Teacher in Development

Via Educause: From Today’s CMS to Tomorrow’s Learning Support System
Begins at the 6:00 min mark  to 15:00 min.
First of all, I’m totally thinking that this little video could be useful in my class with Ed tech coordinators. I have a really stimulating group of students who are coordinators at a local university. They are in charge of educational technology development and deployment. CMS’s are a regular point of discussion, but what I always find….bothersome, is how often CMS and LMS systems are actually just metaphores for control. Finally a student speaks out, and offers something different to think about…

A Snapshot of how NetGenners learn: The Commandments
Text and reference books simply don’t cut it any more: Net Genners go online for info seeking.
CMS should hold updated info re class. Students won’t read a manual to figure out what you’re going to do in the class, they’ll hop onto your CMS to see what’s coming. (But the question is: will your CMS system meet that requirement?)

Busy-work is a waste of time. Show me the value of what we’re doing.
CMS should be an extension of what we do in class, not just an added load to carry around.

It’s not about recite and regurgitate.
Learning happens as we explore. CMS should not be a doc drop, but a start point to explore the web. How can we “get into it” and get dirty.

The web is social.
“I’d rather email you than talk to you in person.” (Maybe I feel stupid to ask a question in class.)

Too much text = boredom.
NetGenners are visual in general.
CMS should be visual environments, not text graveyards. Please populate with interesting video, pictures, sound etc.

Net Genners need guidance on evaluating online sources of info. 

PDF - “print document first.”  Interesting quote: “A paperless society is a myth.”  There is deeper value in what we hold to read. 

Invitation to harness ecommunication tools NetGen uses. (IM, blogging, Myspace etc.)

NetGenners and what they know how to use:  re: software and eTools: they typically know what is relevant for their lives. CMS needs a tour and tutorial.

CMS should be designed for folks who have no net clue. And this could be for both Teacher and Student.

Some of my comments:
PDF - “print document first.”  Interesting quote: “A paperless society is a myth.”  There is deeper value in what we hold to read. 
I find this point to be very interesting. Perhaps we think we’re saving paper and printing costs by PDFing everything we want our students to read. It doesn’t seem to be working this way. While I don’t do this at all actually, I have been thinking a lot about going “greener” with my classes. I was thinking about emailing documents that we would read in class, or simply provide links to valuable online content. But I think there is something really important in this quote: “A paperless society is a myth.”

One of my edTech students, in the middle of a big discussion around e-books and would they ever replace the standard text book, said that we would never fully leave behind paper based reading material. There’s just something special about feeling the paper, holding the book, that adds value to the reading process. I love reading, and I think I totally agree. I would never sit down to read a e-version of the Lord of the Rings for example. (One, I’d likely go blind.) But there’s just a connection that happens with a book that doesn’t happen with computer screen. What do you think about that?

Is paperless a real option in the “green” classroom?

Back to the CMS: The point that really seems to come through clearly for me is that a CMS should be a vibrant place. It shouldn’t be a box. It should be a tool to access the world the way that is most relevant to the students who use it. This seems to be in stark contrast to how most school/university CMS environments function.

Sure, there needs to be some structure and direction, but I think students are crying out for more freedom to explore and get dirty with their learning.

These are just raw thoughts, but I wonder what you think about them?

powered by performancing firefox

Just read an interesting blog post over at the Cog Dog Blog called: My Own URL

Levine discusses some really important issues that educators and students need be mindful of.

What happens when you move from your institution? What happens to your online identity? What happens to your personal learning environment? (Portfolio.)

Levine makes a great observation about permanent presence on an espace that is not your own:

"…to me the catch-22 of electronic portfolios- I cannot really see much personal investment into documenting one’s self on some other system, unless you feel extremely content (a) it will not be yanked or (b) you cannot extract it in a form that will be useful. The popularity of photo sharing sites, blog hosts lies deeply in the realm of how much it belongs to the individual, with the larger group payoff a layer behind, but if it is ours, we can have some say over the longevity of the humble URL."(My Own URL. Levine 2006)

PLE’s should be just that. Personal. Not the school’s. Not the district’s. Not the teacher’s. The student’s. Period. The student simply provides all of the above with an rss feed or link.

I followed the url www.gardnercampbell.net which Levine mentions as an example of an educator who decided to own his online presence rather than leave it to his employer. On his page, I found this very interesting comment - a comment left on Levine’s blog.

"And I agree wholeheartedly to what you’re saying here about domains. Several of us here have been talking about having students select their own domains when they enter college, and learn to manage their own web presence as part of their overall learning in higher education and beyond. That’s a conversation I’d love to have–soon."

 What a really smart idea. And why not? Domain names and web hosting accounts are not expensive. Godaddy.com has some great prices and options. I’ve used them before, and I’ll likely do it again. But I digress.

So new thought:Don’t make space on your server for your students. Instead, help them to build their own identity online. There will be folks who aren’t interested, and you won’t be able to get everyone to buy into the idea of owning their own space on the net, but I sure think this could be a trend for the future don’t you?

Instead of a business card, I hand you a weblink.  

*Blogged for future reference…* Via elearnspace  This is an interesting wiki around ePortfolios.

Interface2006 ePortfolios - Wiki.ucalgary.ca

An interesting post over at Helen Barrett’s blog. (If you’re interested in portfolios, you should be following Barrett. In my humble opinion, she’s a portfolio jedi.) 

E-Portfolios for Learning: Linking ePortfolios and Student Achievement?

In Barrett’s post, a reader asks if there is a link between portfolio use and an overall improvement in student achievement. (Read: test scores.) 

I think Barrett’s response shows what a portfolio is for - it’s not so much about assessing learning, it’s about engagement for learning. 

That’s a big paradigm shift isn’t it?

Both items are important: We need to know what we’ve learned, but we also need to be engaged and "sucked into" the process of learning.  According to Barrett, that’s one of the things portfolios are great at doing.

"However, there is substantial research that supports the use of formative, classroom assessment (assessment FOR learning as opposed to assessment OF learning) with increased student achievement. Look at the meta-analysis conducted by Black and Wiliam in the U.K.: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kbla9810.htm
Also, the Assessment Reform Group: http://www.qca.org.uk/7659.html

That type of formative assessment is well facilitated using a portfolio for that purpose…"(Linking ePortfolios and Student Achievement?, Barrett)

Classroom assessment typically delivers a grade. Portfolios seem to address something far more cooler: student engagement and motivation to learn.

But how can I really help my students make that level of connection with a portfolio? How can I move them beyond the erroneous idea that a portfolio is just another hoop to jump through to get the grade? (The teacher said I had to do this, so I’m doing it. Totally missed the point.) 

This is becomming a very important issue for me as I begin to learn more about my role as an English teacher. I’m learning that I’ve utterly failed if my students continue seeing me as their solution to learning English. I’m learning that I need to be an equipper who actively prepares and pushes students to step out of the classroom nest. I’m learning that I must work hard to teach myself out of a job - which means it’s a good thing to have students who can say they are able to do this on their own, and therefore it’s a really bad thing to have students who never leave the nest.

I’m introducing portfolios to my students for this purpose: not like a tool to generate a grade, but like a baton in a relay race. My hope is that they pass me, and use their portfolio as a tool for continued engagement in English - outside the classroom, and long after we’ve stopped running together.  

I read a really interesting post over at
Cool Cat Teacher Blog: ePortfolio research

It made me think again of the whole issue of ePortfolio control. Does it belong to the school or to the student?  

Vicki raises a very important issue: Motivation. If the student loses their portfolio somehow, you can say goodbye to their ever wanting to do it again. And what happens after they leave the school where their ePortfolio was created, and I assume, hosted? Do they still get access? Is that access for life? 

Portfolios, I think, need to be student owned and generated. They shouldn’t be boxy. They shouldn’t look the same for all. They should be user generated. User designed, and user populated. The person using the portfolio should be able to build it, however they want.

I do think, as a teacher, that I can ask for certain things to appear in my student’s learning space, but over all there needs to be autonomy here. I’m no expert, but I think that’s a real key to engagement. Is there a strong sense that "This is my space?"

All the institutional ePortfolio solutions that I’ve explored have all failed there. Miserably. They tell you what you can and should include. They don’t flex.

Vicki ends her post with this statement: "We need best practices (not just best software) amidst the maelstrom of Web 2.0 educational apps." I can get behind that easily.

A best practice would be teaching about portfolios and what they are for, and how to use them. A best practice would be showing how the teacher uses his/her own portfolio - become the model. A best practice would be opening the classroom to the wide wide world of 2.0 technology that is out there, and showing how to use this technology to reflect on and track learning in a responsible way. A best practice would be helping students find and choose their own tools to use in their portfolio creation - blogs, wikis, delicious, podcasting spaces etc. Best practice would not be boxing the student in by telling them what software to use, and it’s not forcing institutional portfolio software on them either.

The best practice that I’m thinking about here is pretty messy. Messy in the eyes of an institution that is. Boxy is predictable and easily measureable, but is that what teachers should be looking for? Can/should authentic learning be predictable and easy to assign a grade to?  

The portfolio I’m thinking about would be a user generated link: A conglomeration of content taken from a possibly wide variety of locations. (Built by, and decided upon by student.) At the moment, I’m personally thinking/playing with this idea on a superglu account, and what about netvibes.com?

My idea is to patch together all my online spaces, well the spaces that I would use in my professional development, and display them all in one place.  If you visit my glu site, you’ll notice that it’s very messy still…and not well organized. But the idea is there: to bring together multiple sources of content to act as my dynamic portfolio. 

The For Who Question:

A few months ago, there was a great discussion around the net on who the portfolio is for. Employer? Teacher? Institution? Student? I say it’s for the latter. The portfolio MUST be for the student if it’s to succeed as an continuous personal learning environment. But what if you could, at a click of a button, dynamically change the content on your portfolio page? In my case, superglu? 

I got this idea from delicious. Here, you can organize your account by keywords or tags. With one click, and a little bit of typing, you can instantly move entire strings of links from one category to another. I was wondering, what if you could do the same thing in an ePortfolio? Electronically tag your work so that it appears say under an Employer category - which would include all the items in your portfolio that would be important to show to a prospective employer, and that you have tagged accordingly, would dynamically appear when you send them the link. All from a simple tag. 

At the same time though, all these items are available for other uses as well. You don’t just get stuck with a one sided, single purposed portfolio. The student says: This is my portfolio. I can morph it as I please, to suit my own purposes. Today I can use it to help me get a job. Later tonight I can use it to reflect on something I learned.

But it’s not entirely digital. This idea came from Vicki as well. She wisely encourages students to plan for the worst to happen: things digital can vanish. We’ve all had that happen I’m sure. So as she so wonderfully explains here, I think a well rounded portfolio is both digital, and paper based. Perhaps paper based will be harder to customize, but I totally agree with Vicki’s reasoning - back up, back up, back up. If done properly, a portfolio could become a priceless possession.  

This post is messy, but it is what tumbled out of my head as I prepare to go deeper with portfolios with my students. As always, if you could follow my ideas, your comments are welcome! 

"I think the answer to student portfolios is Web 2.0 — that is, students should be doing (authentic) work somewhere, and turn in a URL to that work." (Maybe Universities should not host ePortfolios)

Interesting thought. What if you adopted a decentralized stance towards ePortfolios? You would solve plenty of problems like: Who owns the ePortfolio? Who keeps it when the student graduates? My server is hosting the ePortfolio of a few hundred students, and boy that’s getting mighty expensive!

A decentralized approach would also enable greater autonomy and creativity.I have been exploring a few university ePortfolio programs, and I’ve not enjoyed a lot of what I’ve met. The majority feel boxy, like  eCookie cutters that don’t seem to openly embrace messy learning.

I think that feeling of "I don’t like this space" is an important one to pay attention to. If you don’t feel drawn in, you won’t stick around. If you don’t want to hang out in your ePortfolio, chances are you’ll just use it to get the grade, and that soundly defeats the point of a personal learning environment doesn’t it? 

Web 2 is fun. It’s a cool place to be. It’s a cool space to work in. I would even say it’s addictive. Shouldn’t that be a foundation to ePortfolios? A place where students could become easily addicted to ongoing learning? A place where development is fun?  

I’m fascinated.

Today I was reading and responding to comments left on my post about ePortfolios, and I found Graham’s comments around the need to model portfolio use for students to be very thought provoking. 

He asked:

"… have you given thought to being the role model and setting up your own e-portfolio and learning alongside your students. That way, you aren’t imposing your idea on them but rolling up your sleeves (metaphorically) and pitching in with them."

That made me think.

In my last post, one of the "big questions" I had been wrestling with was around encouraging students to "buy" the whole portfolio process in the first place. Could this be part of the solution?

I think Graham is on the right track here. A few hours after I read his reply I came across this link in my bloglines account. I’ve set a feed up to monitor delicious postings which have to do with portfolios - here’s the link if you want to do the same thing: del.icio.us/tag/eportfolio

Delicious led me here:PORTFOLIO LIBRARY: Planning and Design Guide : see Exercise  2: WHAT GENERAL PORTFOLIO SKILLS DO WE NEED TO TEACH?

He opens with two very interesting approaches to deploying portfolios: the folder approach vs. the model approach.  It was a good smack in the head for me, as I found myself showing up a bit in the "folder" story. Now I know where I need to migrate to…and quickly.

 I do have a very weak blogfolio on the go, but with these new ideas before me I now see that I need to pump my own portfolio up if I want to successfully use it with my students.

It makes beautifully simple sense: If you’re not a "folio thinker" yourself, how can you expect your student to become one?

Take a few minutes and read Kimeldorf’s  story of how he has been using portfolios: he’s passionate about them. Passion is catchy.

Related resources for future exploration:

Why Engage with Electronic Portfolios? 

Engagement with Electronic Portfolios: Challenges from the Student Perspective. 

I identify with Konrad Glogowski and his quest to move theory into practice. His latest post, Readerly Comments - Part II, really struck this whole idea home for me.

"Working on my thesis and keeping this blog has had a strong impact on who I am as an educator. But I do not want to operate in the realm of theory all the time. I needed to test myself." (Readerly Comments - Part II, Glogowski.)

Blogging has had a deep impact on my teaching as well. It’s introduced me to how other people do things in their classrooms, it’s dropped me into powerful conversations that I would never have had access to, it’s caused me to think about things that I would have never thought about on my own, and most valuable of all, blogging has placed me inside a vibrant community of teachers and thinkers.

I’ve been blogging for almost a year now.  I can honestly say that I’ve learned more about the art of teaching and myself during this year than all my six years of ESL teaching without blogging combined.

One of the things that I am learning a lot about are portfolios. (Again, before blogging I didn’t have a clue about them…) I think portfolios are fascinating, and offer a viable alternative to testing and examinations. 

I’ve read about portfolios. I’ve explored them. I’ve written about them. I’ve advocated for their use, but I’ve never actually been able to USE one. I’ve been stuck in theory.

But stuck no longer. I’ve been given an advanced level group, my old legal English group again, and I’ve decided to try and put my theoretical knowledge of portfolios to practice.

Blogging and thinking about things is one thing, actually DOING those things is quite another animal!

Since my group started up a few days ago, I’ve found myself in a state of block. I’ve been really excited about the idea of employing portfolios with my class, but when it actually came to deployment …well it’s been a lot more challanging than I had expected.  

Here are a few of the things I’ve been working through:

1. Selling it to the students: Teaching portfolios.

2. Selling the idea that language learners can  help themselves, and most of the work of language learning should happen OUTSIDE the class.  

3. How do you decide what goes in a portfolio?

4. Where should the portfolio live? Should it be digital or paper based? If it’s digital, what do you do with those who fear tech?

5. How do you evaluate a portfolio?

And those are just a few of the things that have been giving me a bumpy ride. But you know what? I was reflecting on the whole thing during thismorning’s commute from class to our offices, and I found myself feeling a rush. A fresh motivation, and sense of aliveness around what I was doing.

The concepts around portfolios that I’ve only been thinking about, have taken on brand new meaning as I try to deploy into reality.

I can see why portfolios can so easily become a boxy thing, a place controlled by the institution vs. a messy learning environment controlled by the student.

This post feels like it should go on to deliver a polished conclusion, where I share how I’ve figured the whole thing out, and share how my successfully deployed portfolio system has dramatically enhanced my student’s language learning.

But I can’t do that. More than anything, this is a request for help. What have you done? How have you used portfolios? How have you "sold" the idea to your students?

I’m still figuring it all out, and loving the process of stepping out of theory. What do you think?

This post started a few days ago, actually sometime last week. Via Educause.edu:  

 An exploration of the Career ePortfolio at NYC College of Technology (CityTech)

As I explored around the site, I found myself wondering why portfolios seem to be so fond of the finished product. Why should you create a portfolio for just one purpose: the showing off of what you have accomplished?  Shouldn’t a portfolio be a fluid place that showcases success, and highlights skills for employers while at the same time invites continued growth and development? (Learning.)

 I’m totally for showing off skills and competencies. That’s important. Met goals and challanges should be displayed in your portfolio, but I wonder about showing your "work in progress" as well.

The ePortfolio featured here just feels boxy to me. You can post info under Academic Samples, Work Experience, Internship, From the Field,  Professional Goals, and your Resume. (See the ePortfolio template.)

But wouldn’t it be cool if the student could create his/her own categories and decide what goes in them and why? Maybe schools should place some fixed categories there, but a genuinely personal learning environment should offer the student deeper control of its content.

The NYC ePortfolio examples that I explored just seemed to have too many periods. Too many finished statements and experiences. I could be totally wrong here, but isn’t that an incomplete picture of learning? Isn’t it encouraging a breakaway from lifelong learning? Isn’t it tempting the student to think: I met the competency, I read the book, I reflected on course content and that means I’m finished learning? I kinda think so.

Today I came across a really interesting podcast from the 2005 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference Session on ePortfolios entitled Digital/E-Portfolios and Learning: From Mosaic to Kaleidoscope, From Static to Dynamic.  It was delivered by Linda Ehley and is quite interesting if you’re thinking about ePortfolios for your classroom.

One of the biggest questions it left me with was Ehley’s position around the portfolio’s purpose. She argued that there are a large variety of ePortfolio purposes out there, but effective portfolios only focus on one of them. It could be built to showcase accomplishments, to showcase development over time, for employment seeking, for assessment purposes etc. but should only be on one of those, not a combination of many.

She gave an interesting analogy of why: Think about a Swiss Army Knife. It has a variety of tools that can be used for a variety of purposes depending on the tool you select or require at the time. But think about how effective those tools really are. Ehley used the can opener tool as her example: Have you ever cleanly opened a can with a Swiss Army Knife can opener? You often wreck the can and cover yourself with the contents in the process.

According to Ehley, an ePortfolio that tries to be too many things at once loses effectiveness and therefore needs to be highly focused on one thing or purpose.  

Her analogy was compelling, and made me consider my own position on the ePortfolio being used for a variety of purposes at once. But one question remains for me: If an ePortfolio is a focused environment, don’t we set ourselves up for a great splintering of our educational/learning experience?

You want a place to record your learning journey, you build a portfolio specifically for that purpose. You want to show your growing skills to a prospective employer, you have to build a specific portfolio for that purpose. Before you know it you’ll be faced with multiple environments happening at the same time.

Wouldn’t it be more practical and powerful to build a layered environment instead? A portfolio node or hub, that offers a variety of lenses to be looked through, but all from the same place?  Not to push blogfolios, but I see the possibility for this type of thing in this environment. The ability to build a separate page to your blog could be like adding a separate lense or purpose to your portfolio.  

I really like the blog as a portfolio mainly because of the blog’s "unfinished" nature. It’s an addictive animal that needs constant feeding and attention - just like authentic learning. It’s also an interactive environment. Ehley, at one point, describes the thrill students have of posting their artefacts so that others can SEE them. I say you should post your artefacts so that others can interact with them, and give feedback for further growth and development.  The concept that learning and growth never stop is really hit home well using the blog as a portfolio solution.

What do you think? 

Portfolios, and when I say that I mean personal learning environments, should proudly show our failures and how we dealt with them. They should show our work, not just the correct answer. Portfolios should showcase the journey - the wrong turns, the tears, the sweat, the plodding along through snow, hail, rain, and blistering sun. They should show our moments of uncertainty, and what we did to resolve the issue.

If we focus solely on the destination, on rewarding the finished product, aren’t we training ourselves and our students to embrace extinction and irrelevancy?  If George Siemens is right, and it’s really not about what you know but your ability to know more, then portfolios should be fluid places that are in constant flux and change. 

They should showcase the meeting of competencies, but only as sign posts along the side of the way. The journey always continues.

And each portfolio or personal learning environment should be unique. Take a peek over at Jeremy Hiebert’s blog. Both his article, and the comments are well worth your time if you’re thinking about portfolios.

""Self-Directed Learning Tools" to reflect the types of tools and functions that connect these concepts above and below — although the label still sucks, this is a significant conceptual shift — we’re not talking about a PLE (or e-portfolio) as a tool itself. I’m not even sure that it can be created or designed by someone for someone else. Just as each person’s desires, abilities and past experiences are different, each person’s personal learning environment should be their own unique combination of tools, networks and methods that help them accomplish their goals. If the learning environment is truly personal, the tools and the learning are self-directed by definition." (Hiebert, 2006)

Interesting thought: portfolios that are unique, because the student is unique. I think there will be some elements of uniformity in that there are core competencies that everyone needs to learn and be able to do, but how that person reaches those goals and records them, can and should be different.

And if we do our jobs correctly, the real power of the portfolio is what happens after our students have long left our classrooms.

Success: the portfolio, or at least the act of ongoing development and learning, goes on and continues.

Failure: School’s finnished, I graduated, I passed the level = I’m done.

The Value Added Portfolio: I show my work. My audience can see the process, and how I utilized  resources and connections to create solutions.