e-Portfolio Report

e-Portfolio Project

e-portfolio is new concept to me, previously I have read blogs and social media on internet but to create one was a bit of a challenge. When I given this project, I was rather confused but I was up for the new kind of concept to learn something totally new. Starting the task was a hard with the research I begin to understand how e-portfolio is created but still was not confident in creating one.

E-Portfolios first appeared in universities and colleges in the 1990s and have now been

accepted by at least half of all universities and colleges in The United States (Clark, 2009).

When I started I decided to understand clearly what e-portfolio is all about and how it works, before creating mine. I had to have a clear understanding on the requirements given so that I follow the instruction given. To get started I had to  go on a quest of finding information from the internet. My search lead me to wikipedia.org, which explain e-portfolio as An electronic portfolio, also known as an e-portfolio or digital portfolio, is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the web. Such electronic evidence may include inputted text, electronic files, images, multimedia, blog entries, and hyperlinks E-portfolios are both demonstrations of the user's abilities and platforms for self-expression, and, if they are online, they can be maintained dynamically over time. Some e-portfolio applications permit varying degrees of audience access, so the same portfolio might be used for multiple purposes.

On jiscinfonet.ac.uk it is stated  as "An e-portfolio is a purposeful aggregation of digital items - ideas, evidence, reflections, feedback etc, which 'presents' a selected audience with evidence of a person's learning and/or ability (Sutherland and Powell, 2007). "

With the above explanations I became aware of what I was dealing with.  Now I have a bit of clue that an e-portfolio is a collection of work developed across varied contexts over time. The portfolio can advance learning by providing students with a way to organize, archive and display pieces of work. This can also later be used as part of assessment of what a student have learned. E-portfolio as an assessment can be used to demonstrate wider dimensions of learning than just paper-and-pencil reports or exercises

The uses of E-portfolio vary on the purpose of the work, it can be used to store digital information and this information will take physical space on the internet. This information can be viewed by the public, once the student work is organized, users can add easily add sound, pictures, graphics and video to the electronic portfolio. With the e-portfolio students can gain valuable skills while creating and editing the e-portfolio.

E-portfolio tend to include the concepts of students drawing from both informal and formal learning activities to create their e-portfolios, which are personally managed and owned by the student, and where items can be selectively shared with other parties such as peers, teachers, assessors and employers.

To continue with my research I had to view different e-portfolios to see information that have been included by the e-portfolio owner on the internet. I also had to chose the  kind of blogspot that I had to put my information on it. My choice was called blogger.com, which is hosted by gmail.com and it was a free blog. The good aspect of blogger is that it has template that you can chose from you don’t have to re-event the will because you don’t have to design the look and feel of the blog, everything has been done for you all is there to do is to put the information that you want to put in.

There were few challenges that I have come across during the development of my e-portfolio, luckily I managed overcome that.

·      When I started I had problem of choosing the blogs that I will use, but I realized that gmail.com have its on blogs called blogger.com and it was a free blog. I decided to use blogger.com as I was a bit familiar wit the navigation on gmail.com. When I  started going in the blog I realized that it was totally different with what I was expecting, navigating around it was a bit difficult. I was not comfortable to share the information on the blog  because the information was my personal view, but later realized that most bloggers share their thoughts and I learn from what they have shared.

·      Creating my address was another challenge because I found out that most of the names or address that I wanted use were not available. I tried several different types but there was no availability. Finally with my search the following address was available, http://e-portfolio-kagomonare.blogspot.com.  This was a major break through after a long hustle.

·      The look of the blog confused, although the were templates to chose from, I had a challenge to chose that wont confuse me or the reader, which is a difficult task. I went through about the looks but none of the was appealing, finally I found the one I used, which was suitable design for my e-portfolio. I decided to choice a simple design template and started to play around with the various design of layout, background images and colours that are available in the templates.

·      Another challenge was publishing the comments that I have, all the time after I save the content, I could not see where the content has gone to, somehow they were hidden. Later when I was working I managed to find a way around it.

Portfolio based assessment is different from the other assessment methods Assessment because; First, the teacher and the student need to clearly identify the portfolio contents, which are samples of student work, reflections, teacher observations, and conference records. Second, the teacher should develop evaluation procedures for keeping track of the portfolio contents and for grading the portfolio... Third, the teacher needs a plan for holding portfolio conferences, which are formal and informal meetings in which students review their work and discuss their progress. Because they encourage reflective teaching and learning, these conference are an essential part of the portfolio assessment process (Venn, 2000, p. 540).

To my understanding portfolio assessment can be based on individual or group performance of the work. When looking into portfolio assessment is more reliable and provides dynamic data because of the entries or update that are made. In this way an enhanced self-understanding of the content will enable students to create their own learning process while developing the portfolio. This makes the student more active and involved in the content contribution. Also portfolio assessment provides collection of students work in a chronological manner, with all the posting that are done and help in the archiving of the work. It allows for self-expression of the student skills because the content posted is from the mind of a student. On the Instructors side he/she will be able to judge the work looking at the postings done by the student. Feed back can come from anyone the instructor or peers as comments on the blog and this will give the student an idea of the effect of the work. Portfolio assessment focuses on learning process and quality of content and this will be graded.