoc Document with supporting links to some of my work.

My Mahara ePortfolio

Thanks to a Facebook posting by one of my colleagues in Australia, I found a free hosting site for Mahara: http://foliofor.me/. This service limits file storage to 50 MB. But all of my artifacts are stored on one of my websites, and all of my videos are stored in one of the video sharing services, so I don't need a lot of storage. (YouTube now lets me upload videos longer than 15 minutes, so I uploaded a lot of my recorded presentations and some of my older videos.) I spent the entire evening developing the 41st version of my portfolio with this service. (I guess there is another free Mahara hosting service, Foliospaces.com which offers a Premium upgrade for $40/year for up to 2 GB storage.)

My portfolio is located at: http://foliofor.me/view/view.php?id=4448
I wrote my reflection on the process on a page in the portfolio. I didn't try Mahara in the past because I didn't have a server and the portfolio views were a single page. However, this version let me set up a Collection, which groups pages together and places a navigation bar across the top. There are no sub-pages, and the process was a little quirky, requiring a lot of clicks to do a task. But the drag-and-drop nature of creating pages and populating them with content is fairly intuitive.

The tool has a journal (blog) which can be embedded on a page as either the entire blog, or individual blog entries. Each journal entry can have attachments and multiple tags, to make searching easier. There is a tool to create Plans, which I need to explore further. I also set up a group, which could be used for collaboration and discussion. I might explore using this tool in a future online class. Now I need to see if I can upload artifacts with the PortfolioUP iPhone app.

ePortfolios and Counseling High School Students

I received this email today:

...we were discussing how this tool might be infused in the high school... It was mentioned that our counselors at the high school are not convinced universities are interested in seeing digital collections when students apply for admission. Do you have any hard data on this? ...We would like to be able to approach the counselors and make this a topic they could tackle as students move through high school. Thoughts?

My response: I am going to raise your vision of ePortfolios a little higher, toward students building their positive online brand. There are many purposes for students creating ePortfolios; marketing/showcase for college admission is only one of those purposes. I did another blog entry a few months ago about high school portfolios.  I really like the purpose that is addressed in the National Educational Technology Plan:

Technology also gives students opportunities for taking ownership of their learning. Student-managed electronic learning portfolios can be part of a persistent learning record and help students develop the self-awareness required to set their own learning goals, express their own views of their strengths, weaknesses, and achievements, and take responsibility for them. Educators can use them to gauge students’ development, and they also can be shared with peers, parents, and others who are part of students’ extended network. (p.12)

Just as with employment portfolios, I think the primary audience for an ePortfolio is the learner, following under Greek philosophers' maxim, "Know Thyself". Developing an ePortfolio throughout school will help students document and understand their purpose and passions. Just as a portfolio helps an applicant prepare for a job interview, a portfolio can be used to prepare a university application essay (with hyperlinks to an online portfolio). But just as most employers don't know how to read a portfolio (or have the time), the same can be said for college admission officers. (Many resumes and applications are scanned or entered electronically and searched for keywords.) However, referencing an online portfolio might make a difference in applying for some jobs, technical programs or colleges.

Reflective portfolios can help students build self-awareness and build a positive online identity (their personal brand); I often quote from a Harvard Business Review article by Peter Drucker, "Managing Oneself", which is a great way to organize reflection in a graduation portfolio:

What are my strengths?
How do I work?
What are my values?
Where do I belong?
What can I contribute?

I became aware of the Drucker article at a conference on advising highly talented undergraduates, where the opening keynote speaker, from Harvard, said he had all incoming freshmen read this article. You might also be interested in the Saskatchewan Identity Management Project and their YouTube video: Digital Dossier. I also recommend blog posts (from Forbes, PBS and Wall Street Journal Online) that can be found in links on Portfolio Careers and Personal Branding in my online class website.

I was recently interviewed for an online article about ePortfolios, where she asked me specifically about college applications: Beyond the Transcript: Digital Portfolios Paint a Complete Picture. The author also asked me about how parents can support the ePortfolio process; I said, "Parents are the first portfolio keepers." So, hopefully you have some data to share with your counselors. Here in the State of Washington, the high school students develop paper portfolios under a counseling program called Navigation 101.

Supporting Reflection in ePortfolios

I was up early this morning for a webinar with a group of teachers participating in a research project in a school district in Ontario, Canada (without cameras at 6:30 AM!). I spent some time last weekend updating my presentation and several websites to focus less on specific tools and more on a generic process.

http://electronicportfolios.org/eportfolios/

http://electronicportfolios.org/eportfolios/reflection.html

This presentation draws on some of my previous slides, but is more focused on a generic process rather than using Google Apps, mobile devices, etc. I also focused their independent study on my Reflection for Learning Google Site.

Generic e portfolios  

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Selecting "Free" Online Tools for ePortfolio Development

All day today, I have been working on a new web page: Selecting a "Free" Online Tool for ePortfolio Development. The chart is developed for K-12 schools, but I think it is applicable to higher education.

I have also updated the diagrams linked from the following page on Interactive Portfolios that illustrate how to translate reflective blog entries into a thematically-organized showcase portfolio, using the first four types of tools listed below. These pages also cover the steps for using that tool throughout the portfolio development process. I identified these major categories of free tools (with links to the diagrams):

1. WordPress and its derivatives for schools: EduBlogs and KidBlogs
2. GoogleApps Education Edition, including Docs, Sites, Blogger & Digication
3. Mobile Apps with supporting websites
4. Free website builder & hosting tools that include blogs, such as Weebly, Yola
5. Open source ePortfolio tools that require a server (Mahara, OSP/Sakai)

In this Free Tools chart, I then identified the different purposes/processes we want to be able to implement with these tools, asking: What is your purpose for creating portfolios? How does each tool support each process?

• Capturing & storing evidence (stored in online system)
• Learning/Reflecting (organized chronologically) Planning & setting goals
• Formative Assessment  -Giving & receiving feedback & Collaborating
• Marketing/Employment  -Presenting to an audience
• Accountability/ Summative Assessment
• Collect data for Accountablity Reporting
• Showcase work thematically -Presenting to an audience

In the cells in the matrix, I put my best estimate of the capabilities of each tool for each process. I also looked at some of the technology infrastructure and support needs, asking "How does each tool match the support resources available?"

• Server required?
• Programming required?
• Ease of Use for Students
• Age Appropriate Grades K-12
• Teacher Controls (setting up accounts, controlling content & process)

If you have already selected or are using one of these tools, do you agree with what I have written about the features? If you haven't selected a tool, what further information do you need? What did I leave out?

Reflections on ITSC

I attended my second ITSC conference, sponsored by OETC. It was a hands-on conference, and this picture, taken by my friend and colleague Jackie Gerstein, shows the four devices I was using in a workshop put on by Hall Davidson on Making Mobile Meaningful (with my Macbook Pro, my iPad, my iPod Touch, and my iPhone). We explored lots of Web 2.0 tools that could be accessed with a mobile phone, including Polleverywhere.com. I learned that you can email videos directly to a YouTube account through a special email address found in Mobile setup; the same process can also be done within Flickr for pictures taken with a mobile phone.

I learned a lot about QR Codes, and picked my favorite QR code reader for my iPhone (i-nigma or ScanLife). I also picked two websites to generate QR Codes: http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ and http://goo.gl (which will also produce a shorter URL). One website that seems intriguing provides an audio clip to accompany the QR Code: http://qrvoice.net/ I plan to incorporate QR Codes with my poster session at ISTE, including some voice recordings! Hall showed a living book that was a series of QR Codes linked to a series of dynamic websites. I am going to try to incorporate QR codes in my book, as well (which is at the editor!).

Webinar on mPortfolios

Yesterday I did a webinar for a MoodleMeet on ePortfolios sponsored by LearnNowBC. Here is the link to the Elluminate recording. Here are the slides that are created based on my new poster for the 2012 ISTE conference:

M portfolios poster

View more PowerPoint from Helen Barrett

I took my new poster and turned it into a presentation. I am currently exploring the concept of Double Loop Learning in ePortfolios (see my Reflection4Learning Google Site page for more details). Is that level of reflective learning for teachers only, or do we want students to reflect at the level of assumptions, values and mental models?

English Language ePortfolio Development in Vietnam

I got the word last night: my trip to Vietnam has been approved by the U.S. State Department's English Language Specialists program. I will be there in April, helping faculty and students use technology to demonstrate acquisition of English language skills. I will start out at the university in Dalat, and then will probably work with ELL programs in Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon) and Hanoi. This will be a new adventure! I know I will learn as much from them as they will from me!

I have already started a Google Site to provide both a framework for an ePortfolio (based on a Google Site Template that was published by City University of Hong Kong) and some strategies for using technology to document receptive skills (reading and listening) as well as expressive skills (writing and speaking). I will be building this site further over the next two months before I leave on this trip.

Student Self-Assessment

Yesterday, I read the following newsletter article from Faculty Focus: Student Self-Assessment: A Sample Assignment.  The first assignment is a Personal Goals Statement; the last assignment: What Have You Learned from the Class? These are great prompts for learning portfolio/journal entries. This quote from the article illustrates some "portfolio-like" practices:

The real value of the assignment is the final paper where students return to their goals and assess how well they reached them. You could prompt students to provide examples illustrating how their goals were achieved. If a goal hasn’t been reached, there needs to be a discussion of why.

ePearl Model

These assignments were targeted at college students, but they also work with elementary school students, as documented in Rob VanNood's blog on using Evernote with his 3rd-5th graders at Trillium Charter School in Portland. Rob has prior experience using ePearl, which was based on a model of Self-Regulated Learning. (See Zimmerman's 1990 PDF paper, Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: An overview. Educational Psychologist, 25, 3-17.) This diagram was the foundation for my poster developed on Monday and previous blog entries.

Google Hangouts Office Hours

I just finished my first virtual office hours for my online class using Google+ Hangouts. I set up a private circle just for the class, and invited my students to add me to one of their circles, whereupon I added them to the private class circle. I posted the schedule in the circle discussion and simply clicked on the hangout button at the bottom of the message. When they log in to Google+, they should see that I am online:
Pretty cool way to be available to students!

Culture and ePortfolios

How does culture impact on ePortfolio development? I have met with groups that question whether the focus on reflection in ePortfolios is a northern European/Australian/NewZealand/American form of self-disclosure that is very uncomfortable in other cultures, such as southern European, Asian, etc. Over ten years ago, when I was in Singapore, we talked about the difficulty many in Asian cultures have with public disclosure and reflection. (I wonder, has the emergence of social networking changed that attitude?)

When I was presenting at a university in the Midwest last fall, an anthropology professor pointed out the American/Euro-centric nature of my discussion of reflection. Last week, I worked with the Languages faculty at my former university, where we discussed the difficulties of students from some cultures to focus on self rather than groups (family, community) or to point out their own strengths and achievements. I am preparing for a possible trip to Vietnam, where I will be doing workshops on ePortfolios in English Language Learning.  I have a lot to learn about the impact of a person's culture on the implementation of the portfolio process. Are there cultural implications of reflection in ePortfolios that I need to be sensitive to, similar to the developmental dimensions?

I was interested in Darren Cambridge's tweet last weekend from the AAC&U ePortfolio meeting: "[the speaker] makes the classic mistake of thinking an eportfolio is a collection not a synthesis." In my previous blog post, I added some references to Bloom's Taxonomy within the context of ePortfolio development. In the revised taxonomy, where the concepts changed from nouns to verbs, the authors removed synthesis but added create. I added these components to a diagram that I am using to illustrate the development of ePortfolios with 1-to-1 mobile devices, but included both synthesize and create.

http://educationaltech-med.blogspot.com/2011/09/blooms-taxonomy-21st-century-version.html

Supporting Reflection with Mobile Devices

I am doing a Poster Session at ISTE 2012 in San Diego entitled,  mPortfolios: Supporting reflection in ePortfolios with mobile devices. Here is the first draft of the document that I will eventually print out in poster size.  I think I will also try to create a Prezi document based on this diagram. Each of the icons can become links to the specific app website. A lot of this information is posted online in my mPortfolios Google Site.

The Reflection Cycle, which I posted earlier, is based on a theory of Self-Regulated Learning that was the underlying theory of the ePearl ePortfolio system developed at Concordia University. I have adapted the process to include suggestions for mobile apps with supporting websites, or those that include the ability to upload artifacts to Dropbox, GoogleDocs, YouTube, etc. I also identified the multiple portfolio processes that are identified in the JISC publication Effective Practices with ePortfolios: Capturing & storing evidence, Reflecting, Giving & receiving feedback, Planning & setting goals, Collaborating, Presenting to an audience. I also added indications of how the strategies fit within the revised Bloom's Taxonomy. I have placed the Evernote app under all three stages because of the impressive implementation by the teachers and students at Trillium Charter School in Portland. The blog maintained by Rob VanNood is a very insightful documentation of their implementation of Evernote within the self-regulated learning process.

I would love feedback on the diagram, including more suggestions for useful apps to include. A full size version is posted on my website, as well as a PDF version.

FETC Slides

Google Apps FETC2012

View more presentations from Helen Barrett

Last week, I spent two days in Orlando at the Florida Educational Technology Conference, doing a workshop on Tuesday entitled, Student-Centered Interactive ePortfolios with GoogleApps, and a presentation on Wednesday entitled, mPortfolio Development with Mobile Devices, where I used a version of the slides that I already had uploaded to Slideshare (my Powerpoint files have too many images to upload now!).

I learned a few new things at this conference:

• I can now edit Google Sites with Safari on my iPad and iPhone. I'm not sure when that change happened... but it is about time!
• The Richland2 School District, where I worked last September, was one of three districts that was highlighted in the Google Chromebook sessions. They made a very good case for adopting this device for 1-to-1 adoptions. (See Tom Vander Ark's blog entry in Huffington Post!)
• There are now at least two options for editing video online (which would include the Chromebooks): YouTube Editor and Stupeflix Studio. I will need to play with both of these options for digital storytelling.

Wednesday evening, I flew from Orlando to Anchorage (a difference of 90 degrees Fahrenheit!). I will write another blog entry about that trip, because I worked with the Languages department, and we explored a lot of strategies to help them capture student learning in their respective target languages. I am very interested in researching more strategies for documenting second-language learning.

Technology & Learning Question of the Week

Today, the Question of the Week on the Technology & Learning newsletter was:

Is your district using e-portfolios to evaluate student work?

• YES. These are great tools for assessing students and building individual portfolios.
• NO. E-portfolios are too hard to manage. 
• LOOKING INTO IT. Our school is evaluating the logistics of implementing these assessment tools. 

I find the statements following each response to represent a biased and narrow perception of the use of e-portfolios (for evaluation), but there is no way to add a comment or provide feedback on the survey itself. No wonder we have limited adoption of e-portfolios with this lack of understanding about the genre. E-portfolios are not just tools; they are a philosophy and a process to support learning!

Worldwide online class

I am pleased with the registration of my first public online class: Intro to K-12 ePortfolios. The participants are primarily from North America, although I have students from Europe (The Netherlands, Germany, Italy) and Asia (Hong Kong, Japan). In the U.S., I have several groups of 3, 4 and 10 from school districts! The majority have signed up as "singletons" so I will be developing some groups for collaboration. Any group of four or more will qualify for a private one-hour live teleconference via Skype or GoToMeeting. Deadline for registration in this cohort is January 16, so I will have the final number next week. The next cohort begins in April.

This online class has many new elements for me: using Edmodo instead of threaded discussion in a course management system like Blackboard or Moodle; posting the course content online in Google Sites; doing live conversations in Google+ Hangouts. I team-taught an online course last fall using Edmodo for student discussions, and I have been using Google Sites for years. I picked Edmodo because it was a social network that can be used in schools, and has some features that make it more user friendly than a CMS. Maybe in the future I will use Google+ Circles for asynchronous conversations in the class. However, using Google+ Hangouts is new for me. I have the option to use GoToWebinar, but that tool is very instructor-centered. I really want us to have more of a conversation.

XO 3.0 at CES

The One Laptop Per Child Foundation is showing its $100 tablet, the XO 3.0 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. It looks different from the design announced in 2010, but is now closer to production.

While it won't be available under a "give one, get one" purchase at this time, the technology is very interesting, especially the solar panel/cover, giving two hours of power for one hour of charging. According to TGDaily, here are some other specs: 8-inch display with 1024x768 resolution, 512MB RAM, 4GB of internal storage, and a 1GHz Marvell Armada PXA618 processor. Under the hood, the tablet will run either Android or Linux (Sugar) operating system and can be charged using a solar panel cover or a third-party wind-up handle mechanism, as well as a standard wall plug. I can hardly wait until this tablet goes into production, and we can order one under the same charity arrangement.

VoiceThread iOS App

I just read a Tech & Learning blog entry from teacher Bob Sprankle, about using the mobile version of VoiceThread. Here is a VoiceThread he put together with his students, that "was captured almost entirely by walking around the room and having students reflect as they were learning/working." The blog post was entitled, "What's Your Favorite Transformative Tool of 2011?" I have been following the VoiceThread tool for several years, and am excited that they now have a mobile app that can be used on an iPod Touch device. The app is free, but there are a limited number of voicethreads that can be posted per email address. There are educator accounts, where a teacher can set up 50 student accounts (email addresses not required) for $60/year or $15/month. This is an interesting discussion of ed.voicethread.com: