Learning, Teaching and ICT

Ever since Jaye Richards  introduced me to the idea of ePortfolios on twitter , I’ve been contemplating how this might be the way forward for a whole variety of  things (peer assessment, self assesment, personal learning plans, motivated learners, CV’s … the list seems endless to me). 

The first blog post I wrote about the subject has been followed up by a whole host of others - but yesterday I thought to myself that I’d laboured the point for long enough and it was now to focus my (blog) thoughts on other issues. ……… So why is this blog post going to focus on ePortfolios??

Two events happened today to convince me that the subject was worth revisiting yet again.

• The first one was a visit to Larbert High School where I stepped in to the shoes of a High School English teacher. I’m trained in Primary, so it was a bit daunting as I waited for the first class to arrive. I wondered if it might resemble a scene from To Sir With Love  - it was actually quite the opposite   The class were there for two periods and the time was used to revise for the fast approaching Higher exam. After the first hour, I thought they might appreciate a short break and I offered to show them a snapshot of the ePortfolio ideas I’ve been experimenting with. Just on a whim, I asked if any of them would be willing to record their thoughts about the suggestion of students at their level having an ePortfolio. I was delighted when four of them told me that they’d spend 5 minutes of their break recording their thoughts on a little mp3 player with a built in microphone (I happened to have a few of them in my bag from a CPD session I’d delivered the previous evening). I was delighted when they knocked on the staffroom door during the break to say that they’d done just that! They gave me their permission to put it on here (I got the impression that all four had spoken, but I could only find the extract below – hopefully i’ll see the class again tomorrow and clarify this) 

• The second event today was when I read on twitter that  Douglas Blane had written a guest blog post on the the Scottish Booktrust website . Douglas had written very flattering things about  Neil Winton  Dave Terron and John Johnston  …. and my eportfolio ideas were  mentioned, too.  More grounds, I thought,  for yet another ePortfolio blog post    (….. and the “East Lothian gang of four – Ollie Bray, David Gilmour, Don Ledingham, Ewan McIntosh“  were also mentioned in the same article. Gosh – awesome!)

When I first stumbled upon the idea of using ePortfolios, I wrote that this would be my new recommendation when teachers ask about giving children their own online space. Since then, I’ve spent a few afternoons (3 or maybe 4, I think?) trying to ‘sell’ the idea to to a few Primary 6 stage in Carronshore Primary School. I chose these particular children because I suspected that I’d be welcomed in the school - and I knew that they were already familiar with some of the online tools available to help them tell the story of their learning journey.

I worked with six children (3 girls and 3 boys). During my first visit I tried to explain the advantages of having an ePortfolio. However, researching lots of  published information is one thing – but how do you convey that to 9/10 year olds? After I’d spent some time trying to get the message over in a way I hoped they’d understand, I asked them to go off with one of the school’s mp3 players with a built in microphone and produce a welcome message for their (so far empty wiki shell) ePortfolio. The children were familiar with the voki site and were able to create their characters and then upload their own mp3 file.

Here’s Maryam’s voki – unfortunately voki.com was down at the time of writing this post, but I have a desktop version that I’ve uploaded elsewhere. I’ve learned to be prepared

 I was satisfied that they had grasped the general idea and during my next few visits we discussed and planned more aspects of the ePortfolios, such as what pages to include and what the content should look like.  But, of course, building an ePortfolio is a long process and we’ve barely scratched the surface …. but it is a start I’ll put a page on the Carronshore blog with links to the ePortfolios.

Meanwhile here’s a link to Jaimey’s ePortfolio.

 I’m pleased that the Art Department of the local High School are keen to be involved and have asked me along to their next departmental meeting to talk about the experiment. It would be great if the discussion area of the ePortfolios could have input from them (at the moment, it’s just the children themselves – and me).

I was also asked to go along to talk  to the L.A. Assessment Group today. I wasn’t sure what their knowledge was. I made a powerpoint presentation to try to show what I’ve learned about ePortfolios so far. I even tried to ‘wow’ them by uploading it to prezi as well

Here’s the presentation. I hope they ‘got’ it?