eFolio in 4 Minutes

I recently presented at the BridgEd futurelab day in central London. BridgEd is a unique attempt to match suppliers with customers within the world of educational technology.

Apart from some really excellent keynote speakers the afternoon activity was set up to 'match' vendors with delegates. From my point of view this 'dating' approach was both new to me and very successful. We were able to have meaningful and searching conversations only cut short by the determined blowing of an old-fashioned school whistle every half hour.

Well, the point of this blog is that before lunch each of the vendors were given four minutes only (yes! 4 mins) to present their products or services to the whole audience. Wow! that demanded some concise thinking, no waffle and no time for PowerPoints! My question, therefore, is how would you present eFolio in just four minutes to a technologically alert and intelligent audience who all wanted to see real innovation? Here is my effort.

Introduction:

1. I was doing a Naace/Becta research project on the impact of VLEs on teaching and learning in schools.
2. Becta had said in 2005 that they expected that all schools would have a VLE up and running by Spring 2008 with the facility for an e-Portfolio by 2010.
3. I soon realised that almost every one of the 35 different VLE vendors claimed to provide an e-Portfolio, but none met my perception of what an e-Portfolio should be capable of doing.
4. There is obviously a serious mis-match between the understanding of educators and vendors compared to the expectations of Becta.

A simple definition:

1. An e-Portfolio is a system of representing one’s self on-line.
2. Firstly, note, it is owned by the learner and not the institution.
3. Secondly, It is both Lifelong and Lifewide.
4. Thirdly, it may be seen by a variety of different audiences.

Learner Owned:

1. In Primary schools in particular or when dealing with less able children, the system may be set up for the school using menus, templates, guidance notes and colour schemes.
2. Before long the pupils are encouraged to develop their own page organisation and colour schemes as they wish.
3. Above all, children are encouraged to take a pride in ‘This is ME!’

Lifelong & Lifewide:

1. If Lifelong, it must be free of any institution, it must be portable or capable of transition from one institution to another.
2. As the learner matures, so the e-Portfolio should be capable of changing, chameleon like, changing menus adding more complex artefacts etc.
3. If Lifewide, it must be simple to use, for the least able, and yet capable of high levels of sophistication, for even the highest PhD student.

for a Variety of Audiences:

1. With younger children it will inevitably start off that only the child and their teacher sees what is in their eFolio.
2. Soon, parents, peers and mentors will be given permissions to see the child’s eFolio.
3. The granting of permissions, selecting different ‘views’ to different audiences is an essential part of the presentation process.
4. Feedback, polls or surveys can all be safely controlled by the owner.

In conclusion:

1. eFolio meets all of the above requirements and a lot more too.
2. For the learner, it gets to the parts that other products cannot reach.

Adult ICT users

You may or may not have been aware that John Denham recently asked Baroness Estelle Morris to carry out an independent review of ICT user skills. She has now published her report.

The BIS website gives a synopsis which may be worth reading first.

Even at a cursory glance it appears to be saying all the right things. However, I am flabberghasted in that although written by the highest authorities in the land it makes no mention of e-Portfolios!

Is there nobody who actually advises these lofty oracles who knows anything about the value of e-Portfolios in any form of learning, however old the learner or whatever their previous abilities?

Surely, the motivation to get on and learn anything to do with ICT starts by having some sense of pride of ownership and self-representation. What tool is better able to provide planning, collaboration, peer-review, formative assessment and the final showcasing of a student's work than the e-Portfolio?

Having marked adult learners' paper-based portfolios before I cannot understand why anyone can even dream of not using a simple e-Portfolio system. eFolio, for instance, is a low-cost product, simple to use and maintain and, what's more, can be kept with pride, for life!

eFolio and Home Access

Never have there been such pressures to encourage the communication of information from and to the home.

Government expects it, teachers need it, parents want it, friends and relatives are impressed, the kids love it! So why make it so complicated?

eFolio is designed to overcome all the complexities of the wide variety of Learning Platforms, transition between institutions, and different hardware configurations. – And what’s more, there is no extra work for technicians!

eFolio is a very simple to use e-Portfolio tool especially tailored to the needs of young students, whatever their ability. In fact the developers of eFolio believe that the best place to start using eFolio is certainly by Key Stage 3. – eFolio can even be used by pre-school staff and parents.

e-safety has always been a concern of the eFolio team and especially for our younger or vulnerable users. In the first instance eFolio is ‘locked down’ so that only the child and teachers can see what is placed in the eFolio. As the student progresses through KS3 and on to KS4 they will learn how to set the eFolio permissions as to who can see their work, completed or not.

To begin with, just consider eFolio as a place to celebrate ‘best practice’ - the things that the youngster is proud of, whether sport, music, coursework, family activities or clubs etc. Any digital artefacts can be copied by ‘drag-n-drop’ to pages in eFolio.

As the young student gets older he/she will probably choose a different template design, colour scheme or font size. This very much supports the concept of ‘ownership’ of the e-Portfolio. New menu items can be easily added as can ‘sub-menus’.

Any form of text documents, scanned images or ‘rich media’ can be uploaded or hyperlinks can be put in place to other repositories. It’s just like owning your own website, but without the problems of understanding HTML or CSS. eFolio acts as a ‘gatekeeper’ in that the student must decide what to put in the portfolio rather than use it as a total repository for everything!

Reflection can be a very profound learning experience whereby students learn to compare what they did several years ago with what they can do now. Why students select certain artefacts and not others, why children see something as significant for them, and possibly not their ‘best’ work, is all about understanding oneself.

Managing a large number of courses and modules needs clarity of mind. The e-Portfolio is an excellent ‘organiser’ in this context, enabling the young student to focus upon what is important in each subject area, particularly when it comes to saying ‘This collection is what represents the Real ME.’

As young people progress through KS3 and on to KS4 much soul searching can take place about ‘options’ for KS4. Invariably this includes time spent in studying Careers advice, developing PLTS, Health & Social Studies and a host of pastoral issues.

Many times such deliberations may prompt the student to ask for advice from ‘another adult’, a parent or mentor - the e-Portfolio again can become the perfect place for the virtual benefits of ‘sitting alongside’ one another and chatting through issues with invited members. For staff, a simple messaging system can warn when new work is ready to be assessed.

Towards the end of KS4 again, students will have to face several situations in which they have to represent themselves, either to Work Experience employers, actual Job Applications or applications to move on to further study in a 6th-form or FE college. In each case eFolio is the ideal tool for representing the student. Again, eFolio is also specifically developed for the 14-19 Diploma courses!

eFolio v 2 has arrived!

Well, we've been waiting quietly but excitedly for the arrival of our new baby! Well, not new as such and not so much of a 'baby' - it's really very big once you get to know it! The 'new' eFolio might on the surface look very much like it did before BUT the whole of the 'back office' working has been revamped to meet the needs of the new web 2.0 generation.

Everything you thought you knew about eFolio is about to change… and it is not only because the look and feel of the interface are different.

Electronic portfolio users have often focused on the eFolio tools and resulting portfolio sites. This has, in the past, created a gap in development and process. Unfortunately that gap has directly impacted the value portfolios can play in the assessment of learning. We often refer to the gap as “portfolio thinking”…representing elements of design and planning needed by both educators and learners. I look forward to what users will experience in filling that gap as they discover what the new version of eFolio tools are positioned to contribute to learning communities, social learning, and teaching strategies.

Start now by thinking about content as discrete objects that can be used in many ways within a single portfolio. The simplest example may be found in the data fields identifying self, a peer or professional contact. Change your thinking that those “contact-related” fields create items about a person that contribute only to a “Contact Me” or “References” page.

A contact may now be identified as someone who contributed to your work on a project or was a mentor in an activity. A contact might be identified as an employer associated with a past job or a professor who evaluated your class work. As such, the contact can be linked to an artifact, event, or affiliation. Resulting content combinations will, in turn, be available as items posted on the pages of your portfolio site.

The difference is that each content object (such as a contact) also remains uniquely available for re-use in a different context on a different page or within the pages of an alternative site. The possibilities are endless when expanded to address the advantage of owning multiple personal portfolio sites as part of one account (e.g., Personal, Career, Coursework, Work Experience) or the existence of shared sites available to members of defined groups and learning cohorts.

Perhaps this is what excites me most, that objects can be re-used for different audiences and for different purposes - and all at the same time!

Join us over the next several weeks as we begin to discover how eFolio’s expanded toolset will promote your experience with the power of portfolio thinking in a content/object-oriented interface.

Thanks to Lynne Groves at Minnesota for much of this text.

Quo Vadis? again?

Following research into VLEs in schools and various edicts from BECTA I discovered that there is a serious lack of understanding in schools (ie throughout compulsory education) as to what an e-Portfolio is and how its use will influence teaching and learning. Despite some excellent documents from JISC and my own papers to BECTA the message does not appear to be ‘trickling down’ to mainstream education. Over the last two years I have spent almost every day investigating the development of e-Portfolios and have come to some very clear conclusions as to why most projects are limiting themselves to institutional practice and not breaking out into Lifelong and Lifewide usage.

Other initiatives such as Building Schools for the Future and the Home Access Programme will open up the floodgates to new levels of communication, collaboration and formative assessments etc. Not only will this increase in communication occur between teachers and students but also between a very wide range of stakeholders, using a wide range of platforms and software. How we, as teachers, prepare to handle this new era in Teaching and Learning and how we learn to cope with a much wider variety and number of contacts is being exemplified by our take-up of e-Portfolio practice.

The e-Portfolio is no longer just a ‘capstone’ tool for assessments, a convenient device for PDP or a method of showcasing to potential employers. It will become a common tool for all subject areas in schools, for informal learning and the recording of appropriate experiences. It will become THE tool for community work and even family life. It will also become the repository of one’s digital identity.

How the various ‘camps’ within the e-Portfolio debate agree to resolve their differences is yet to be seen. Examples include: individual ownership v state control, VLE embedded e-portfolios hard-wired to an MIS v privacy issues, personal identity v preformed templates, purpose-designed assessment systems v ‘all-age’ tools and last if not least, SIF v SCORM v IMS v Leap2.

It is therefore necessary to identify what are the present limitations to progress. In particular, clearer definitions of ‘transition’, ‘ownership’, ‘Lifelong’ and ‘Lifewide’ need to be addressed.

Only today I read yet another blog quoting outdated reports and ideas from 2004/5. This is just not good enough. What we need is practical exemplification and debate as to where we might be going to rather than where we have come from!

Who is in the driving seat?

Over the holiday period (and repairs to my PC etc) I have had plenty of time to read others' blogs and reviews - all of which have made somewhat disappointing reading. On the one hand there are a few brave warriors contending for 'e-Portfolios in the sky' and on the other hand there are still far too many people propounding conventional didactic styles, somehow embedded within an e-Portfolio.

So, who IS in the driving seat? For some years now JISC and Educause have been beavering away and publishing regurgitated articles which move e-Portfolio thinking no further forward than we were five years ago! BECTA made several edicts a few years ago, expecting that all children in the UK, or possibly just England, would have access to e-Portfolios by next year - but I see little progress towards this date. And, of more concern, I see very little mention of e-Portfolios in their more recent publications,

What is not clear is where any guidance about how liberated approaches to Teaching & Learning are actually being used in conjunction with e-Portfolios. Just to use an e-Portfolio as a tool for presenting traditional coursework is, to my mind, somewhat anachronistic if not just a pretence at e-learning.

I am very concerned by the number of undergraduates who are developing their own e-Portfolios with little or no guidance as to how the use of such a tool can emancipate Teaching & Learning. This is a blatant case of 'the blind leading the blind' and, in my book, can only be viewed as professional irresponsibility.

For anyone reading this blog for the first time, and for all those out there who are blissfully ignorant of what an e-Portfolio can do, I strongly suggest that they read my simple analysis of what an e-Portfolio is all about.‘Ten Prime Directives’

Recently an eminent and well revered blogger referred to 'distance learning' within the context of e-Portfolios. I had to respond that e-learning is NOT the same as distance learning. In fact students could be involved in e-learning, collaboration and peer review all in the same room and even on the next workstation.

Participation culture, creativity, and social change

In David Gauntlett's inaugural lecture, 'Participation culture, creativity, and social change', (from 12 November 2008 - Just less than 10 mins) he does not actually mention e-Portfolios. However, at a breathtaking pace he covers much of the ground that e-Portfolios can or should address. A very challenging video!

Through his understanding of media and communication skills he underlines the importance of understanding audiences, the need for communication skills and an understanding of a 'making and doing culture'. 'Happiness is about having a rewarding engagement with the world'. Or, quoting Ivan Illich, 'People should be able to shape their own world and not have it set for them by others.' And again, Richard Sennett's book, 'The Craftsman' deals with the important issue of 'self esteem'. Surely, this is very much what e-Portfolios are about?

He then goes on to talk about tools for thinking and everyday creativity on line. Again, almost every sentence has echoes of e-Portfolios. This is one of the very few videos that I have repeatedly gone back to time and time again.

Another of his videos worth watching is the results of his research in 'Representing Identities'.