... perhaps the greatest potential for ePortfolios in our era is to connect that growing Personal Historical Learning Consciousness (to coin a phrase) to a rich, Personal Futures Learning Consciousness. I don't believe that the ePortfolio community - nor futurists - have explored that notion much.

...

We need to impart a rich, disciplinary view that provides a perspective of changes in the bedrock of human knowledge. We need to provide that enhanced Time Perspective that comes with it, a sense of the collection of events unfolding along a particular trajectory and the ability to project forward into it to determine the possible, probable, and preferable futures. We need students to learn to artfully choose and proactively enact so as to be an agent OF the future. A future-focused ePortfolio could assist people to gain that perspective despite the challenges that:

• The future is surprising and beyond our capacity to predict.
• The future for us today is very different than the future was for most people in ages past.
• We largely assume - wrongly - that tomorrow will be pretty much like today.

...

http://hothousestrategies.com/tefblog/?p=71

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Click your browser's BACK/Return arrow to return to the post that brought you here, or return to

• Types of ePortfolios

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1. 4/16/08 - How can we make ePortfolio development (use) a natural process integrated into everyday life? Lifelong and Life Wide learning

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Return to Dr. Helen Barrett's ePortfolio work

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So the question: How can we make ePortfolio development (use) a natural process integrated into everyday life? Lifelong and Life Wide learning

It needs to easy to use but sophisticated enough to allow individual customization so students can see their ePortfolios as an extension of themselves (see mySpace, Facebook). The best ePortfolio toolset is a "mashup" where students store artifacts in a variety of places (e.g. blogs, wiki, bookmarks, images, podcast) and link to each from a central location (URL). The trick is to create a wrapping application that will facilitate grouping, searching, and assessing ePortfolios.

http://digiwalks.blogspot.com/2008/04/notes-from-teched-2008-eportfolios.html

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Consider LWPS to be that "wrapping application".

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Return to Key posts by Dr. Helen Barrett

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1. 6/27/08 - The e-Portfolio development process is an encouragement to students and professionals alike to take more aggressive and in-depth action in planning their professional future and managing sudden unforeseen circumstances. By listing previous and current education, skills, experience and goals a more stable foundation is established.
   
   e-portfolios can include a wide range of information:
   
   Personal Information
   
   Education History
   
   Awards & Certificates
   
   Previous Employers
   
   Previous employer Comments
   
   Goals & Future Professional Ambitions / Plans
   
   Personal Values & Interests
   
   Educational / Professional Presentations
   
   Personal / Professional Activities – volunteer work, professional development
   
   http://www.career-opportunities.net/articles/view/what_is_an_eportfolio
   
2. 4/22/08 - Future-focused ePortfolios
   
3. There are many type and definitions of ePortfolios. But for the purposes of lifework/career planning, I wish to use Dr. Helen Barrett's recent post where she describes the ePortfolio as Process and ePortfolio as Product.
4. This Wikipedia entry for Electronic_portfolio is also useful since it reference "Elgg" under "See also". (LWPS is powered by the Elgg engine.)

1. Dave Tosh has written a short post about Helen Barrett's use of the Elgg presentation tool. Make sure you click on the "Contents" link at teh top of her presentation.
   
2. On PBWiki
   
3. On GooglePages Good overview
   
4. Helen Barrett 
   1. Calendar
   2. Her links on ACSCI-Board Yahoo group
5. A review of E-portfolio systems - a Wiki
   

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(later)

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E-Portfolios for Learning: Passion and Future ePortfolios:

... That reminded me of a statement made by Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat: CQ + PQ > IQ (Curiosity plus Passion is greater than IQ) in the learning process. As I look at my work on ePortfolios, I feel a real disconnect between my vision of the ePortfolio as a way to document the story of deep learning, and the pervasive implementation of ePortfolios as a source of data for accountability and accreditation. As I quoted Hartnell-Young and Morriss in an earlier blog entry, portfolios created for this purpose 'tend to be heavy with documentation but light on passion.'

As I wrap up my current study on ePortfolios in secondary education, I know what I want to study next: this issue of passion, ... excitement, flow and engagement. ... I want to find examples of where students are excited about learning, using ePortfolios as a way to demonstrate that excitement for learning. ... My passion for the last decade (or more) has been ePortfolios, and the related processes that enrich the experience (reflection, digital storytelling). I realize that I have changed my vision from the early days, when I was more focused on assessment and standards-based portfolios. Today, ... my vision has broadened to a more lifelong, life wide perspective. ePortfolios aren't just for schools... in fact schooling may be ruining the experience for a lot of learners. I hope that we can find the passion again in documenting, and better yet, celebrating learning within a worldwide community. That is a future worth working toward.

4/27 - Link to the EIfEL website and Serge Ravet's position paper on Eportfolios

In its short and dynamic history, the ePortfolio has rapidly moved from the status of simple paperless portfolio to sophisticated ePortfolio Management Systems. Today, the explosion of new social practices emerging from the use of new media, such as social networks and what is commonly referred as Web 2.0, tends to blur the frontiers of ePortfolios. This will have an impact on the technology developed by ePortfolio Management System suppliers, as well as on the standards for making them interoperable with other related information systems.

Is MySpace an ePortfolio? Is 43things an ePortfolio? Is Elgg really an ePortfolio? What is the relationship between an ePortfolio and an ePortfolio Management System? What standards do we need to make ePortfolios interoperable? What ePortfolio parts shouldn't be made interoperable?

The objective of this position paper is to describe an ePortfolio architecture where the response to these questions will be offered, providing a pathway for innovation and standardisation, keeping the power of free personalised expression and interoperability. This will be done through the description of an ePortfolio enabled environment based on the interaction between ePortfolios, personal ePortfolio Systems and organisational ePortfolio Management Systems.

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9/30/07 - Graham Atwell video

7/7 - Helen Barrett's REFLECT PDF
6/13 - "ePortfolios are digital representations of a person and thus need to be an integral part of a person's digital life. Thus ePortfolios need to be either aggregators of data or citizens in bigger digital environments"

http://randgaenge.net/2007/06/13/the-2-parties-in-eportfolioland/


6/12 - the relationship between the ePortfolio Process and the Learning Process

http://mosep.elggspaces.com/jpallister/weblog/80.html
How does the ePortfolio process fit into a cycle or spiral where the learner experiences something, reflects, does some thinking, assimilating or absorbing some 'learning' which they then go on to test out through some experimenting. The experimenting stage itself contributing the 'spiral' element to the process drawing the learner into new learning as they test what it is that they have just learnt. The experimenting stage providing new experiences upon which the learner with reflect etc.

Kolb learning cycle + ePortfolio process
;

Experience [plan, Do] [collect and select evidence]
?

Experimenting

[Plan, Do, Record and Review]
P

[collect, select, review, reflect]


Reflecting [review, reflect and record] [reflect]
<

Theorising [linking into existing structures]
8


The ePortfolio process encourages the learner to review and reflect on what they have done, made, experienced or learnt. They are encouraged to record their reflections in their ePortfolio and share them with others. The ePortfolio process gives value to reflection and requires reflection to be explicit and more visible. This in turn might result in the learner deriving more benefit from the reflection stage, previously something of an invisible process.

http://eduspaces.net/peteh/weblog/friends/

http://tinyurl.com/2ne79r

6/6 - EIfEL position paper - http://www.eife-l.org/news_events/releases/2007/eppositionpaper/view

Is MySpace an ePortfolio? Is 43things an ePortfolio? Is Elgg really an ePortfolio? What is the relationship between an ePortfolio and an ePortfolio Management System? What standards do we need to make ePortfolios interoperable? What ePortfolio parts shouldn't be made interoperable?

e-Portfolios – the DNA of the Personal Learning Environment?

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Creating your own ePortfolio, or multiple variations of your ePortfolio, or any other type of presentation (a form of resume, a story, etc.) using posts you have created in your LWPS blog just became easy and quick via Elgg's new "Presentation" plugin.

Dave Tosh just released the video below to explain how the "Presentation" plugin works.

That plugin will be available on LWPS when the new Elgg 0.7 release has been completely installed, customized to make it LWPS and tested. Elgg 0.7 was installed on our dev.LifeWorkps.com test system late March, but we have not customized it yet, nor tested it.

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NOTE: The plugin physically copies posts into your presentation as apposed to dynamically retrieving each post. That is fine for static posts. However, if you make changes to the original posts you include in your presentation, you must "reload" them. Since I am constantly improving my posts, this design feature is tedious and awkward for me. When I can finance it, I will ask my contract programmer to alter the plugin to dynamically embed posts each time the presentation is viewed.

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Elgg as an ePortfolio - try it out

The new presentation tool, designed by Curverider and funded by the University of Brighton, means those wanting to use Elgg as an ePortfolio can now do so, effectively.

Here is a short video which talks you through the process of creating a presentation.

 
There is an information sheet available to download - Elgg Presentations: a flexible ePortfolio for your institution. 

Here are a couple I have made describing the Elgg journey. 

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