The Next Generation ePortfolio: Trent Batson, Helen Barrett, John Ittelson

(Brief note: I am not going to blog every session. The one I attended before this one was not very interesting, was disorganized, and, I thought, a bit simplistic. So, the next cool one was "The Next Generation ePortfolio" and that is what I'll be summarizing here.)

This was a panel presentation, with each of the speakers mentioned above getting a little less than a 1/3 of the time. There was a respondent, Eddie Maloney, but he was left so little time at the end of the hour that his comments were minimal.

In general, the overall theme of this panel was how radically the preponderance of web 2.0 technologies that our students are already immersed in might change the way we think about what an ePortfolio really is. Does it have to be a closely controlled, commercial product, such as TaskStream, or are we moving to a time when our on-line identity, in the spread out through the “cloud” of internet applications, becomes a searchable, archived, and linkable ePortfolio, not only for learning and assessment, but for our lives.

Trent Batson: Trent began his presentation by noting some trends in the US higher education and Web 2.0 use that color potential adaptation of e-portfolios. These are:
-Becoming more field specific
-We are extending the "front end" of Web 2.0 products
-Most commercial CMS programs now include outcomes models
-Faculty and Students are already beginning to use Web 2.0 tools for infomal portfolios.

Given these, we might articulate a vision...
-The web itself, particularly the Web 2.0 part, is becoming a de facto e-portfolio
-The idea of a ePortfolio is no longer a technology, but an evidentiary way of teaching
-This ePortfolio is emphasizes experiential learning
-We become apprenticed, if you will, not to a trade, but to a principle or idea of way of thinking.

A Web 2.0 Rubric might include:
Assignments
-Site
-Activity and Constraints
Artifacts
-Show Change
-Show value

Data Entries in Campus system would demonstrate
-satisfies assignments
-satisfies an element of outcome

Learning:
-In a knowledge economy, the whole world should be seen as a learning space
-The process of learning is therefore not uniform
-Uniformity is achieved through OUTCOMES
-Outcomes could (and perhaps should) be learning out to learn in certain circumstances…outcomes are beginnings of new learning activities, not ends.
-The process of learning aims at internalizing the guide

Therefore, It is the outcomes that sit under all of this.
eportfolios = campus outcomes + life experiences captured

The next presenter was Helen Barrett, referred to by all the panelists as the godmother of ePortfolio…she insisted on grandmother…

Anyway, she downloaded her entire PP presentation.
So instead of a summary of her presentation, I will let everyone follow that.

The final presenter was John Ittelson, Director of the California K-20 initiative and Prin. Investigator of MarcoPolo California Project

This presentation tried to make a fine distinction between what the others were calling a digital or web “self” and what he wanted to label an “e-dentity.” It seemed like a distinction without a difference to me, but the presentation was done in about 20 minutes, so I’m sure I missed things.

While John did not provide a link to his PP presentation for this conference, here is a link to the presentation he gave at another conference that will give you an idea of his basic approach.