Joehn Pallisetr is a UK based teacher who is enthusiastic about e-Portfolios. He blogs now on a group he has set up on Google. If you are interetsted in e-portfolios I recommend that you join.

We wanted to provide students with more appropriate ways to store andpresent evidence of their learning, achievements and planning; we developed and introduced ePortfolios. We soon recognised that although the ePortfolio itself was really useful, it was the ePortfolio process that was even more valuable. I came at things from a Personal Development Planning angle and this has influenced my thinking on ePortfolios. So why have I rambled on?  Simply to encourage people to interpret the‘P’ in ILP, as ‘Process’.

In the right environment the social networking potential of the learning landscape and eportfolio-related tools are features that facilitate and enhance the making of connections and the linking together of people, ideas, resources and learning… (pp. 30)

here is certainly a lot more worthwhile reading in the full handbook which contains contributions from over 100 of the world’s leading experts.

Now Microsoft has added a set of tools, described in detail here, to support use by the scientific community.

It includes a virtual research environment (VRE) to allow research teams to share data, an authoring tool to capture metadata during the authoring process, a hosted e-journal service, a repository

Instructors start the process by defining assignments for their classes and “registering” them with the program

The student works the assignment and produces a solution in any number of media and venues, which might include the student’s ePortfolio (we define ePortfolio broadly)

The student combines their work with the program’s rubric (in a survey format)

This will give every student the opportunity to store files, create learning groups with forums and dicussions, create multiple blogs, and even create their own “learning dashboard” similar to netvibes or pageflakes.

I have no misconceptions that this will probably end up getting a small handful of students in trouble.

In many ways, the site is a standard Web video portal. What's unique is that the Flash-based video files have an extra interactive layer that lets viewers insert text on top of any clip as easily as if they were typing an instant message, and it displays that comment whenever someone else loads the video.

In order to allow this kind of collaboration, Alex and the guys at Soundcloud could have used a standard player and tossed a comment stream below it. Instead they decided to expand the player and allow commenters to add notes directly inside on the waveform itself. The result is pretty cool. People can post tracks and receive a flurry of comments attached directly to the waves.

The player spans the full width of the screen, so it’s easier to set the playhead at the exact spot you want. Commentor’s avatars appear in the bottom of the player, and their comments pop up on hover.

I have developed a design theory on how to build social portfolio software.

A social portfolio should: Support student ownership Enhance peer learning Focus on ease of use

What makes Mahara different from other ePortfolio systems is that you control which items and what information (Artefacts) within your portfolio other users see.

Learner control over content access would be one of my essential criteria in selecting an e-portfolio system.

Imagine being able to search and having one of those search returns be a tag within a video that takes you right to that context within a longer sequence.

So a tagged section in essence IS chunking the videos. But in the case of Vimeo it's user chunked.

Tagging also makes possible a true mash-up. If I am easily able to tag a section of a video, reference it externally and pull that stream through some type of API on call / on cue -- wow.

Networks within academia will become embedded into the applications delivered from academia.

Just as Facebook grew though the academic community out to the masses, there will be a class of applications, with detailed knowledge of the needs of education, hosted within Universities, supporting teaching and learning and research, but integrating with distributed services from applications all over the internet.

Is the edupunk ideology saying that the use of social media in commercial learning management systems is an assault on the very philosophy of learning 2.0?Ideologies shouldn’t be rigid should they? Rather they should be adapted and used in pragmatic ways don’t you think? If you’re a trainer embracing learning 2.0, who gives a rats ass where it lives.

If you have a population of learners who have already adopted tools (such as blogging and social bookmarking) for themselves that are different than the corporate tool (the LMS) do you ask them to move?

If your population has not adopted a tool yet, do you have a responsibility to the individual to show them tools that can live beyond their engagement at the company?

our education systems needs to change, but as Mark notes, the reason for that change is likely not to be found in "changing learners". Instead, in my eyes, we need to change education for two primary reasons:

2) the changed ways in which we can access, interact with, and connect to each other.

“Next Generation” of Learning Management Systems, BlackBoard 8

to survive as a LMS, but that survival is not necessarily dependent on a technology or an innovation, rather it is a means of taking the imaginative experimentation of others and wrapping them up as a product that can be bought and sold like a pair of shoes. The insanely irresponsible advertising for BlackBoard 8 suggests that Academic Suite release 8.0 will “enhance critical thinking skills” and “improve classroom performance.” What LMS can do this? What Web 2.0 tool can do this? This is total bullshit, how can they make such an irresponsible claim? These things are not done by technology, but rather people thinking and working together. Our technology may afford a unique possibility in this endeavor by bringing disparate individuals together in an otherwise untenable community, yet it doesn’t enhance critical thinking or improve classroom performance, we do that, together.

they are taking the experiments and innovations of thousands of people and re-packaging them as their own, unique contribution to the educational world of Web 2.0