E-portfolios : Global Discursive

I’m back at the keyboard poring over Leigh Blackall’s post which teases apart what he considers to be the underlying attitude shift that would need to occur for educators to embrace the use of the global network to truly grow the online learning eco-sphere. man o’ man am i getting tired of hearing that my colleagues are still fighting on the front of awareness.

However, that said, I cast my mind back to five years ago and I must admit my own use of social networks which interlink by manner of association and interest were not lacking in interest rather in making the shift from LMS fishtraps bobbing in the waters of the knowledge world.

I do think Leigh’s right.

It’s all about “….the difficulties we all have trying to convince others of the benefits blogs, wikis… web2 … what networked learning is and could still have for learning in general.” Great comment and concurring with my working role, that of my discussion with friends and family and that of my professional integrity and beliefs for education ethos in general. I get more blank looks than any affirmative nods lately and get sick of dumbing down everything in an attempt to solicit some recognition of what I’m on about.

Graham Wegner puts his points forward as part of his immersion into what an LMS may look like in the future and the current state of play for those contemplating how such a concept of an always acessible e-portfolio could look like. It appears Graham also struggles with dispelling the myth that blog = poo amongst his colleagues ….i dont envy his position as he grows his own in a primary education context. Phew !

Nick Noakes [Wednesday, February 15, 2006v ] on the other hand gives us this gem for considering what the web mash of a global e-portfolio might look like ;

“…..Now with our online identities being spread all over the net, in comments in various blogs, flickr, del.icio.us, etc., and at various events, we need a way to bring these together simply and quickly. And we need to visually show (semantically, socially and genealogically) our journey, trajectory and identities all in one … something that aggregates and connects our learning into one visual interface for our lifelong personal portal (side track: I think this means we would need to be able to tag our own comments, not just our posts)…..”

If we take Leigh’s perspective on resistance and disenchantment and that of Graham’s and Nick’s whilst mixing it with that of say Iverson you’ll see that ( at least i do ) a correlation in the taxonomy of retrieval, the manner by which the links and semantics make sense for the future.

Users on any open online learning environment could have a multi-view ever-evolving e-portfolio simply by hitting the global e-portfolio portal search function for the term ‘mobology’ and have presented for them a chronologically ordered entry for every aspect of my online presence right back to 2005 when i first started using that ‘tag’. This gives me the view that our repsonsibilities as educators is maybe that of ensuring ( as Graham Wegner suggests ) that students find cool and memorable ciphers and signs to ‘recall’ their learning from where-ever they were at whatever time it was in the past. The portals for displaying such waress are ever increasingly hand held .

if Google WAS doing it’s job wouldnt we have everything we’d ever done digitally available through their search facility ? Damn that would be fine if it was able to be in secure mode.

I replied to Graham’s comment in my blog with reference to e-portfolio’s stating that “…..I liken the formative and academic pursuit of collating, uploading and aggregating my blog posts, interactive writing and mobile blog data as none other than fornicating with naive catalytic elements in a reactive soup of electronica. E-portfolio for me is the conversation we are already having.”

I stand by that.

Softwares for e-portfolio’s SHOULD NOT be developed rather the taxonomies for retrieval enabled in each and every learning environment that we enrol our students / learners in. It’s obvious that the operational / pedagogical / philosophical shift would be immense.

Get it ? How hard would that be to achieve ?

Learners need open courseware and protected windows through which we can view their learning and they access it all anytime. Learning management sytems need not be anything more than those needed for adminstration and enrolment procedural formailities - not for learning ware.

I’m of the firm opinion that all the above is possible if this discussion amps up a notch and that the e-portfolio’s discussion come to grips with ;

• the always on and interoperable stability of the www
• the needs of learners and not that of software / hardware developers
• the apolitical stance ( and conservative ) that educators adopt when faced with students who seek interoperability not sustainability
• users wants verses operational needs
• the sensitivities of those who live building closed systems to ‘protect’ their users from unwanted communication

I’m intrigued ……Have we escaped the behaviourists yet or will the connectivists have their day ? Can an e-portfolio be invisible and weigh nothing other than a memory for a key term ?