robyn jay

On day 2 of DEHub I enjoyed a workshop by Debra Hoven (now at Athabasca) on e-portfolios. Although plagued by internet problems (will conference venues EVER get it right!) that meant we were unable to build ideas in Debra’s wikispace (some great resources here) it was an engaging conversation across a very diverse group. Debra’s approach was very much one of student choice/ownership and a focus on narrative/ digital storytelling.

Here’s a few notes I took during the session:

• E-portfolios are about the development of personal ‘brand’ not about proving something
• A purposeful and cumulative aggregation of digital items/ artefacts – ideas, reflections, evidence, feedback
• How to select? – choose 5 artefacts and justify selection
• The repurposing of content has implications for use in recognition/RPL
• We must be careful of validity – what is actually being assessed? the ability to reflect? technical skills?
• Attempts to implement an e-portfolio system that is scalable and manageable assume something being DONE TO students
• The benefits of being electronic (discussion) – portability, varied voice, connections, multimodality, updating anywhere/anytime, easier, variable access, sorting/categorisation potential
• Avoid showcasing (as opposed to assessment) which tends to only highlight the best aspects – encourage discussion of things that didn’t work
• How can we scaffold reflection? – this is particularly of interest to me as I continue to experience teachers, let alone students, who lack the ability to engage in critical reflection around their practice

Debra’s students shared the following pointers for supporting the use of e-portfolios:

• Provide top 10 tips and best practices
• Give examples of model e-portfolios
• provide examples of artefacts
• develop tutorials
• provide access to one person who has completed a portfolio
• offer videos of past students discussing how they used their portfolio to gain employment
• set up facilitator/student discussion forums
• record podcasts from staff explaining uses and how assignments are relevant to the portfolio

[CC FlickR image shared by nickrate]

I’ve been working on my eLearning10 session today; trawling through sites and tools and papers about FlickR in education and gathering my thoughts. For many years now it, along with social bookmarking, has been at the top of my list for ways to engage educators in the world of e-learning.

After all this time there is little that comes even near it in terms of functionality and it seems that even Blackboard and Moodle have recognised it’s benefits with both Bb9.1 and Moodle2.0 including search and mashup tools in their new in-built functionality. To be honest with increasing use, geolocation interest and 3rd party tools to supplement FlickR I can only see its usage growing further. Interestingly there are now over 1.6m creative commons images in FlickR available for use under various licenses; it makes my lowly 9,000 odd very trivial.

In my session I’ll be focusing broadly on FlickR’s potential uses but will look in particular at how it could be used to enable individual portfolios of work within courses. The presentation will be is now up in my slideshare account . My FlickR in Education guide is on my wiki and there’s also a list in Diigo that may be of interest. Here’s a start of a brainstorm of uses but I’ve love to hear more ideas if you have them.