PLE I hear Thou

(cross posted from here)

"- Can you picture and describe your Personal Learning Environment?
- Learning? Isn't that the stuff I had to do at school?
- Yes.. but surely you did not stop learning the day you graduated, did you?
- True… I suppose my experiences, my goals, my thoughts, my responsibilities, my training, my projects, all constitute ongoing learning..
- And it looks you are onto a good thing, so keep with it as "your ability to learn is the only lasting competitive advantage!"

I have been thinking about the place of the ePortfolio in a Personal Learning Environment. ePortfolio and Personal Learning Environment can both be a software system or a concept. I am considering the latter here.

The ePortfolio is a great personal space to collect, select, and make sense of information, throw ideas around and verify the more potent ones.
The Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a layered, variable, distributed, open, collaborative space.
ePortfolio and Personal Learning Environment are inherently linked, each feeding the development and make up of the other.
PLE is nothing new, but since it is bound with technology its form, shape and purpose continue to evolve with it.
 
To me a Personal Learning Environment is a self crafted connected ecosystem comprising of people, tools, and spaces:

 - that I build, maintain
 - that grows and adapts to my needs
 - that is both physical and digital
 - that serves my purpose,
 - from which I collect information,
 - with which I experience new learnings, am comfortable with or challenged into doing new things,
 - that lets me engage in conversation around topics of interests
 - with which I interact and share my understanding of these common interests
 - that allows me to chose the media, the time and the place at which any of this happens
 - where I feel "at home"
 - that lets me dream, frame ideas and act on them

My PLE is a mash up of : friends, peers, mentors, with whom I have a relation of trust, clients, influencers that I respect and who I connect with via a range of tools, Twitter, my go to social media for short and sharp info and for just in time conversations on specific topics, ePortfolio as planning and goal setting space where I archive and reflect on flow, blogs, including mine , Feedly where I make up my own reading lists from blogs of interest, online forums and groups,  and google scholar on serious topics, google alerts, Youtube for "how to" do something, curating tools like Scoop It and Pinterest when researching for a project, LinkedIn as my office, Facebook as my playground, Quora as my knowledge base where I sit tight and absorb,  Evernote to keep notes, email where many a one on one conversations are continued and developed, Pocket to save and organise links of interest… Elements in my PLE are public, others are shared with a selected audience, some face to face, others online, some are private to me.

Some spaces come and go, some topics come and go, according to my needs and wants, new people are added as connections widen and grow, interests evolve, opportunities arise. My PLE is a living space.

It is undeniable: the way I learn and work is increasingly project based, individualised, flexible and is also increasingly less structured, less time and space dependent. And adapting to new ways of working and learning require more self discipline, self determination and independent thinking to answer questions such as "how am I doing?" "what problem am I trying to solve?" "how can I do this better faster more efficiently?". Hence my need to articulate my understanding of my own online presence and pin my position in this environment I create.

As I develop the skills and the mindset to evolve in this environment I develop a more open approach to sharing ideas and meeting new people. I engage more in conversations, seeking new information, making new knowledge, and together with my network push my own boundaries. The Internet has multiplied the opportunities to become agent of my learning, transferring knowledge between context and domains as well as people, so I ask myself:

Taking charge of one's own learning is the default attribute so do I want to be limited by institutionalised software?  
Sharing what I know and make it explicit is not an option, do I want to have control of how and when and with whom I do this?

With a device at my fingertips any time any where, it is easy to access an ongoing flow of information, to communicate, to create, share, cross pollinate thoughts and ideas, to participate in a network I build over time,
I can also capture and archive meaningful pieces, organize them for a purpose, and reflect upon them. I blend formal learning with informal, learning is no longer the work of the individual, it is the work of the network! I am "done learning" I am self directing it!

Along the way the boundaries between my personal self and professional self blur and blend.  And with it the need to "develop a strategy to manage the various information streams" and design and organize my own learning, and recognize it happens in different places, with different people, in different contexts.

The challenge for any learning institution, should they be schools, universities, training providers, companies L&D, is to recognize that individuals' access to information, tools, devices, experts and peers impacts on their ability and willingness to drive how, what and when they learn. The learning institution have to adapt their learning design, the tools they provide, to support the development of learner attributes. Through fostering a sense of community, nurturing a stimulating environment and culture conducive to serendipitous knowledge transfer, ideas and solutions generation the learnplace/workplace will start realising the potential of knowledge sharing and the innovation and opportunities it brings about.

The challenge for the individual is to have awareness of their own network, maintain it, grow it and diversify it. And to realise its potential for personal and "collaborational" growth. My PLE is constantly changing making managing time, sources and relationships within it unprecedented and complex. My PLE is constantly challenging, hence my deep engagement with it.

---

Readings:

Pontydysgu: New Thoughts on Personalised Learning EnvironmentsGraham Attwell: Personal Learning Environments
Ilona Buchem: Definitions of a PLE
Harold Jarche: The ability to learn is the last competitive advantage
Jane Hart: The Social Learning Handbook

Photo courtesy of: tata_aka_T [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The year that has been

The year that has been… I woke up this morning realising today is December 7th. 2013 is nearly over.
There has been some good, some great and some less good and some messy! 

I have:
 - deepened my understanding of the scope and role of ePortfolios, researched and analysed methods of implementation outside of schools, inquired into their potential for employability, professional certifications and acreditations, as well as personal branding.
- dived in to identify and articulate the attributes of the Life Long Learner
- related the building of an ePortfolio to digital identity, digital footprints and key digital literacies.
- made sense of the inherent links between personal learning and social learning and how to scaffold them
- assessed ways of restructuring the way we work to make best use of both personal and social learning
- evaluated a range of online tools and services to support the ePortfolio approach
- started using design thinking
- worked on OpenBadges, instructional design
- realized I am only a technology consumer ...
- had a first go at synthesing this into a minimum value proposition to get started with ThinkAgency
- contributed by invitation to many projects and conversations but failed (so far) to get all the stakeholders I have engaged with to contract me…

This has led me to:
 - identify salient common points between the "world of education" and the "world of work"
-  slowly break away from my "edu" echo chamber and go and listen/participate in other communities
-  discover an engaging and switched on to learning professional community
 - see the need for a common vocabulary when labeling and describing skills, strengths, competence
-  invest in attending conferences where I have listened, participated, presented, met with
-  see and work through others' problem with them
-  value openness as the modus operandi
-  talk a lot around dreams and ideas (sigh…)
-  throw myself in a lot of new related stuff wanting to start to understand OpenBadges potential, IT stuff around metadata, experiencing basic coding...
-  feel frustrated by not staying focus



Which in turns has opened my eyes to: (the confronting....)
- how limited I actually am to see the big picture: I find it hard placing boundaries around my ideas to have them evolve beyond just that
- the tyranny of too much autonomy! (especially let lose with a connected device)
- how limited my mastery around IT is beyond using/consuming
- how easily I forget I can't assume and must verify all hypothesis...
- how unable I seem to be at actually establishing my own actionable purpose!

Yet fabulous stuff happened such as:
- experiencing the world of entrepreneurship and start ups
- getting a feel for this whole ecosystem and going in with eyes wide open
- drawing some connections to the world as I have known it so far
- acquiring vast amount of new learning (some of it yet to be connected)
- witnessing what truly persuasive and convincing look like in practice
- starting to understand value in a commercial and business sense
- developing solid partnerships


I have maintained and grown lasting existing friendships.
I have worked on balancing my PLN, opened new channels and participated in a range of conversations.
I might have done it with too much gusto….
My teenage-like heart has fallen in love at first sight with many enlightening, supportive, challenging, critical new friends.
I count on time and actions to tell how these influences evolve!
I live with and love the most honest and caring dragon. I must never lose sight of this.

2013 as the "Year of Trying"! 
In the unstoppable momentum I have been saying yes yes and yes to so many things: I have done, got feedback, got knocked, undone, redone.
Today it feels that in terms of accomplishments for the year, well,  it is close to a "not a lot to show for". 
To move forward into 2014 I will need to do less Yes to learning and more Yes to executing.
I have a few weeks before making New Year's Resolution. Phew.

Why am I doing this?
The ability to learn is the only lasting competitive advantage for any organization. H. Jarche
Can I build a business model around this?
I have the ideas, the people, the want and the drive.
2014 will be the Year of the Concrete Steps.

ePortfolio Forum Takeaways

Thoughts in no particular order arising from having attended the 2013 ePortfolio forum organised by ePortfolioAustralia.

- Met lots of like minded people whom you don't need to explain what an ePortfolio is!
But:
- What is an ePortfolio? remains an open question. A tool? A space? An approach? A story?
For me the ePortfolio starts with the "who". Who is  making use of it? "Who" moulds the shape the ePortfolio takes as it is his/her specific purpose (evidencing of learning for assessment, reflective practice, professional learning, workforce entry, employability, career management, online presence, showcase of achievements, process of learning etc) that is the driver. "Who" 's life journey leaves positive digital traces, the ePortfolio, dynamic by nature, documenting and keeping a memory of experiences and accomplishments.
So:
- When introducing ePortfolio it is crucial to know "who" and empathize with the needs and wants, the goals and aspirations of "who".
The actions involved in building a structured ePortfolio (collecting digital assets, selecting them for a purpose and a determined audience, of connecting ideas through thinking, and connecting with others for comments/ collaboration) constitute a personal, educational, professional story.
And:
- by showing selected parts of a structured, purposeful ePortfolio, users demonstrate digital competence. And a digital presence. Enough said.
Also:
- Implementing an ePortfolio has to combine a top down and bottom up approach, framed by learning design. Top down to ensure infrastructure, access, support are available. Top down to support relevant curriculum development and pedagogy that lend themselves to ePortfolio development. Bottom up by giving tangible, relevant, authentic reasons to develop an ePortfolio and opportunities to users. Bottom up by making explicit the potential for developing digital literacy as well as making visible a wide range of skills beyond the qualification recognized by the institution.
Talking of skills:
- More and more conversations around employability revolve around not only the hard earned qualifications, but also around soft skills (communication, critical thinking, willingness to learn, knowledge sharing, being a team player, listening skills and ability to teach, mentor…) The ePortfolio is a perfect venue to evidence and develop these skills.
Thus:
- To engage learners into an ePorfolio development, they must be involved in shaping it and taking control of it from the outset, through punctual explicit training if necessary, but mainly by empathizing with each individual's goals and scaffolding their steering.
Moreover:
- an ePortfolio is not just the work of an individual: the sharing with an audience, commenting from peers, feedback and feedforward from teachers or lecturers, collaborating on projects and gathering feedback, communicating on forums, crowd sourcing an idea that shape a personal ePortfolio. Learning is social.
Which leads me to the tool:
- Mahara allows for granular permissions, ensuring privacy if/when/where needed, has a resume building, aggregates productions made in range of files off or online, has a built in social network. It allows for pages to be submitted for assessment. It can be hosted on a dedicated server or online. Which means also that it has got to be institutionalized in the first place… This is important for context. At least to start with!
What is (even more) exciting?
-   ePortfolio, the learning centre, evidence gatherer, thought processor + open badges, the visible indicator of accomplishments, skills, interest, across communities and platforms = lifelong and life wide learning!

Why are ePortfolio supporters still pushing the rock uphill?

- Learning in 21st c has changed. Not everyone has noticed.
- ePortfolio have mainly gained traction in education so far. Period.
- Technology is changing everyday. It is not at the heart of ePortfolio building though.
- ePortfolio as a vehicle for common vocabulary across stages of life (school> training/university> work/life) is yet to be realized (although OpenBadges may offer a step towards this!)
- their potential for employability and careers is huge, or so it promises. Employers need to be shown ePortfolio more readily. Employers want qualifications AND skills so employers need to be involved and asked if/ how they can make use of eportfolio for recruitment but also for productivity and skill evidencing for themselves and their employees. While supporting digital literacy development. Or else it will remain an academic pursuit.
- Professional associations need to be made aware of ePortfolio potential for ongoing professional learning, accreditations and evidencing of on the job skills. That could have some impact on the employers' perception of ePortfolio.
- Careers services outside of learning institutions (job re entry, immigration, skills gap analysis etc) need to be made aware also.
- There is no longitudinal research (that I am aware of so please do correct me and comment if I am wrong) to see if ePortolios continue to be populated by their owner pass education.

It's time to get out the building and into the "world" post education to go and find out if ePortfolios live up to their status of life long learning companion!
That is the road I am choosing to take with ThinkAgency. While remaining faithful and committed to my interest in ePortfolios in schools.



References: 
Prof Phillip Long from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology will share what the role of the eportfolio will have in a distributed digital learning future.
Dr Alan McAlpine (Queensland University of Technology’s Career and Employment Unit) will share what’s happening with the use of eportfolios in the recruitment and employment marketplace.
(Will link to both keynotes recording when made available)
Shane Nuessler Learning Design Reflections in Higher Education
Portfolio the work of an individual? Kristina Hoeppner
Pictures from the ePortfolio Forum
Angela Shetler' Storify of ePortfolio Forum

OpenBadges Potential

MOOC "Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials" - Understanding the Open Badges Ecosystem and Building a Badge System

CHALLENGE TWO: Define the Currency of an Ecosystem
____________________________________________________________________________________

Tania  a Spanish teacher in an Auckland (NZ) secondary, undertook a year long Professional Learning course. Her focus is on improving her classroom pedagogy and deepening her understanding of second language learning acquisition. A fluent Spanish speaker who has travelled extensively to Spain and South America before settling into work and family life, she has developed a love of all "things Spanish" and often refers to her experiences as a language learner to support her students' learning experience and help them empathize with others' culture and ways of doing things, the Language curriculum resting on developing language as well as intercultural competencies for the purpose of communication.
Tania, through experiencing with Task Based Learning with expert support during her course, now realizes the importance of assessment for learning, and of providing timely feedback and feedforward to support her students' next step in their learning. This practice helps her and her students manage the evaluation of the internally assessed standards. She initially felt she was assessing all the time but now she sees her students identify their next step more rapidly. Tania also realizes the importance of providing authentic learning opportunities to motivate her students' engagement and scaffold their language learning. By authentic she understands authentic for her students, learning that will serve them in real life. Tania connects "real life" to jobs using languages. She has coffee with Ian, in charge of the school's career program and they discuss where languages currently fit in career pathways, in connection with assessment standards and credits. As always, Languages are not prominently featured, and retaining students from one year to the next can prove difficult.  It is a timely conversation though:  Ian reminds her to focus on the skills involved in learning a language, such as communication and use of technology to access native speakers for instance, and how these skills, if made explicit, have huge currency for employability.
Tania prints the "Know your own skills" quick reference published by CareersNZ  and takes it to her Department meeting. This prompts the team to revisit the Key Competencies, the "capabilities for living and lifelong learning" as outlined in the NZC. The NZC states that Key Competencies ought to be kept track off continually, monitored rather than assessed. Her school has not explicitly identified a focus on these Competencies, and they have not always been at the forefront of her and her team's attention when developing their learning programs which are articulated around content knowledge.
Yet the deliberate crosschecking by the Language team of the Key Competencies and the employment skills reveals a wide range of common vocabulary. Tania undertakes to unpack the Key Competencies, break them down in more granular skills, especially around Managing Self and Participating and Contributing, which are two competencies that develop in the unfamiliar learning context of Spanish immersion learning:  Managing Self because students need to structure their portfolio of evidence, use a range of tools to produce this evidence and meet deadlines for submission. Participating and Contributing as students must practice to be understood, and interactions in Spanish require that they are both listeners and speakers.
Tania decides on a set a key words for each competence and uses them to label the resources and activities she has uploaded on her Moodle course. She decides that she is going to track how her students develop these particular competencies for a term, as well as draw students' attention to them explicitly in her teaching, making connections with the skills they will require in the workplace.

Abbi is close to making her choices for her subjects for her final year. She has considered more than once to drop Spanish. It is tough and it requires quite a lot of self study for her to complete her assignments. Managing deadlines for submitting portfolio pieces, alongside the volume of her activities in other subjects and out of school is difficult. She finds it hard too to communicate verbally in the target language unless she has learnt a piece off by heart. But through listening to her teacher's consistent use of formulaic phrases in the classroom, she is starting to build a repertoire for herself. She is reusing some of it quite successfully now and can even provide some feedback to her peers when they are working on a common task together. Neither of them can speak English in the classroom (or else, which is "enforced" in a friendly manner by her teacher!) so she is developing new strategies to communicate, sometime using gesture, or her laptop to look up phrases, practice saying them, and then use them when interacting with others. It is really what has been keeping her in the Spanish class that, the fact that tasks require that they work in small groups, assign roles and go and find a way together to solve the problem at hand. It is a nice change from her other academic subjects where she is doing a lot of writing. Verbal interactions are captured by way of videos too, so she and her friends can make good use of their smartphone. Feedback she receives regularly from her teacher helps her decide when she ought to give recording a go. She has now worked out how to upload her video files to her ePortfolio, and she has made good use of the forum function to first ask for help and now to give a few tips on how best to do it. Her teacher recently has started to talk about work skills, and as a class they have spent sometime deciding on a set of labels that describe what skills they are actually developing in class. Since she contributed to the list, she understands all of what these words mean. A girl in her class pointed out in the group forum that Miss was using these labels on Moodle activities. This leads the conversation to the use of tags when organizing evidence of learning in their portfolio. Abbi can see her tag cloud develop and the word "helping others" and "communicating" get bigger. Her teacher has noticed she has helped others in the ePortfolio system through posting replies in the group but also has observed that Abbi is showing peers tips to access good Spanish podcasts and other resources online.  Her teacher awards her a "helping others" badge that she pins on her lapel alongside her Captaincy badge and her Service to Charity badge. Moreover Abbi can identify these two skills are developing now and can relate to this as she has recently filled in a Careers Questionnaire which indicated that if she wanted to work in Early Childhood Education (something she is considering at this stage) these skills were important to foster. Upon reading her Spanish teacher's feedback on her latest assignment she realizes the "time management" word in her tag cloud is yet to appear: her dad has been moaning over dinner at how poor at time management some of the people he employs can be. She makes note to self to ensure she will meet the next deadline. Abbi has noticed her teacher has changed her approach to delivering her lessons. She is starting to get into the swing of self and peer assessment rather than always relying on her teacher to get to her. While she would not say she is taking risks with her learning, she understands from the feedback she gets regularly that she takes initiative and is curious to learn more. Abbi might well take Spanish next year, as she has gained confidence in her ability through persevering. Some practical skills acquired along the way are developing, and are made visible as her teacher makes them explicit in her lesson outlines but also through her tagging. Abbi is starting to see the relevance this subject has with what her life may have in store after school.

Greg notices Abbi's new badge on her lapel as he drives her to school. He congratulates his daughter and asks her how come she has been awarded it. To his surprise, as Abbi usually is quite vague when it comes to talk about school matters, Abbi launches into a list of what she has done to get it, and is quite eloquent when describing how she uses her ePortfolio system. Greg is surprised but suddenly realizes that school is actually preparing his daughter for the real world.

My attempt at a first visualisation

This story takes place in a secondary school (NZ) environment where most of the learning is happening face to face in a classroom setting, with only some elements of the course delivered digitally and some opportunities to use devices. Few connections between Learning Areas are made explicit to the learner. The potential to make the Key Competencies visible, traceable and "rewardable" is being explored and it could help with this.  The teacher is the assessor, she and her students are unpacking the Key Competencies together in their unique way, in their context. This teacher is "creating a mechanism to make students learning visible" (OpenBadges for Life Long Learning, p.3), in a formal context.  The Key Competencies are "future focussed, student centered and interconnected", and school is one of several environments where they can be gained.  To move from a 'Physical badge" system to an Openbadge system would further enhanced the interconnected nature of these competencies. But first of all, the system would need to be tested with other learning areas. It may be with the in school careers' program initially as students have the opportunity to identify a career journey. This would require that Tania took risks to continue her investigation through teaching as inquiry, was willing to share her ideas with colleagues (she is already working well with her Department) and was prepared to face ambient cynicism about change and new ideas. Secondly, it could bring to the fore that the badge can communicate information about the holder which could complement the NCEA qualifications. To that effect, it would be necessary to develop consistent, reliable and valid assessment activities with a determined success criteria to issue a badge, that is valid and recognized across the learning areas of the school. This could be tested by working in tandem with one other department at a similar year level for instance. MyPortfolio/Mahara as badge displayer with Moodle as issuer  would require more teachers and students jumped into the innovation bandwagon to make use of the learning systems available in the school. Badges would have more value if used school wide and recognized for what they represent. Schools have been in the business of issuing badges to recognize achievement outside of the classroom for a long time. What needs to be established is the specific skills they each represent, define a learning path (on and offline) to capture them, to ensure that the badges represent the development of the competencies. It is a dynamic process, a living record. Students have to see for themselves what is in it for them. That will motivate them to lead the development of their own Key Competencies and encourage them to seek opportunities to earn badges. If students recognize the value of badges for themselves and for the reputation of their peers, then there could lay the most potent strength of the system.

Meet Abbi

MOOC "Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials" - Understanding the Open Badges Ecosystem and Building a Badge System

CHALLENGE ONE: Define a Current Ecosystem.

Consider an industry or community of practice where you anticipate that badges could have a positive impact

 _______________________

       Meet Abbi. Abbi is quickly coming to her seventeenth birthday, with mixed feelings about leaving school. She lives in Takapuna, north of Auckland New Zealand. She started college in brand new buildings 4 years ago. Abbi is in year 12 now, and in a year's time in December she will have to have decided what she wants to do next. Abbi does not mind going to school, even if sometimes the 5 lessons a day get in the way of all the other things she really wants to do. She is quite athletic, and with the school' s soccer team training in winter and the surf life saving club in summer, she keeps fit.  Abbi's efforts in both disciplines are often celebrated, as her soccer team came first of their division this season under her captaincy, and she has received many a trophy already for her surfing ability. Abbi is a popular girl with a good group of friends and she often signs them up as a team for charity events, organized both at school and the community. Her goal this year is to get the largest team to raise money for CanTeen, since her team only came second last year and missed on the "big prize"! She knows she needs to draw on her organizational skills as well as on her time management to pull this off this year: her part time job at the local supermarket is now taking up 10 hours a week. She needs to save up as much as she can for when she leaves school, should it be for university or training or maybe a gap year.  Abbi is busy. She goes from one lesson to the next with long to do lists of assignments deadlines for her 6 different subject areas. Most of her NCEA standards  being assessed internally, she has to compile a portfolio of evidence over the course of the year, culminating to selecting the best pieces for final submissions. Her teachers are on the whole pretty helpful and keen to support her but she finds she needs constant help with unpacking the achievement objectives. Above all the sheer volume of what needs to be produced for each of her courses puts her under pressure. Abbi does not actually have neither the time, nor is she regularly offered the incentive to step back and consider and reflect on her learning. She wants to achieve with Excellence as her mum keeps telling her that it will give her more options for after school. While she has overall above average literacy and numeracy, she gets little feedback in the way of the skills she is developing through managing all of this coursework, participating in all the extra curricular activities . She is also considering going back to handing her work in written form since her teacher, while providing positive oral feedback on her creativity, found it hard to assess the cartoon strip she designed with an online tool and presented as evidence towards her History credits via her ePortfolio.  Abbi is concerned mainly by getting school work done, rather than how she is getting it done.


        Meet Tania. She is Abbi's Spanish teacher. Tania is in her early 30s and likes her job. The school environment is pleasant, she has been here for three years now and has built a good rapport with her colleagues and her students, who respect her. She likes the area, her young family and partner live nearby, and they can enjoy the proximity of the ocean year long. Tania has had to change a lot to her teaching since she started ten years ago. The New Zealand Curriculum was implemented in 2007, and was quite a departure from the previous documents. This fairly slim document intends to be a holistic guide to all New Zealand schools to review their own curriculum and align it with the firmly student centered vision of the National document. Tania has been involved from the outset to grasp all of its intent, based on community engagement, learning to learn, and future focus. She is experimenting with her teaching, and has moved away from the painstakingly crafted units of work she used to base all her teaching on.  She is making some use of the School Moodle where she posts resources for her students to access. She'd like to use it more as she sees the potential but she has also undertaken a year long Professional Learning course which aims to accompany her pedagogical evolution towards a task based approach to teaching and learning. Tania uses the teaching as inquiry cycle to ensure her teaching meets the learning needs of her students. Tania is busy. She has a range of classes and responsibility for her learning area. She knows she could engage in her inquiry with more depth. Tania does not actually have neither the time, nor is she offered the incentive to step back and consider and reflect on her learning as a teacher. She also knows that deadlines for the high stake NCEA assessment are always looming. Despite having been aligned to the New Zealand Curriculum, offering students a more personalized and individualized pathway to achievement, the managing of portfolio of evidence proves very tricky and imply students taking "more ownership of their learning". Tania witnesses that all of her students are also getting to grip with their new responsibility, and the response varies greatly according to their level of engagement. Plus, Tania is intent on getting good grades, as the overall image of her Faculty and of her school, will be reflected on the results. To maintain her students' level of success, as measured by the tests, she is putting on the back burner discovering with them what online tools they could use to produce work, and her students, while they BYOD, use their device mainly for research, word-processing or sharing a googledoc and sometime use language learning apps. Tania feels she "does" teaching to her students while she wishes she could do more to get them to make sense of their own learning, as intended by the NZC. She also knows that the Key Competencies too often slips under her and her students' radar. When she stops and considers, she knows they ought to be the common language across all learning areas, as they encompass knowledge, skills, attitudes and values. Tania knows too that these competencies are for teachers, learners and anyone beyond the school community.


        Meet Greg. Greg owns a medium size business, based on hydraulic engineering. He still drops his daughter Abbi at school in the morning: she can sleep in a bit longer if she rides with him rather than bus it. He has an engineering qualification and his business, thanks to a recent contract with a Chinese manufacturer, is doing quite well. Greg has been in the area for twenty years and benefits from the import/export activity generated by the Port of Auckland, the most active in the country.  Greg typically employs between 25 to 30 people. He would like this to stabilize but the lower skill employees come and go, often at the drop of a hat. He has also found it hard to find suitable match to join his management team, as he is often left disappointed that the qualification and veneer presented on the resumé does not convert into workplace skills once hired. Overall, he finds critical thinking and problem solving skills, often coupled with below par communication skills, are sorely missing. Greg is busy. He needs to travel to get more work. Competition from cheaper countries is a constant threat. While he knows he ought to do something to invest in the professional development of his employees to retain them and also to support them gain more quickly the skills he views are essential, he needs to invest in other areas first. Greg always wonders what the kids really learn at school. 



These descriptions showcase there are some good bases on which to dream a badge system development in New Zealand.
Here comes the not so distant future:

Abbi will start gaining badges, hopefully Openbadges, identifying and showcasing her sporting and community engagements and successes, issued by the reliable institutions that are offering these opportunities. Those institutions will find badges a natural digital extension to the cups, badges and certificates they already issue.  She will display them on her ePortfolio (MyPortfolio powered by Mahara, available to all New Zealand schools as SaaS) which won't be the rather dry venue where she has only been collected her speaking and writing evidence for Spanish. She will see her achievements accumulate. Abbi will start to engage in keeping a more consistent record of her learning, and possibly seek more opportunities to earn badges.  Or, why not, start issuing some to her friends when they achieve the Canteen challenge?
Through seeing the badges displayed on Abbi's portfolio profile, and engaging in conversation with her about their significance, not only will Tania get to know her student just that little bit more, but also will start thinking how she will herself issue badges. Not only it would get her to look more deeply into Moodle functionalities, she has always wanted to do to spend more time on that, but it will also be a way to finally evidence the Key Competencies in a concrete, visible, understandable manner: students getting expandable badges for essentials skills they progress on, but also for the aptitudes and competences they develop. Issuing badges credentialing time management, intercultural competence, communication skills... Tania is getting very exciting at the prospect! The visual badge would go a long way in materializing the complexity of each of these concepts, the task is now to be break them down in simple manageable steps.
When Greg reads Abbi's report inviting him to view Abbi's eportfolio, as she has not had the time to show him her badges, he will discover the Openbadges Abbi has been collecting and the competencies she has developed. Greg will relate to the vocabulary being used in the description, as these are the very things he wishes to see his employees develop or at least articulate. Short of thinking he could build badge issuing into the professional development plan he is currently considering to offer to retain his employees, he understands the value the Openbadges would bring to the interview table, or better still, prior to that as he selects the resumés. Greg  will start to see that kids in New Zealand schools really learn to learn at school.

I would argue that the New Zealand strong sport and service community coupled with a forward thinking education system offers, in appearance, a fertile ecosystem where there could be a multitude of opportunities to try and build a Badge System with a concerted approach. The next challenges will definitely allow to dive more deeply in the complexity of what it entails.


Pascale Hyboud-Peron
20th September 2013

ePortfolio: what tools, what functionalities?

I have recently come across two amazing examples of professional ePortfolios:

- @traintheteacher is a regular and prolific blogger whose reflections are tagged, using the Registered Teacher Criteria, collected and selected for the purpose of her PRT ePortfolio using Wordpress (a powerful blogging platform)

- Don Presant's career ePortfolio presents selected personal information, his CV as well as the services he offers, alongside much evidence of his research and presentations, using Mahara(a purpose built ePortfolio system).

A range of online services can be used and combined and together make an ePortfolio for their owner who want to showcase and flesh out their achievements, skills, and competences beyond the wording on their CV.

Typically the blog (like this one!) is a place of where one goes to put down ideas, or accounts of experience, or reflect on what they have done, where they are now and what they can do next. 
What else is there?
Vizify can be used as a visually pleasing aggregator of the stuff one produces in a range of spaces, for a range of interests (eportfolio for life wide learning!)
About.me can be used as a cover page to your ePortfolio.
Belonging to groups (on Facebook for instance), nings , listserves,  having a twitter account,  etc is a way to bring in the social component to one's learning, where you get some and you give some and where ideas can be tested out.

Using online services like those imply that the user has embedded a level of comfort with publishing online for a purpose that is usually self determined, or for personal branding.

Developing an ePortfolio, and the mindset to go with it, is the result of a range of factors: it is undoubtedly beyond the "tick the box" requirement that any professional body or employer may require. ePortfolios are a place where one can let things stew and develop, as work in progress. They also allow the owner to showcase their stuff when/where/to whom it is necessary or timely. One does not become a reflective practitioner the minute they create an account on MyPortfolio nor do they always keep organised, meaningful traces of their learning with Instagram or SoundCloud. Nor necessarily act on the feedback left on way of comments... That is why I am talking about adopting a ePortfolio mindset! And having a self chosen purpose to get started.

Developing an awareness that any of these tools actually support learning by making it visible to the owner while at the same time making the owner visible to a chosen audience or to the world at large is well worth investigating. ePortfolios have the potential to accompany the development of a range of digital competencies as well as being a space to display them.

I have also recently stumbled upon netice.fr a French start up focused on providing ePortfolio services as well as a Mahara instance, for employability with an emphasis on insertion in the world of work (post formal education or after unemployement)  supported by the development of digital competencies. Netice.fr has caught my attention, in particular as it seems to be what I would like to be part of here in NZ!

So that finally takes me to the point of this entry, phew! Why a dedicated ePortfolio space like Mahara for instance rather than a suite of etools that the owner bundles together? After reading the report of ePortfolio use at Plymouth State University to which Ellen Mary Murphy contributed (and which link is no longer available), here is what I came up with to start visualising what functionalities support ePortfolio development, when they accompany the development of digital competencies and require an element of privacy and control over what is published. Work in progress...

One very useful model...

Aaron Nolan, NZALT Auckland Regional Officer, has asked me if I would give a presentation about useful tools for the Language Classroom at the upcoming Auckland LANGSEM (August 24th, UoA, Epsom Campus).
While I would have favored to facilitate a tool "smackdown" à la Educamp, this does not fit well in the standard Conference schedule (I won't give up mentioning it again and again though!)
So what can I do in 30 minutes, which is the time I have available? I can forget hands on, but having said that, connected participants can always have a quick look at the tools if I share the links at the outset. I think it will be pretty fast paced too, so I will pre warn people and stress they can re visit the information at anytime.

Tools for learning or learning supported by tools? 

http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/

I will divide the 30 min into two distinct parts:
a-  tools for the students to learn, create and share
b-  tools for the teachers to connect, curate and share ( and post the link here when done!)
Well... This opportunity opens two doors:
- to stress the need and use for an eportfolio to aggregate creations, to share them with an audience, to receive feedback and to reflect on the learning.
 - to refer participants to one very useful model to help teachers integrate Education technology: the SAMR model.
Here is a very useful short video to explain it:

The SAMR model is useful in many ways:

- it raises awareness of how we use tools in the classroom,
- it indicates that there is progression, until it is seamlessly integrated and ubiquitous
- students direct their learning more effectively as tasks are redesigned and modification takes place
- it also expands the world of the teacher and students beyond the classrom
- above all it reminds us why we use tools in the classroom: for the learning to take place!

It is good to continue to investigate ever changing tools but it is important to keep focus on what learning needs to be achieved.

Helen Prescott  gave an effective 3 min presentation in the Primary context at TeachMeet#2  full of practical examples and links to the Key Competencies

The wheel below combines Blooms with SAMR and a wide range of Apps (while these are apps for Ipad, many are also available via the browser or on Android).
The "graduates attributes and capabilities" (my point of focus at the moment, at the heart of my eportfolio "dada") at center of wheel are closely reminiscent of the Key Competencies.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/05/new-padagogy-wheel-helps-you-integrate-technology-using-samr-model/

The action verbs and activities are also present in NCEA Languages Assessment standards, from which are derived a lot of the languages programmes in our NZ schools.
There certainly won't be anytime to generate any conversation during this presentation at the Langsem: shame. It would be a chance to start a conversation around how to assess and provide feedback on creations which are not merely text based or just spoken. I'll think of another media, wonder if the good old NZAFT listserve will be receptive this time?
Anyhow I hope that I can direct participants to this post and that it plants a seed for them to grow, as well as allow them to make connections with what is happening in their school and the world of education technology at large.

PS: Blogger's interface, like any other google tool, defaults to French as my IP is in France at the moment. Midly enerving but also rather irritating to have this mish mash of languages on the screen!

Inquiry Learning in Tom's Class

Continuing to look for ways of making the eportfolio approach seamless and integrated within the learning process, I asked Tom Atkins if I could spend a bit of time in his inquiry classes at Tauranga Boys College. 

This is a snapshot of my visit last week. 

The setting:

- traditional 4 wall classroom

- 2x one hour class

- laptops available in room, wifi
- use of googledrive + edublogs + specific maths and writing online if/when necessary

The characters:

- two classes, boys, by year level groups (year 10 followed by year 9)

(students apply to participate in the Inquiry programme upon enrolling in year 9> selection is through a questionnaire where the students indicate why they would like to be considered, supported by a parent comment. 

The scene:

- students work in pairs on a question of their choice. It is their forth question this term. (In year 9, to start with students are given 2 questions to work on, then learn the process from there)

- sense of purpose: upon entering, everyone picks up a laptop and logs in, and gets started

- Tom is hands off to start with, and then spends time with each pair, evaluating and guiding and giving feedback

- This is week 3 of this particular cycle: students checking emails expecting to read from experts they have contacted, or finishing their questionnaires, or looking at the analytics from responses they have got. Some are framing their writing, others are looking for images and editing them. 

- The inquiry culminates to each pair's presentating their finding to the class at the end of the cycle. Then take comments and questions from the class. 

- Tom seizes one "teachable moment" with each class, the only time he actually speaks to the whole class for a few minutes: with year 10, he mentions questionnaires and puts a few pointers out on how to make a representative samples (eg: one yr 10 group is investigating Superannuation, and thus needed to obtain answers from people in employment: they have emailed TBC's staff the link to their survey). In the year 9 class he chose to discuss and give example of appropriate ways to write to request information to someone you have been referred to). 

My Story:
I saw:
- engaged boys, working in pairs to find solutions to their questions

- interesting questions, based around a range of themes: use of farmland, a motorway running the length of the country, lowering the drinking age, types of school, 

- students collaborating with each other, answering questionnaires for instance or working on same document

I noticed:

- the technology use is embedded, it's the pen and paper.

- respect of the environment, super effective classroom, all laptops are charged for instance

- students can eloquently talk about their inquiry and are prepared to ask me questions themselves

- students welcome a stranger to the class and are comfortable with the presence (and the questions!)

- the Year 10 class students display their ability to go beyond describing their questions, they are able to compare for instance, and have started analysing and relating ideas.

- through using googledrive students keep evidence of their learning: they will select from these artefacts for their final presentation

- Year 9 students describe the use of their blog as their log book, where they record what they did

- Year 10 students describe the notes they take when listening to and interacting during the final presentations as "their personal thoughts" that they keep to themselves.

I learnt from Tom

- each group has 8 inquiry class/week with two different teachers who work together on planning

- students tend to do better at NCEA when they go in mainstream in year 11

I wished I had asked:

The students:

-  how they feel about their choice of being in the Inquiry class

-  what they get out of it

- what process they use to get to their fertile question and how long they spend on it

Tom:

- to show me the framework he and his colleague use to scaffold students' progress.

Looking at this snapshot through my "eportfolio lense" there is plenty of evidence that the collecting and selecting of learning pieces for a purpose is taking place and is making use of the technology available effectively. Students have a strong sense of ownership of their current work and know the steps to reach the success criteria. Collecting and selecting are two main ingredients of the eportfolio approach, with reflecting and sharing two other ingredients. One angle I would be interested in looking into is how the capacity to reflect on achievements and through learning from others develops over the two years of the programme.

I am not that visual...

Many are trying to establish a definition of what an ePortfolio actually is. And describing the nature, scope and meaning of ePortfolio will be done in relation with who establishes this definition for what context. I particularly liked this introduction to ePortfolio for students at Victoria Uni.
One comment written by Sarah Stewart on an anti ePortfolio blog post steered me towards picking an other lense to consider ePortfolio. She wrote "ePortfolio is what you want it to be!" Yeah!
I decided to drop (for now!) the institutionalised lense (education context, assessment, evaluation, measured improved outcomes, definition, implementation, eportfolio system...) and to focus on the individual ePortfolio owner* whoever that may be at any time of their life. Folios are life wide and life long and need to be considered from the user's perspective, who is a curious self motivated autonomous proactive agent of his/own learning (coming from a school near us soon!)
I came across this Guide to Digital Portfolio and I liked its presentation format. Maybe because it is flat and linear and that it caught my eye is a reflection of my limited ability to think differently :-)? I would like to master Prezi so that I convey my thoughts and experience about things through using it, but so far my attempts have left me disappointed in the result. I need to work on why? (and suggestions to guide this reflection are welcome!)
Anyhow this is my attempt at describing what an ePortfolio is. For me. Work in progress.

* Bloggers keep blogs, need to think of a name for a person who keeps an ePortfolio...

A week of two halves!

France is in New Zealand for three test matches against the All Blacks at the moment. Typically it means intense rugby watching. Succession of high highs: admiration, exhilaration, discovery of talents, enthusiasm, connections, cheering, a win... Intermittently interspersed by low lows: indecisions, refs' decision, frustration, lack of direction, a loss! And that is pretty much the story of my week!

While there has been some talk since December that some ongoing community support for MyPortfolio has received funding, and I have been asked what I could contribute to this, things are only lifted slowly of the ground. I am not waiting. I am thinking.
Why am I so passionate about this ePortfolio thing? ePorfolio is about learning, is about learning to learn, is about life long learning. It is about gathering one's own evidence of learning, organising it, reflecting on it, sharing it. It is about keeping traces, it is about readying oneself for opportunities. This happens best if the eportfolio is building out of purpose, powered with drive,  by individuals who make choices, are proactive about their own learning and have an understanding of the power of sharing, who have embedded reflection as a way of being. Along the way, the eportfolio user develops digital skills, digital literacy and a digital identity. In becoming agent of their learning, they proof themselves against the unknown an ever changing world is putting in front of them.  They have at the ready,  evidence of who they are as a student or professional, of what they can contribute and of their reflections on how to go about it. They understand qualifications is the What, ePortfolio is the Why and the How. And they understand it is what makes them stand out from the crowd: the Why is deeply individualised and the How is much personalised.

How have I drawn this picture of the ePortfolio user? Working with teachers and students and developing my knowledge and my understanding of the New Zealand Curriculum. This awesome picture is stuff from the world of Education. It's extremely good stuff. It is education talk. Is it heard, and understood, beyond that realm at all? Are employers, recruiters, business owners, professionals ready to pay attention to the potential a 21st century learner with an ePortfolio and to leverage what 21st century learning can bring them and their organisations?
If we spend time with students in schools learning to develop an ePortfolio approach, the best way to make it an authentic learning experience for them is that they see it has a value beyond formal education, that it is not merely something one does in French or Art.
If an ePortfolio succeeds in conveying this extremely good stuff about its owner as self directed, reflective, connected, how is this presented, explained, experienced to society at large?
I spent much of the last couple of weeks continuing to "meet" people, some synchronously but remotely, like Diana Ayling, who researches at tertiary level with interest in developing human potential, some asynchronously through their published work, like Philippe Gauthier who has compiled a Why and How to the ePortfolio approach book with employability in mind in France, or like Don Presant who is championing the use of ePortfolio for employability and career development in Canada. And some face to face, like Steven Vincent, who owns an IT service provider and support company specialising in the business and education markets. His business is about Open Source software. Steve sees helping people make the best choices around the technology that supports their every day life as a cornerstone of his activity. I also had a long chat with a woman I know socially who had a successful career in HR prior to having children and who now wishes to reenter the business world. An ePortfolio could help her capitalise on the "soft competence" she has grown and harnessed through being a mum to add to her otherwise brilliant CV.
All these encounters contribute to the high High! By moving my focus slightly out of ePortfolio in New Zealand schools and by looking beyond, it becomes clear to me that there is a direct application for an ePortfolio in the "real world" and that at the mention of its potential, people are very interested in knowing more, and getting started!
All these encounters contribute to the low Low! What to do with this understanding? Where to start? Who with? How? What is my next step?
But I start to look up again as essentially there is a Why! So that there is continuity from school to work, there needs to be a common language about Learning across sectors. So that these worlds complement each other, the people who inhabit them ought to recognise and value future proofed skills and competences, to recognise and value creativity and self direction in individuals. I believe ePortfolios are the opportunity to establish this common language.
Now what? To test the theory. This is what I am going to do locally, while continuing to learn from the world of Education!

PS: Like the image? Just a little fun reminder to self that I have got to start believing that I can be a little part of that!