ePortfolios for 2009: Decisions, decisions, decisions…
The new year is well under way and now that my research project has finished we are faced with making a decision about how we provide eportfolios for our students for 2009 and beyond.
For the duration of the research, Inspire proved its commitment to schools by hosting our WordPress MU install for free. This was absolutely fantastic and allowed us to have a secure, online environment that catered for almost every need we had regarding our eportfolios. However that arrangement has expired and Inspire are in the process of considering what this may look like for 2009 and if there may be a cost involved.
2008 saw 60 student eportfolios with that number potentially growing this year into the 100’s. As our media content was all uploaded within the WordPress install, rather than being embedded from a number of other sites, this used up a large amount of disk space and data, averaging at about 100MB per student. Thanks again to Inspire for allowing this to happen.
Let’s look at the positives of this (beyond the fact that it was free):
- We had complete control over the site from being the ’super’ admin, to available themes, plugins, capabilities, privacy etc. customizing it to suits our needs and our eportfolio vision
- Unlimited blogs (eportfolios) meant the system could grow as our school rolls out eportfolios and blogging to all students
- Private, safe and secure environment.
- A one stop shop for uploading and displaying learning. No need to use, and log into, other sites to store and then embed content (unless it was created and stored online like an Animoto movie).
- One password to remember for students to access and edit blog.
- No adds
And the disadvantages:
- Full responsibility for setting up, problem solving, testing plugins, backing up, updating etc. all responsibility rests with us (or should I say me).
So, only one disadvantage, but it’s a biggie. Is it sustainable? What would happen if I left? Is there someone ready to learn the ropes and share the responsibility?
And it all takes time. Problem solving, backing up and updating all while teaching and being a DP. Hmmm…
Additionally, if there is a $ value attached to it from now on, how will this service compare to other services such as an upgraded 21Classes blog portal or signing up for an Edublogs supporter subscription?
Time for a good old fashioned PMI. A more detailed discussion of these options will follow.
the discussion needs to be had around your purpose of the eportfolio.
the key for me is that the eportfolio cannot and should not hold all the info, it is flawed thinking to believe it is there for things like kids attendance, teacher notes, and screeds of irrelevant notes, forget test scores and irrelevant teacher/school information/assessment, it needs to be kept separate. the eportfolio is there to share, collaborate and celebrate the learning. schools who set up separate networks, with intentions of a one stop portal defeat the purpose of an online presence by locking out the learning and learners who they intended to collaborate with in the first place.
Once you establish what the web presence and level of collaboration is for your school then you can go about doing that.
As for one person having to do it all….. we all know that model will fail, and the worst thing about that is for the dude who set it up and looks after it, cause they pour hours and hours into it…
re-evaluate the current model, thin it out, make it self sustaining, remove the SMS school management stuff and assessment stuff.. teachers and principals all play a part.. everyone must contribute and make it happen together.