I attended the seminar on the use of the Penn State Blogging community in designing portfolios for pre-service teachers. Dr. Zembal-Saul started by explaining a bit about the history of portfolios and the affordances that the web offers. Essentially, teacher educators wanted to have a way to allow students to perform four tasks: 1) to select learning outcomes and compile evidence for them [develop curricula], 2) to develop a philosophy of teaching, 3) to reflect upon their own practice, and 4) to develop an ongoing conversation with others of the teaching profession. In the early days of the web, the College of Education used tools such as Dream Weaver to develop websites for the students to create and post their portfolios, but quickly found these platforms to be too cumbersome and difficult for the average person to easily use. The discovery of the Penn State blog was, as Dr. Zembal-Saul put it, “an Aha! moment.” Now pre-service teachers had a space where they could record their learning, reflect upon it, and share it with the rest of the Penn State community, future employers, and the rest of the world.
Maria White, one of the first students to have used the blog ePortfolio system throughout her entire teaching program, spoke about her experiences with the system, walked us through her own portfolio, and answered questions. One thing I really thought was useful was that all of her course work for several different classes was included within this blog, divided into categories. Although she did not explicitly mention it, this would be a useful way to turn homework in to the right professor (through the use of an RSS feed gathering from only one particular category), while simultaneously providing a compendium of knowledge and experience gained throughout one’s education. Although I am not a pre-service teacher and am not required to create an ePortfolio, after seeing this presentation, I am excited to create my own public record of my own learning experiences here at Penn State.