I attended the ePortfolio Experts Reference group meeting on 27 March 2008 (agenda). This is a group coordinated by Becta, on behalf of the Centre for Recording Achievement, JISC, HEFCE, LSC, and the DCSF (ex DfES) and DIUS.
For a documents and links please see the groups growing wiki.
The meeting was a series of speakers and discussion. Points of note follow.
Geoff is working with teachers on their IFL CPD portfolios using PebblePad. The Institute for Learning (IFL) is the professional body for teachers, trainers, tutors and student teachers in the learning and skills sector. The IFL has adopted PebblePad for teachers portfolios.
Thanet Colleges Learning and Teaching infrastructure is based
a vision is of a Personal learning space, using:
- Moodle VLE
- PebblePortfolio
- SharePoint for non curricular stuff.
Assessment, submission and marking is in the VLE, while reflection is in the eportfolio. For staff development they have gone off systems training all together to mentoring through narratives: 24 situations using PebblePad proformas and an eportfolio gateway.
Important questions for institutions are:
- What are the risks of using external services?
- Where are the boundaries between VLE and Portfolio
Pilar Cloud, from TAG Learning discussed their work with awarding bodies such as OCR. She reported on an innovative assessment strategy in the Craft Design and Technology field, which is being extended to Science and Technology. Key to success of this activity is that the assessment is "owned" by the subject community (Richard Kimble, "Design Talk"). The assessment in CDT surfaces design talk through the assessment. The authenticity of the assessment is what is important.
See report on the project, available here and a seminar, here.
Tag is working with BSI to create open standard for submission of coursework to awarding bodies based on the TAG Qualification management system, focusing on open standards, or "Internet Lego" using, e.g. Flickr, YouTube, Open Social, etc.:
- How does the company render the huge variety of schemes? TAG has designed "unique XML schema"
- How do you integrate the huge range of eportfolios, platforms, VLEs, testing suites? TAG has developed an API that allows any eportfolio, platform, or school network to submit to an awarding body.
- How do you provide examiners and moderators with means to access uploaded work? TAG has developed "Red Pen Technology", a mechanism for allowing a huge variety of file-types to be moderated, layering marks on top of files.
Shane Sutherland of Pebble Learning mentioned the JISC/Cetis UK Leap "Lite" emerging standard.
Paul Messer discussed, Careers Wales Online, a service owned by 6 companies that provide careers advice in Wales, including an eportfolio service, launched in October 2004
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