ePortfolios for ABE

California has created an ABE Initiative, supporting adult education programs to look at different ways to support Adult Basic Skills students and to serve them better. We have an online community for the Initiative (not open to the public). I recently received a request from several program administrators to look into the possibility of having some kind of eportfolio system for ABE students.

The things they want to be able to add to an eportfolio are: education plan, personal goals, employment goals, resume, checklist of competencies, work samples, awards, recommendations. The idea is that the student would add to or work with the portfolio maybe weekly, the instructor could check in weekly or monthly, and the student might review their portfolio with the counselor each quarter or semester. The portfolio would go with the student to higher level classes, post-secondary, or employment.

I imagined that there were several free options online, but it hasn't been so easy to find them. I started with EPAC (electronic portfolio action and communication) and their extensive list of resources, which was quite overwhelming, so I emailed Helen Chen at Stanford who was kind enough to talk with me about our goals and the various possibilities. She made several recommendations regarding programs that have implemented eportfolios, including Penn State which has a nice description for students of the steps in creating an eportfolio.

Helen also recommended Helen Barrett, who currently provides information on how to create an eportfolio using Google apps - Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Groups, etc. This might be beyond the comfort level of ABE teachers and students, though.

My current favorite possibility is Mahara - an opensource product from New Zealand that incorporates all the features we're looking for, and is also easy to use, and best of all, free! Students can create a profile, a set of goals, and a resume. They can upload files and media, as well as embedding. They can create different views of their portfolio - one for the instructor, one for prospective employers, another for themselves and their friends. You can create a demo account to try it out.

Research also took me to David Warlick's recent post on ePortfolios as the next killer app. He includes a list of features that he would like to see included. The comments and discussion on this post are interesting, and contain links to other products. I will be presenting Mahara at a meeting this week, and will see what kind of feedback it gets.

Personal Learning Network

David Warlick posted a picture of his personal learning network on his blog, and then twittered about it and got a bunch of questions and responses, and responded to some of those on his blog. It's an interesting idea. I'm thinking of printing the picture, or making my own diagram, and using it as an activity at our next staff meeting. If you have a picture in your head of your personal learning network, does that help you consciously take more advantage of it? I would think so. It would definitely help you see how your learning process has changed over the last 10 years.

My personal learning network certainly involves Twitter, del.icio.us, friends, conferences, colleagues at work, books, articles. He filters all his online input through aggregators. I haven't gotten to that point yet. I still check out links that are sent to me in emails or posted on Twitter. I've received some excellent information that way, and I guess this is an example!

Becoming a 21st Century Literate Educator

This post by David Warlick is in answer to the question from a teacher - How do I get started with learning how to use technology? He lists 12 suggestions, including finding the tech support person at your school and making friends with them. Actually, he says bake them some cookies! Other ideas include finding other teachers who are interested in the same thing and working together, reading blogs and sharing information, and creating a wiki to share notes. Seeds of a learning community.

Another interesting post I read today was from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach at 21st Century Collaborative on reflection as an agent of change. Having that time for reflection is so important, and teachers are "on" so much of the day, it's hard to find that time to think about how things are going, what direction to go from here, what went wrong and how to make it better. Sheryl's point is that collaboration really helps nurture that process. When we are in our own separate classrooms by ourselves, there is no one to reflect with. When we are engaged in collaborative projects, f2f or virtual, we have a posse to talk with, think with, reflect with. That makes life so much richer because we are learning as we go.

And Sheryl linked to a post by Jennifer Jones at Injenuity on Viral Professional Development. I think this is the direction we are going in adult education in California, away from the big workshop and towards supporting teachers at a site to work with each other to learn what they need to learn. Can you make this happen? If you have even one or two excited and enthusiastic early adopters, you can. If not? Maybe you have to wait until those people show up, and they will. Jennifer gives a really nice description of viral PD, and a list of steps to get it going.