Tag Archive for achievement

Why pay for an e-portfolio?

04/11/2009 eportfolio 3 comments

There is much talk of e-portfolios at the minute, particularly as part of recognising achievement. Throughout these conversations I’ve been thinking of something Lynne Lewis said to me when I first started my secondment. She pointed out the power of blogging as an e-portfolio. A blog can be used by pupils to record learning and achievements through video, pictures and text. It can then be read and commented upon by their parents, peers and teachers. This blog could be started in the earliest phase of their schooling and could continue throughout their school career. Pages could be created to summarise specific achievements or events. This blog could even then be continued into later life as an ongoing record of learning and development.

We’re lucky in East Lothian to have the EduBuzz system provided for us, so we’d have an e-portfolio system for free! Of course, you could use Glow instead, but I think the WordPress platform would work much better in the meantime. Perhaps when Glow has developed, this could be used instead.

Why shouldn’t we do this? I think the normal objection to this idea is along the lines of child protection/privacy. Should pupils be posting all of this information on the web? How would it be monitored? Firstly, a blog doesn’t have to be fully public. If you clicked on the link to Lynne’s blog above, you’ll see that it’s actually private. There is a selection of privacy settings within the EduBuzz system to restrict who can see your blog.

It’s also possible to mark an individual post as private.

I also think this could be used as a learning opportunity for pupils. As part of their use of their e-portfolio, they could explore the issues of what they should and shouldn’t be uploading. This could even help them to be more sensible in their use of Facebook, Bebo, MySpace etc…

And anyway, this isn’t new. Lots and lots of pupils are blogging. You need only look at Margaret Vass’ blog to see lots of examples of this. This would simply be about formalising this into an e-portfolio/record of learning & achievements and continuing it throughout the pupils’ school careers.

DoE for all?

06/09/2009 duke of edinburgh 4 comments


Ross High School pupils Silver training on Loch Tay

The TESS on Friday included an article on the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. HMIe have praised the award and want it to be extended more widely in schools. I am a huge fan of the Award. I attained Bronze, Silver and Gold at school – and even completed two Gold expeditions just for fun. I have helped out a little bit with the Award in schools as well since becoming a teacher. It is a fantastic scheme which does indeed allow young people to develop the capacities described by the Curriculum for Excellence – which is pointed out in the TESS article also.

However, I have very strong reservations regarding the idea that we roll out DoE to all pupils as part of the curriculum. The education system does need to invest in the scheme and provide it with a greater recognition within the school. However, it should not be made compulsory in my opinion. Part of the beauty of the scheme is the fact that children opt into it. If they had to take part, I worry that much of the essence and benefit would be lost. I also feel that forcing pupils to do this is actually contradictory to Curriculum for Excellence as it removes the element of choice. The danger is schools will be able to ‘tick a CfE box’ and say that their pupils are confident individuals etc because they all do DoE – however they haven’t chosen to so how engaged really would the pupils be in their own learning & development?

DoE could be brought into the mainstream life of the school, however as part of a choice. Schools could provide a range of this sort of alternative for the pupils to choose from, all of which would contribute equally to the development and achievement of the pupils.