Blogging in educational contexts

While a learning diary could be used for oneself in a non public way a ePortfolio needs to be public, at least in extracts.
In general there are three purposes for creating and keeping an educational portfolio:

• development
• assessment
• presentation

An “e” portfolio is an adaption of the original portfolio concept to electronic media. Depending on what purpose the portfolio has there are quite a lot of definitions of eportfolios available. (Mason, R., Pegler, C., Weller, M., 2004 p. 717)

“Each stage of the portfolio development process contributes to teachers’ professional development and students’ lifelong learning:
Collection – teachers and students learn to save artifacts that represent the successes (and “growth opportunities”) in their day-to-day teaching and learning

Selection – teachers and students review and evaluate the artifacts they have saved, and identify those that demonstrate achievement of specific standards (this is where most electronic portfolios stop)

Reflection – teachers and students become reflective practitioners, evaluating their own growth over time and their achievement of the standards, as well as the gaps in their development

Projection – teachers and students compare their reflections to the standards and performance indicators, and set learning goals for the future. This is the stage that turns portfolio development into professional development and supports lifelong learning.

Presentation – teachers and students share their portfolios with their peers. This is the stage where appropriate “public” commitments can be made to encourage collaboration and commitment to professional development and lifelong learning.” (Barrett, H., 2000)

Figure 15: Stages of the portfolio development process

“Social software has been one of the driving forces behind the adoption of e-portfolios for learners in bringing together learning from different contexts and sources of learning and providing an ongoing record of lifelong learning, capable of expression in different forms. “ (Atwell, G. et al 2007 p.37)

Even though blogs are ranked among social software, they are one option for an open source solution as ePortfolio software. (ibid.). It is easy to insert, organise, retrieve, and display artifacts from an ePortfolio if you use a blog as ePortfolio tool. (Schroeder, B. 2009)

Compared to a reflective learning diary the ePortfolio has a criteria list on which you are asked to reflect your learning and afterwards share your reflection for presentation, assesment or personal development while the reflective learning diary might have criteria as well but they are set up by the creator of the diary and not by a teacher or an institution. The goal of a learning diary is only personal development.

Keywords: cms, communication, constructivism, education, formal learning, informal learning, lifelong learning, microlearning, non-formal learning, nval, school, tumblelogs, university, usecases, weblogs

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 11:16 pm and is filed under Keeping an ePortfolio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.