I read a Dutch book on portfolios years ago (can't find it at the moment). As I remember it, portfolios were discussed in that book as a way to support competence based learning, and the portfolio was presented as a tool for students to
1. collect and present evidence of their learning / acquired skills
2. reflect on what they had learned and to identify gaps in their knowledge and skills
3. to plan future learning activity
With that in mind, I had a look at Pebblepad, and it seems to me that all these things can be done there. Would it be something I use? No, I already have a solution for that in my PLE. If the course would require me to use Pebblepad, I would use it, you might use it as an alternative for the course blog, for instance. Another reason though I would rather not use it is that I could not find an easy way to export stuff from Pebblepad, so I'd fear a potential lock-in.
On to the readings. Ayala's article reads as a pamphlet and raises questions. Second paragraph for instance: portfolios as an attempt to solve curricular issues. What issues? Seventh paragraph: no discussions mentioning student-centered pedagogy (...) have infiltrated the discussion on e-portfolio (...). That's not my recollection of the Dutch book that I read (I really need to find that back). Eleventh paragraph: democratize, all for it. But what about: should be build on a constructivist knowledge paradigm, a little elaboration would have been nice here. Twelfth paragraph: discussion about why portfolios are valuable have not appeared in the literature, I don't think so.
The Barrett / Carney reading. I have written elsewhere that the eskimo snow words story is an urban legend. But there is something basically wrong in this article. First they make a big fuss about incompatibility of accountability, learning and marketing purposes. No, they are all related. And even a quick glance of Pebblepad shows you that you can manage your assets there for all three purposes. And indeed, Barrett / Carney even see this on the eight page: "Students can draw from the same collection of evidence as they respond to and create multiple portfolios."
Third page, a survey of six people?! Really? Can you get this through peer review?
Okay Clara, this concludes my work for the last two weeks, I'll be hitting the road again tomorrow and won't have much time until Monday.
Looking at the activities list, I see that I have not played around with WebCT. I had the plan to create an alternative - smooth, in Bayne's words - 'learning environment' in the WebCT wiki, just to show that a more level playing field between teachers and students is possible, even in WebCT. Alas, haven't gotten around doing that.
Keywords: IDEL10
Comments
Good point. Particularly worrying when moving on from the institution.
On Ayala and ‘curricular issues’ – well, based on your readings, what curricular issues do you think portfolios might solve? :)
>First they make a big fuss about incompatibility of accountability, learning and marketing purposes. No, they are all related.<
You don’t think there are any tensions between the three purposes then?
Happy weekending. Next week it might be good to start trying to draw your critiques of the readings together a bit more. I know you said you weren’t quite ready for it, but it looks to me like you are. :)
Cheerio
C.