 |
|
|
2009 was the year that my 4th of July lasted for 42 hours, at least that’s the best I could calculate it at the end of the day. Much of the day was in Auckland, New Zealand, then the flight to San Francisco, a four hour layover, and then five more hours across North America. A bit ragged this morning.
I’ve been been reflecting, though, about my NECC experience — especially the conversations at the Leadership Symposium and a couple of the conversations I had at the EduBloggerCon. The idea is starting to jell in my mind that the next big… Hmmmm!
As I wrote yesterday, it seems that everytime we sit down and talk about education reform, there seems to be something in the way, preventing us from what we want to do right now. We can’t move that tile in the puzzle, until the one next to it is out of the way, which we can’t move until another one has been shifted, etc. etc. There is only one open space in the old Cracker Jack puzzle game, and often only two tiles that can be shifted to make room. In our particular game of education reform, it seems to me that there is only one tile that can be moved into one empty space. But when that one is shifted, a domino affect may result, leaving room for a sudden and complete overhaul of education.
That tile is how we assess the quality of education for the sake of accountability — namely the high-stakes government issued tests. No surprise here. We’ve all had this conversation. And we are starting to feel that there is a new spirit for doing things differently.
 |
|
|
However, accountability continues to be a focused part of conversations, especially in the monologs coming from the Education Department — and I don’t think we should hold our breaths for any proclaimations of a different kind of assessment coming from Washington.
So what might spark the change. What might the catalyst be. What’s going to jolt us to a new level. I’m wondering if the next killer app, at least for education, might be a highly innovation new eportfolio platform. It will be something that we all get so excited about, that we’ll all want to use it. We’ll want our communities to be excited about it. We’ll want to switch to eportfolio assessment, because we’ll want to use this new thing.
Here are a few features that would excite me:
- It won’t be just a digital folder. The killer eportfolio app will be about much more than assessment.
- It will be used all year long, not just at assessment time at the end of the year.
- It will be a work platform, not just an archive for assessment.
- It will have elements of social networking, featuring personal profiles and a variety of communication devices, such as blogging, micro-blogging, discussion forums, and commenting.
- It will easily and invitingly accept multimedia products.
- All products will be critiqueable with commenting or threaded discussion, by educators, fellow students, and the verifiable community.
- It will also have components of a course management system. There will be curriculum structures within the platform so that work can be aligned, at least implicitly, with instructional objectives.
- There will be a facility to critique work based beyond mere foundational standards. Work will also be judged on inventiveness, collaboration, quality of communication, compellingness, value to an authentic audience.
- “Standards” will play a minimal roll in this product.
- It will facility portability, so that students can carry their portfolios with them to the next grade and/or as a standalone product on CD or other networked platform.
- It will not merely be classroom-friendly. It will be user-friendly, regardless of the location of the learning.
- Students will want to spend time here. They will have a strong voice and hand in what it looks like and how it operates.
- Students will be able to enter products that are not necessarily curriculum related, such as personal video and machinima creations, art work, game scores, business ventures, and products of personal and passionate interest.
- The work will belong to the students.
- Students, teachers, and parents will participate in selecting the work that is assessed.
- Assessment will be school-based, government-based, and community-based.
- It will preferably be open source, but not necessarily so.
- The social aspects will be reasonably open. Students (and teachers) will be able to collaborate across classroom and school (and even national) boundaries.
- Assessment will be based on content, quality & compellingness of the communication, and value.
- All learning products will include an element of reflection by its producer.
- It will become the talk of the town.
Please suggest your own features. I would love to see this happen before the next NECC.
I LOVE the idea of eportfolios. I attended a Birds-of-a-Feather session about them at NECC, and got to see some real samples. However, these were created using expensive software not always available to all students. I teach in an inner city school in Philadelphia where internet and technology access is limited.
The idea of a universal app for students to use is a great idea. I would love for it to be web-based, or maybe run off of a local server with the option for web hosting. I see eportfolios being the new “Common Application” for colleges in the US. Students can provide the link to their web-based eportfolio to apply to college.
I also see this being used in a Flat Classroom setting, with classrooms across the globe using them to share knowledge and critique each other.
My only fear is the fact that there is a definite “Digital Divide,” which would put my students behind their peers right away as a result of their lack of access to technology. This is why the movement would have to be supported by the Obama Administration, State governments and local School Districts, with funding available where needed.
This app would, at least in the USA, be applicable to NCLB and it would have to have a viable assessment method that would perhaps be standard across all states. If this were not the case, it could also be used simply as a way for students to maintain a record of what they have accomplished in addition their standardized test data.
I’d be interested to hear the opinions of those who do not deal with things like NCLB (No Child Left Behind) or AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress).
I agree with most of your observations. I’m not so sure about the importance of standardization. NCLB, unless I am mistaken, leaves standards up to the states, though I have heard some new mentionings of national standards. But this is all another blog post. Standards, I believe, may be the antithesis of the direction education needs to be moving.
I also get your point about digital equity. But I suspect that one way of solving this problem is to create the expectation that 21st century learners must, as a matter of action, have convenient and ubiquitous access to the digital, network, and info-abundant information landscape. No choice! No excuses! But that, again, is another blog post.
I especially like your reference to flat classroom. I would love to see something like a reliance on true performance (not just knowing, but knowing how!) to flatten the traditional hierarchies of the traditional classroom — not totally doing away with it, but flattening.
Thanks so much for your comment.
I have also been trying to find a platform for the perfect ePortfolios. We are starting a project using Moodle – Mahara – Google Apps – Wikispaces all with a single sign on. This seems to contain most of the elements in your list. How to make it a cohesive group of tools for students is the question.
The access issue addressed by Mary Beth above is not so much a problem with us as we move to distribute Netbooks to the students. However, I can see where it is going to be a long time until access to technology is truly ubiquitous.
A conversation worth watching.
I agree about a combination of tools. I makes the establishment of a cohesive information culture more difficult. But, at the same time, it is important that students use a variety and growing array of tools. It’s the locker or archive of student work that needs to be consistent, though not necessarily from school to school. For instance, one school might establish a museum look, while another presents the look and feel of a professional library. But the information culture is of utmost importance.
Sounds like a long day, and way too much to bring in together all at once. I fear that with the downturn in the economy, change is being promoted because it replaces fear. But is it useful change? What will measure it? Your list, David, was very comprehensive. I agree on most points and will encourage the conversation myself. Thank you for your efforts. I don’t think it will happen. I don’t think it can. I have been on the cutting edge of technology growing up in the 80’s and 90’s. I have taught for over 12 years, am Board Certified, have my Masters, was Tech Teacher of the Year for my state, and work in one of the wealthiest districts in America. There is no money left. There never was and won’t be. It’s not important enough, yet. When our culture was struggling as colonists or pioneers, or during the Great Depression, we wanted better for our kids and we saw education as the answer. It isn’t the universal answer anymore. Technology, commercialism, enterprise has replaced it in many areas. So, to use technology and failed capitalism to support and fix education, when in and of itself it replaces it, will result in failure. But, that isn’t to say it isn’t helpful or useful, it’s just not practical. What there needs is to be a movement of people’s motivations and desires. Something to bring us to a sharper focal point. Fundamentally, standards must exist or assessments are useless and there is no aim, unless technology is the aim. Collaboration? I’m not sure. How about mastery learning with students forced to come during summers to complete units not mastered? How about giving state assessments at the beginning of the year to drive instruction? These may work. Thanks for your thoughts and vision.
http://sites.google.com/site/editinghelpsite/
An interesting statement:
It was fear about competition with the test cultured countries (manufactured fear, in my opinion) that lead to trying to prepare our children to be better test-takers.
I wonder, however, if the economic downturn might actually be an opportunity to learn that elearning might actually be cheaper than education based on 15th century technology.
But I agree with your statements and often feel less than optimistic. But there is a spirit for change in the air, even if it does lack of “sharper focal Point.” It’s the reason why our culture image of formal education needs to change, become new and exciting. There is nothing duller or less motivating than a report card. But to actually see the work of students, the happenings in classrooms, and a blurring of the walls between inside and outside the classroom learning might be something that people would promote.
It could be expensive. It could be cheap. That depends on how this evolves. As for equitable access? I have only four words. “We Have No Choice!”
Thanks for your comments and for continuing the conversation.
The killer app you are describing sounds an aweful lot like one that I started using a year ago called Edu 2.0. It is free and you can find it at http://www.edu20.org. I have been using it in my classroom with great success. I can do many of the things that you describe in your killer app. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Thanks, Clarena! I’ll add that to an update of this blog post!
First of all I am jealous you are in Auckland. Love it there and can’t wait to go back. I personally hope what ever is dedcided to reform education is at least stuck with long enough to see if it is making a difference. I have only been teaching for 5 years, but feel like soemthing new is implemented each year. We get excited, then it is gone because we didn’t get the results we wanted and we start something new. If we would give some programs longer than a year to get kinks worked out, we may see a change for the better. Do you feel like porgrams are not given a chance?
Jennifer,
Auckland was great, though not nearly as interesting as the train ride up from Palmerston North.
As an educator of 33 years, I certainly know what you are talking about. Constant change happens when politics get involved — and they have certainly been involved over the past several years, though more for political reasons than for the sake of our children and our future. Politics are, in a sense, the extension of the community into the schools. It’s what politics do. But if ePortfolios might serve to draw a more direct connection between the school and the community, politics may not have such an easy hand.
At least I hope so…. 😉
Hi David
I was very interested in your thoughts regarding ePortfolios. I did some research in April and came up with the following features that I would like in an ePortfolio http://www.scribd.com/doc/14114920/ePortfolio-Criteria-April-09
It will be interesting to see if ePortfolios become the next bandwagon in educational circles. I do hope that if it does it will be for the right reasons; to improve teaching and learning, to facilitate assessment for learning, not just for reporting purposes.
If you are interested in our journey with ePortfolios check out my blog http://lietze.edublogs.org/category/eportfolios/
Jamin :+)
Jamin,
I’ve bookmarked your Scribd document and thanks for continuing the conversation on your blog.
— dave —
In my recent Google Teacher Academy application video I referred to the value of rich ePortfolio learning spaces: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJncsgDo_sY . I truly believe that when we start having our students share their excellent work in some type of online learning space that the value of letter grades will diminish significantly. Who wouldn’t want to see actual, authentic student work instead of the nebulous grades that appear on report cards? We’ve talked about the value of authentic learning portfolios for decades in education and now we actually have tools to make this meaningful and possible…what is holding us back? The use of ePortfolios in our schools/districts will also force some of our courses (APs in particular) that rely heavily on traditional assessment tools (papers, exams, quizzes and homework) to think about adopting more authentic assessment tools.
This part year we had a handful of teachers create their own professional learning profiles/portfolios using Mahara. I can’t say we had a ton of commenting and overall traction in the ePortfolio pilot community, but it was a start. If you’d like to my portfolio done in Mahara, visit: http://tinyurl.com/castimjmontagne . We may be using ePortfolios with all of our ninth grade students next year as a reflective learning tool for some of their classes.
Also, we’ve had the opportunity this year to investigate the interaction between Mahara and Moodle. As it stands now, integration between the tool is simply limited to single sign on. But going forward, the Moodle 2.0 roadmap allows for much deeper integration that will allow students, with the click of a button, to push content out of Moodle and into their ePortfolio reflective learning space. A while back we actually built up a Moodle server with Moodle 2.0 alpha and full mahara integration and posted a screencast to demonstrate the process over here: http://middleschoolblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/moodle-20-alpha-and-mahara-eportfolio.html
@Sharon-you might want to rethink SSO between all of those environments, unless of course you’ve configured it in such a way that the authentication is happening via Google. We actually had SSO between Moodle and Google Apps up and running prior to our transition to Google Apps EDU/mail, but in the end we decided that Google’s up time would be better than our Moodle network.
Thanks for the link, Matt and your experiences. I have to say that I can’t think of anyone I know who would get excited about interacting with a teacher portfolio 😉 My my children and the children of my community might be a different thing, especially if the context is something that intrigues me.
Also, thanks for advice about integration of tools. As I said above, I see advantages both ways. To me, the questions is whether you want to make the job of learning more authentic or the job of teaching more convenient. A narrow view point, from someone who rarely has to deal with the messiness of classroom instruction 😉
But so often, in conversations about technology, especially from government perspectives, the conversations seem to be around helping us do the job of teaching, rather than helping students do the job of learning.
Thanks again! I actually look forward to seeing your portfolio. 😉
After reading posts such as this one, I am always amazed and appreciate how people can speak about education as if there is no achievement gap. Many parents and educators that are in favor of a progressive change in education are those who have been successful in a traditional teaching setting, attended good colleges, and have had relatively successful careers thus far. So why would someone want to change a system that is designed in their favor and probably their children’s favor? I have my thoughts, but would love you hear yours and anyone elses.
Are you ‘waving’ at us?
Hi. Thanks for the thought-provoking post.
I’d add the ability to make artefacts out of the assets already existing in the portfolio. DOn’t know if you’re familiar with Pebble Pad (http://www.pebblepad.co.uk) but it has CV builder and webfolio tools, designed for users with relatively low level of technical skills. Unfortunately it isn’t open source, (although users can share content) something I think is actually essential for e-portfolios if they are to have any wider impact. (If you make the tool paid for, then you’ve already got a barrier to entry.)
David,
We are already doing most of the features on your list in our eportfolios. We are in our 3rd year of these with a school of 750 students. The platform we use is not free, but I believe if your pedagogy, structure and school focus is clear the platform doesn’t really matter. Our eportfolios are reflective (student, teacher and parent) and the emphasis is to show process of learning and next steps for learning.
The only thing that is essential is the single sign on, for ease of use by the teacher.
What a pity I didn’t get a chance to show you some while you were in New Zealand (Palmerston North), recently.
I like this idea. Students deserve to be assessed on much more than one, in most cases, a hand written assessment. We need to look at the whole child when teaching and assessing. I feel a portfolio gives a better depiction of that. I will be interested to see where this will go.
It seems to me that the general framework for the next killer app might already exist in something along the lines of WordPress or Moveable Type—or some other open source, highly extensible software. The rest comes not from the development of software, but a change in the philosophy of those in control of the software.
No app will ever be able to force people against their will to peel back the layers of standards-based bureaucracy to look to see if kids are actually learning.
This topic is so perfectly timed! I work for an adult education project in California and recently had a couple of principals request a ePortfolio system for their ABE students – adults reading below the 8th grade level, and sometimes way below. Thanks to all of you who linked to the ePortfolio systems you are using. I am especially interested in Mahara, http://mahara.org/, because it doesn’t require a lot of reading, it’s open source and downloadable, it has all the features the teachers and principals are looking for, students can create different views such as one for themselves and their friends, one for the teacher to assess, one for employers, and has control over the level of public access to each.
Students’ portfolio would go with them wherever their personal goals take them, not tied to one teacher or one class.
Am I missing something? Are there other free, opensource possibilities that I haven’t seen?
Hi Marian,
You’re right on with the strengths of Mahara as an reflective learning/ePortfolio space. I would add that it is a highly social ePortfolio tool as another strength (it allows commenting, groupings, etc). As Steve Kinney suggests, you certainly could do these types of things with a blogging platform (a “Blogfolio”) or something like Drupal. But Mahara is really dialed in to be a social ePortfolio space. Version 1.2 should include user ePortfolio exports, so if a student/teacher leaves the school/district, he/she can zip the portfolio keep a personal copy.
While I really like Mahara, I did want to point out some negatives from my experience of using it with over the past year with a handful of other teachers: limited embed opportunities (limited to YouTube/Google Vid right now), limited themes (this is a big one-students really should be given the opportunity to fully customize the look and feel of their ePorts), no support for guests outside of the network to comment (which makes it impossible for parents and experts to comment unless given an account), semi-klugey authoring interface, minimal critical mass (which I think is very important when considering open source software adoption), and no RSS feed for updates to the portfolio.
@all another resource to add to your reader is a team blog authored in part by Helen Chen of Stanford…it is topical to all things relating to authentic K20 assessment through ePortfolios: http://epaccop.blogspot.com/
Cheers!
Matt Montagne
Palo Alto, California
A lot of these ideas are what we have in store for the future of Edmodo. It will not happen overnight, but we are working on getting there.
-Jeff
I too participated in the Leadership Symposium at NECC. I agree that “what gets measured is what gets taught”; therefore we need to move toward adding ePortfolio in as one way of assessment. In Maryland, this was the first year that High School Assessments (HSA) were required for graduation. Seniors needed to pass the HSA Algebra, Government, Biology, and English to graduate. As the deadline approached, there was an issue about students who would not graduate who had met all the other graduation requirements. Maryland decided to offer projects and portfolio assessment of these projects as an alternative to passing the tests. Many students worked hard and teachers worked hard with them to satisfy the requirements. Reports from this year’s seniors to under classman are that you should pass the test because it is alot less work than passing the project portfolio assessments. May question is why weren’t these students taught this way in the first place?
By the way, I love the thoughtful comments posted here. In my blog http://techintcoach.blogspot.com/ I am urging interested educators to share such reflections on the National Educational Technology Plan (see http://www.edtechfuture.org) I’m disappointed that not very many of the thousands of attendees at NECC have shared their opinion there.
David,
Our school is moving toward a ‘possible’ proficiency based graduation portfolio and I’ve been dreaming about the exact same type of application you suggested.
Might I suggest that you and other tech-savvy educators put a little subtle pressure and helpful support to the project currently being developed by Graham Greene at http://www.edu20.com. I’ve been using this app for two years and it just keeps getting better and better. I’m sure if anybody can create the ePortfolio that both you and I dream about, it will be Graham.
What do you think?
Matt Henchen
David,
I enjoyed your piece on the Killer App and the long collection of comments serves to justify a deeper analysis than this comment could contain.
I note my friend, Jamin, referes to his list of criteria which I was discussing with him at that time. Previously I had created a list of ‘Ten Prime Directives’ which can still be found on my blog.
My own product, here in the UK, ticks almost all of your boxes. However I would add one point, which may be implicit in the others, that the tool should enable a pride of ownership, that allows the learner to feel that it states ‘This is ME!’
Another point that needs to be emphasised is that the tool should be free of any institution and thus externally hosted. This would avoid the somewhat dated idea of “exporting to a CD”. (Sorry David)
I would suggest that ‘The Killer App’ is not so much the tool as the willingness to understand the massive sea-change to teaching and learning that can come about through the introduction of e-Portfolios.
You can see more of my writings on this subject at:
http://www.efoliointheuk.blogspot.com
I applaud your list of features, which exist in one form or another somewhere on the internet. The challenge is putting them together into one system without making it very complex. I have experience with a lot of the commercial and open source e-portfolio systems, and the learning curve/ease of use is a challenge. In my blog– http://electronicportfolios.org/blog –I am discussing a lot of the issues of e-portfolios for learning. I have seen e-portfolios in teacher education programs move from stories of deep learning to checklists of standards/competencies. There exists a lot of confusion about e-portfolios: are they reflective journals? or are they assessment management systems? I believe the current collection of commercial tools were developed in response to the NCATE 2000 Teacher Education Program Standards. The problem with ePortfolio tools today is their genesis in higher education. There are very few tools that were created specifically for K-12, and especially usable by primary students.
After the last NECC, I wrote a blog entry (http://bit.ly/LZRM3 ) where I discussed ePortfolios and the new Accountability Systems discussed in the Obama Education Plan. There needs to be a wider discussion of the implementation of the e-portfolio process in K-12 schools, that is not tool-specific, but provides educators with a range of Web 2.0 technologies to support BOTH student learning and institutional accountability. Right now, I advocate using separate tools to meet these disparate purposes, because I believe that the capability for student personalization and creativity always takes a back seat to data collection and aggregation in these all-in-one systems. My blog entry on Which ePortfolio Tool? (http://bit.ly/4otfoo ) outlines some of these issues. I also discuss “Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolio” on my website and in conference presentations and keynotes: http://electronicportfolios.org/balance/ (I believe we need to separate the workspace from the showcase; the process from the product; the learning portfolio from the presentation portfolio.) David, your work on Classroom Blogging is, for me, the foundation of a reflective Learning Portfolio.
Let’s keep up the dialogue. I think some of the best thinking on ePortfolios is happening in New Zealand, where they have published several interesting White Papers, and they are addressing the issues from the students’ learning needs. They have developed a very interesting e-portfolio model (http://bit.ly/RjoaJ ) that includes a database to store artifacts or links to documents stored anywhere on the Web. Such a database could be used to organize all of the artifacts for use in a portfolio (regardless of the tool to be used to construct the presentation portfolio). With the Internet, the process is really one of hyperlinking and, as I learned from Hall Davidson at NECC: “All you need is an EMBED code!”
I am honored that Helen Barrett would find my blog post and then comment on it. …and I have to agree, after some of the blog readings I’ve done lately and especially after reading this, that it might be preferable to open students work area up to a much broader collection of digital tools — and emerging digital tools, and then post in some organized way the products for evaluation. As Helen states, linking is the spirit of the World Wide Web.
That said, what I was after was a single spearhead (sorry for the military metaphor). We need a single thing, movement, or killer app. We need something that educators (education) can point to and say, “We should be doing THAT!”
Thanks, Helen…
Hi David,
Thats a really nice post.
We have started a new ePortfolio portal based on Mahara which is called LinkMyPortfolio – http://linkmyportfolio.com.
The idea behind starting this portal is to bring together students, professionals, teachers and Institutes worldwide and provide them the power of eportfolios. We are still in very initial stages and we are in process of adding Institutes across the world.
Please visit our portal and if possible join it and contribute some eportfolios.
Kind Regards,
Lucky
80% of the killer app you describe is here and has grown to 23,000 users in its first year. It is called PbyP (Personalisation by Pieces) and has been adopted for all learners in the schools in Adams 50 district in Denver as well as over a hundred schools and distrits in the UK and Australia.
There is a yes next to all the items on your list including the fact that it is being used through the mobile phone and is entirely user owned with Teacher mentoring but the 20% from your list that is currently not in place are the following
•It will have elements of social networking, featuring personal profiles and a variety of communication devices, such as blogging, micro-blogging, discussion forums, and commenting.
– We have just solved how to do this between schools internationally securely without removing ownership – will now be in V2 – in the current version the international user to user doesn’t allow users access to names or details of each other.
•“Standards” will play a minimal roll in this product.
– We have gone for redefining the standards around generic competencies
•Students, teachers, and parents will participate in selecting the work that is assessed.
– teachers and parents can advise but students have complete control
Contains lots more stuff such as – continuous training in the skills needed to manage your own portfolio from the age of 3 upwards (our youngest to have a self managed portfolio is 5 and oldest is over 40!) – also built in mentor support and assessment based on you rather than how well others are doing.
V2 spec is now complete and we are looking for funding – will let you know if and when we get it. When we do I have another 10 to add to your list.
Dan
I think we have done this…it is pretty close. I guess great minds think alike…Can’t wait to meet you soon. Trish McCarty