John Pallister :: Blog :: There is never a good time to ‘buy’ an ePortfolio! – But – But - But

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Not today, we will do it tomorrow when the dust settles and interoperability, life-long hosting, secure Web access, web multimedia and other vital issues have been sorted out. This Planning and Preparation Prevents Pretty Poor Performance approach makes sense.

The dilemma, wait until the ‘right’ system arrives or get on with it now? If it is the ePortfolio process that has the value in terms of supporting the learning process it should be the ePortfolio process that we should be integrating into curriculum practice now. All that we can be certain of is that the Technology and the tools that support the ePortfolio process will change, and will always change –  we know that there is never be a good time to buy a television, a computer or anything to do with electronics or software.  With that as a ‘fact of life’ why not get on and test our hypothesis that the ePortfolio process can ‘deliver the goods’, that is, can it support learning?  – can it support the learner? If we find that it cannot we will save ourselves a lot of time experimenting/developing tools that, at the moment, we only suspect might support the process.

We do not need the fully fledged, all-singing, all dancing systems that employ all the features of web 2 to find out whether the ePortfolio process can support learning, that is the learning of all, 5 – 88 Years olds. We should harness the available technologies and use them to support the process. As new things/tools become available we should use them. We should not wait for the perfect system. It will never arrive. By sitting back and waiting we are, if the ePortfolio has the potential to support the learner, robbing our students of opportunities.

An argument: the ePortfolio process encourages the learner to understand what it is they need to learn or be able to do; requires them to plan how they are going to do it and capture their evidence; encourages them to review and reflect on what they have done, learnt or produced. All of the things that a learner should do. Nothing new. The only new bit is that they record evidence of their learning and reflections in an Electronic format. A format that should make storage, retrieval and presentations easier and more ‘efficient’.

So what should we do? Build on what the students can already do and do not straight-jacket learners by making them use text-based interfaces simply to enable anywhere-anytime access. We should keep our eye on developments and Integrate new tools when they become available and when learners are ready/confident for them. What have I missed?