Milton Chen

Senior Fellow & Executive Director, Emeritus, The George Lucas Educational Foundation; author
of Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools
Twenty-first-century learning shouldn’t be controversial. It is simply an effort to define modern
learning using modern tools. (The problem is that what’s modern in 2010 has accelerated far beyond
2000, a year which now seems “so last century.”)
Twenty-first-century learning builds upon such past conceptions of learning as “core knowledge in
subject areas” and recasts them for today’s world, where a global perspective and collaboration
skills are critical. It’s no longer enough to “know things.” It’s even more important to stay curious
about finding out things.
The Internet, which has enabled instant global communication and access to information, likewise
holds the key to enacting a new educational system, where students use information at their
fingertips and work in teams to accomplish more than what one individual can alone, mirroring the
21st-century workplace. If 10 years from now we are still debating 21st-century learning, it would
be a clear sign that a permanent myopia has clouded what should be 20/20 vision.

The term "21st-century skills" is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as
collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools
need to teach to help students thrive in today's world. In a broader sense, however, the idea of
what learning in the 21st century should look like is open to interpretation—and controversy.

So what is an ePortfolio?
An academic ePortfolio is a digital collection created by a student of their course-
related work, like essays, posters, photographs, videos, and artwork; academic
ePortfolios can also capture other aspects of a student’s life, such as volunteer
experiences, employment history, extracurricular activities, and more. In other
words, ePortfolios document and make visible student learning. But a good
ePortfolio should be more than just a collection of products.

A good ePortfolio is both about being a product (a digital collection of artifacts)

and a process (of reflecting on those artifacts and what they represent). Like a
Learning Management System (LMS), ePortfolios exist online and support student
learning. They differ from Learning Management Systems in two key ways: namely,
ownership and control. In a university course, the Learning Management System is
“owned” and controlled or managed by the instructor who decides who has access,
what tools are turned on or off, and so on. With an ePortfolio, the student is in
charge: the student decides who can view the ePortfolio, what artifacts get added,
how it is designed, and so on. Typically, a student loses access to the LMS when
courses end; in contrast, ePortfolios remain the student’s property after finishing
university.

The learning theory behind ePortfolios

According to Basken (2008), ePortfolios “are a way to generate learning as well as
document learning" (Basken, 2008). Both generating learning and documenting or
recording learning are important, but the process of generating learning sometimes
gets overlooked. ePortfolios generate learning because they provide an opportunity
and virtual space for students to critically assess their academic work, to reflect
on that work, and make connections among different courses, assignments, and
other activities, such as work experience, extracurricular pursuits, volunteering
opportunities, and more. ePortfolios are effective learning tools because they
support students’ own knowledge construction, make otherwise invisible aspects of
the learning process visible, and place agency in the hands of students, which
fosters learners’ motivation.

Constructing knowledge

ePortfolios fall within a learning theory known as social constructivism, which

proposes, in part, that learning happens most effectively when students construct
systems of knowledge for themselves, rather than simply having information
presented. Social constructivism also proposes that another determinant of
effective learning is that it happens in a social context – that is, we construct our
knowledge through dialogue and interactions with others. With ePortfolios, the
process of reflection originates as a solo activity, but becomes social through a
feedback loop, as the student’s instructor, peers, mentors, and even family
members respond to and provide commentary on those reflections. Making and then
sharing an ePortfolio with others is somewhat like telling a story: the story of one’s
learning journey.

Making learning visible

Bass and Eynon (2009) describe the process of critical reflection involved in the
creation of effective ePortfolios as one that makes “invisible learning” visible. By
invisible learning, they mean two things.

First, Bass and Eynon refer to the intermediate steps that occur whenever a
student, or any person, is attempting to learn something or do something. It’s easy
to focus exclusively on the final product (such as an essay), and to overlook the
stages of learning and doing that preceded that product. By reflecting on these
invisible stages, students can learn more: they can learn more deeply, they can
learn more about how they learn, and they can learn how to do better the next
time.

The other aspect of invisible learning is learning that goes “beyond the cognitive to
include the affective, the personal, and issues of identity” (Bass & Eynon, 2009). In
other words, the process of learning something doesn’t involve just the rational
mind; rather, feelings, personality, and sense of self are all involved – sometimes
facilitating that learning process, and sometimes hindering it. By reflecting on
those affective, personal, and self-identity factors, students can develop meta-
cognitive skills that can enhance their learning.

Fostering student agency

Finally, because ePortfolios are a student-centered activity – one in which the

student is free to choose what artifacts are included, and is free to reflect on the
process of their learning – they foster engagement and motivation (Tosh, Penny
Light, Fleming, & Haywood, 2005). Research on student engagement with learning
suggests that when students perceive that they have choices in how to learn they
are more engaged and motivated to move beyond simple information acquisition to
try to gain an understanding of the subject (Entwistle & Karagiannopoulou 2014;
Kuh et al., 2005). ePortfolios offer this opportunity for learner control and can
support or promote deep learning as students are able to make connections
between the learning that occurs in different contexts. Indeed, it is this
recognition that learning occurs beyond the classroom that makes ePortfolios
attractive to many educators.

Types of ePortfolios
Some educators see ePortfolios primarily as a tool for generating new or deeper
learning while others view them as a tool for assessment (of students and, by
extension, of university programs). Barrett (2008) described the difference in
perspective this way: “There’s a major tension right now between student-centered
and institution-centered ePortfolios.” Institution-centered ePortfolios, she adds,
are driven by “assessment of learning.” Student-centered ePortfolios, on the other
hand, are driven by “assessment for learning,” which refers to academic
assignments that fulfill the traditional role of assessing student learning while at
the same time providing an opportunity for students to learn as they complete the
assessment.

Even within the student-centered approach to ePortfolios, it’s possible to classify

different kinds of ePortfolios based upon the purpose of the ePortfolio for the
student. Different organizations use different names with some distinctions
between what the institution or research group wants to emphasize. LaGuardia
Community College’s ePortfolio initiative, for example, distinguishes between
assessment ePortfolios, where the audience is internal to the institution and the
goal is to support institutional outcomes assessment, learning ePortfolios, where
the audience is students themselves, and the goal is helping students examine and
reflect on their learning, and Career/Transfer ePortfolios, where the audience is
external, and the goal is to provide students with a tool for showcasing their
achievements to employers or transfer institutions.

Best practices for instructors

When ePortfolios have broader institutional uptake, students will be encouraged in
all of their courses to use their ePortfolio, and to reflect on and make connections
between all of their courses and academic experiences. For this reason, ePortfolios
are most effective when they are established as an institution- or program-wide
initiative, but they can still be successful at the individual course level. To ensure
this success, it’s important to observe a number of best practices.

Explain the benefits of ePortfolios to students

ePortfolios can: help learners develop new or deeper learning, which results in
higher grades; help learners develop a better sense of themselves as students and
as individuals; be shared with friends and family members; and showcase learners’
achievements when they are applying for a job.

Establish clear expectations

Explain to your students what you expect them to do in their ePortfolios. Learners
may have difficulty understanding the need for them to reflect on their work and
the need for them to make connections between different courses and
experiences.
Provide numerous examples of successful ePortfolios created by students

Direct students to examples of effective ePortfolios created by Waterloo

students, like Inkless, a project-focused ePortfolio created by Mechatronics
Engineering student Kevin Liu or this ePortfolio by Knowledge Integration student
Danielle Cruz that features “course skills spotlights” and more.

Scaffold student learning

Help students start small: ask them to choose just one artifact (such as an essay)
and have them reflect on the challenges they had to address as they wrote their
essay. Or, have the students select two assignments from different courses, and
have them reflect on how each of those assignments helped them to better
understand the other assignment.

Walk the talk

Create an ePortfolio for yourself and share it with your students. You’ll better
understand the challenges and benefits of maintaining an ePortfolio, and it will also
persuade students that it is a useful endeavour.

Tie ePortfolios to assessment

Maintaining an ePortfolio demands a significant amount of time and energy from

students, and they will resent it if their time and energy are not reflected in their
final grade. If ePortfolios are merely an optional assignment that is encouraged but
not required, most students will not undertake one.

Make it social

Integrate viewing and commenting on other students’ ePortfolios as part of the

assessment. You could, for example, have a link to each student’s blog in the online
space that your course has in your university’s LMS. Additionally, you could create
a discussion forum in that online space where students make helpful and
encouraging comments on one another’s ePortfolios. The ePortfolios, then, become
an integral part of the online community of students. Adam Rothman, of
Georgetown University, refers to this approach as the hub-and-spoke model.

Assessment of ePortfolios
Because ePortfolios require a significant investment of time and energy from
students, it is important that they be assessed carefully, and that the assessment
contributes in a substantial way to a student’s final grade in a course. However,
there are challenges to assessing ePortfolios: how, for example, does one evaluate
the quality of a student’s “reflections”? Furthermore, if students come to see
their ePortfolios as “just another assignment,” then they will not engage with it in
an authentic way and it may become just another “hoop” for them to jump through.
Helen Barret (2005) suggests that “high stakes assessment and accountability are
killing ePortfolios as a reflective tool to support deep learning.” A balance needs to
be found, one that strives to help students appreciate the genuine benefits that
they will experience by developing an ePortfolio that captures their work and
personal reflections, but which also acknowledges that assessing ePortfolios is not
a merely “subjective” matter. In other words, ePortfolios can be personal in nature,
and yet still assessable by objective standards.

Perhaps the best way to overcome these assessment challenges, while still ensuring
that students benefit from their ePortfolios, is to assess ePortfolios with a rubric
(such as this rubric developed by the University of Wisconsin). Furthermore,
consistent formative feedback, either left by the instructor or by other students,
helps learners maintain motivation to work on their ePortfolio, while also providing
feedback to assist in subsequent reflections or other additions to their work. In
this case, there is no need to provide a grade for the work they have contributed –
scaffolded feedback to guide them in their learning journey can be very beneficial.

A blog is much simpler:

 A blog is normally a single page of entries. There may be archives of

older entries, but the "main page" of a blog is all anyone really cares
about.
 A blog is organized in reverse-chronological order, from most recent
entry to least recent.
 A blog is normally public -- the whole world can see it.
 The entries in a blog usually come from a single author.
 The entries in a blog are usually stream-of-consciousness. There is no
particular order to them. For example, if I see a good link, I can throw
 it in my blog. The tools that most bloggers use make it incredibly easy
to add entries to a blog any time they feel like it.
In this article, you will have a chance to enter the world of blogging. You will
even learn how to create your own blog and publish it to the world.

A typical blog has a main page and nothing else. On the main page, there is a
set of entries. Each entry is a little text blurb that may contain embedded
links out to other sites, news stories, etc. When the author adds a new
entry, it goes at the top, pushing all the older entries down. This blog also
has a right sidebar that contains additional permanent links to other sites
and stories. The author might update the sidebar weekly or monthly.

Basically, a blog is a lot like an online journal or diary. The author can talk
about anything and everything. Many blogs are full of interesting links that
the author has found. Blogs often contain stories or little snippets of
information that are interesting to the author.

Even though blogs can be completely free-form, many blogs have a focus. For
example, if a blogger is interested in technology, the blogger might go to the
Consumer Electronics Show and post entries of the things he/she sees
there. If a blogger is interested in a certain disease, he/she might post
every news article and every piece of research he/she finds on the disease.
If a blogger is interested in economic issues, he/she might post links to
articles that discuss the economy and then offer commentary on them.

There are people who use their blogs simply as a scrapbook -- a form of
online memory. Whenever the author finds a link or a snippet of information
that he/she wants to remember, it gets posted in the blog. Even if no one
else ever looks at it, it is still useful to the author because the blog is a
searchable electronic medium that the author can access with a Web
browser anywhere in the world.
In other words, a blog can be anything the author wants it to be. The thing
that all blogs have in common is the reverse-chronological ordering of
entries.

The Blogosphere
PREV NEXT

One thing about blogs that is so fascinating is the interlinking. There are
millions of people keeping active blogs, and bloggers often tend to look at
other people's blogs. When they see something they like in their favorite
blogs, bloggers will often link to and comment on it.

All of this tight interlinking has created a phenomenon known as

the blogosphere. The blogosphere consists of all the cross-linked blogs.
Once you arrive at one blog in the blogosphere, it will often have links that
connect you to many of the other sites in the blogosphere. You can bounce
around in the blogosphere for years if you like that sort of thing.
www.site123.com

easydocmerge.com

A concept map or conceptual diagram is a diagram that depicts suggested relationships

between concepts.[1] It is a graphical tool that instructional designers, engineers, technical
writers, and others use to organize and structure knowledge.
A concept map typically represents ideas and information as boxes or circles, which it connects
with labeled arrows in a downward-branching hierarchical structure. The relationship between
concepts can be articulated in linking phrases such as causes, requires, or contributes to.[2]
The technique for visualizing these relationships among different concepts is called concept
mapping. Concept maps have been used to define the ontology of computer systems, for
example with the object-role modeling or Unified Modeling Language formalism.’

Thinking Maps and graphic organizers are NOT the same thing.

Let me start by analyzing the titles of each.

Graphic = picture; organizer= to arrange or order. Graphic organizers
are a visual way to put things into categories or order.
Thinking – a critical and creative activity of the mind; maps = provide
guidance and direction. Thinking Maps provide people with guidance and
direction for their critical and creative thinking.

The key difference is in the THINKING involved.

Graphic organizers are generally blackline masters with blank spaces

for students to fill in. If students are given a web with 4 bubbles, they
write 4 answers in the bubbles. If they are given a cute picture of a
hamburger with a top and bottom bun, a hamburger and some lettuce,
they write on each of the pictures.
Thinking Maps should never be blackline masters that students fill in.
Each map should be drawn by the student to represent whatever kind
of thinking the student is doing. Each map, like each child’s thoughts,
should be unique and individualized.
I collect graphic organizers like some people collect bears and angels. I
have over 700 of them in notebooks in my office. There are 8, just 8,
Thinking Maps, each one representing a fundamental thought process.
Students will never “own” hundreds of graphic organizers. Those belong
to the teacher who assigns the worksheet. Within a few days, students
can “own” Thinking Maps; they can be taught the maps in order for
them to become independent thinkers, using whatever map represents
their thinking.
One graphic organizer is rarely used with another. Thinking Maps are
really the most effective when they are used in combination. Students
can use a Circle Map to brainstorm; a Tree Map to classify and
elaborate their ideas; and a Flow Map to organize those elaborated
ideas into a piece of writing. Or that same student might decide to
identify the causes and effects of a problem using a Multi-Flow Map
before moving on to another map to continue their thinking.
There are lots of other differences which I will continue to explain
after I hear from you. Once you have been trained in the maps, you will
learn that other than both of them being visuals, there really is
nothing else graphic organizers and Thinking Maps have in common.