Will Richardson

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Helen Barrett Blog

July 8, 2004 By Will Richardson

(via Jeremy) It’s fun to watch e-portfolio guru Helen Barrett discover the potential of Weblogs as portfolio tools in her own blog. Her observations from NECC:

I was impressed by the number of sessions that mentioned blogs. I even had a couple of teachers of the airport shuttle ask me what a blog was! And I was able to explain it! I don’t think they saw the application to schools, but it was interesting that they asked.

And from BlogTalk 2.0:

I keep thinking about how this phenomenon can be adapted to electronic portfolios. When the two presenters from Sweden showed some examples from their moblogging at a conference last winter, including an audio entry that sounded like it was added by a cell phone, many bells started to go off in my head. Now, I need to learn more about moblogs. Another new term I learned” “vogs” (personal publishing of video or audio).

She’s writing some great stuff about the value and use of e-portfolios, much of which is directly related to the value and use of blogs. For instance, substitute ‘Weblog’ for ‘portfolio’ in the following:

I believe the two approaches (positivist and constructivist) have more to do with how portfolios are viewed in relationship to assessment. Are portfolios assessment OF learning or assessment FOR learning? Summative or Formative assessment? There is a great deal of difference. One has a perspective of what a student has learned to date (past-to-present); the other has a perspective on what more the student needs to learn (present-to-future). One is more of an institutional focus on accountability; the other is of an individual focus on understanding. One is often treated almost as a “bean-counting” exercise (have all of the standards been covered?) whereas the other is approached as an exploration of new insights.

Definitely thoughts worth following.
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Filed Under: General, Weblog Tech

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