There is much talk of e-portfolios at the minute, particularly as part of recognising achievement. Throughout these conversations I’ve been thinking of something Lynne Lewis said to me when I first started my secondment. She pointed out the power of blogging as an e-portfolio. A blog can be used by pupils to record learning and achievements through video, pictures and text. It can then be read and commented upon by their parents, peers and teachers. This blog could be started in the earliest phase of their schooling and could continue throughout their school career. Pages could be created to summarise specific achievements or events. This blog could even then be continued into later life as an ongoing record of learning and development.
We’re lucky in East Lothian to have the EduBuzz system provided for us, so we’d have an e-portfolio system for free! Of course, you could use Glow instead, but I think the Wordpress platform would work much better in the meantime. Perhaps when Glow has developed, this could be used instead.
Why shouldn’t we do this? I think the normal objection to this idea is along the lines of child protection/privacy. Should pupils be posting all of this information on the web? How would it be monitored? Firstly, a blog doesn’t have to be fully public. If you clicked on the link to Lynne’s blog above, you’ll see that it’s actually private. There is a selection of privacy settings within the EduBuzz system to restrict who can see your blog.
It’s also possible to mark an individual post as private.
I also think this could be used as a learning opportunity for pupils. As part of their use of their e-portfolio, they could explore the issues of what they should and shouldn’t be uploading. This could even help them to be more sensible in their use of Facebook, Bebo, MySpace etc…
And anyway, this isn’t new. Lots and lots of pupils are blogging. You need only look at Margaret Vass’ blog to see lots of examples of this. This would simply be about formalising this into an e-portfolio/record of learning & achievements and continuing it throughout the pupils’ school careers.
This post is tagged achievement, Blogs, edubuzz, eportfolio
Great ideas here, Fearghal. I’ve just set up some eportfolios using wikispaces with a small group of primary 6 pupils. It’s early days - and difficult because i’m not the class teacher - but I’m really looking forward to what transpires.
I’ll blog about it
Fearghal
We do have e-portfolios already set up at Athelstaneford. They are now in their third year. I would of course share them with you but they’re private
Thanks to you both.
I’ll be keeping an even closer eye on your blog in future Margaret!
That’s really interesting Lynne. Can the parents see them? Have the pupils managed to maintain them as they move up through the school (and out of your class)? What do you envisage happening to them when they get to the High School? I know that primaries can be great at using blogs with pupils, and it’s even better that their now beginning to be used as eportfolios. But we need to find a way of translating these skills into secondary schools.