Social Pedagogy

Feedback and using the power of feedback – it is powerful in improving the process of going through a task and in both student and teacher self regulation.  Peer assess and self-assess allows students to get feedback without having to say something that might be comfortable sharing (or even be aware of) during the class. The nature of the portfolio allows them more opportunity to share their thinking – it isn’t time bound.

Knowledge community – a place where the students collaborate through eportoflio to create/show expertise in a specific area.

Do students need to be engaged before using eportfolio or can eportfolio be a tool for increasing engagement?

In trying to use comment feature to increase communication but it needs to be more structured and have value/grades associated with the commenting. 

Relationship between inquiry and reflection – which do you tackle first? Commenting on a course eportfolio the engagement is different than when commenting on a course eportfolio. Higher level of engagement when work is coming from personal eportfolio.

Pg 5 reflection article – reflection as a personal practice even in the absence of content – can reflect on the structure of the course and everyone can get involved. Puts reflection first and the content second. 

What is the difference between process reflections and product reflection?

After a period of time, students took more responsibility for commenting and keeping the ball rolling.

What does eportfolio add that we can’t do otherwise?

-        If creating a project as a eportfolio then it forces the student to organize and visualize what they will be doing.

Need an eportfolio about how to create an eportfolio. Students need a resource to help them create their own eportfolio.

Every practice comes out of a course. Each part of the eportfolio is an essential product of a course. Things go better when creating the eportfolio is the focus rather than something else the focus?

-        It is more visible – can be shown off.

-        It forces a metacognitive mode on students.

Learning how to be students or learners.

-        It also give students and teachers a place to keep things.

-        A different way of presenting things.

-        A way to demonstrate what they have learned in different ways and across the board.

-        Gets student to see themselves as creators rather than consumers of knowledge and information?

-        Helps build digital literacy. They have the technology with them all the time but may not know how to use it well. Eportfolio may force them to do this more.

-        Commenting on blogs etc may help them develop skills in having conversations.

With eportfolio, the working memory of some students is so overloaded that they can’t get to the content focus/goals because the eportfolio seems so overwhelming to some students.

Could we use cycle one to provide a prototype eportfolio and then cycle 2 have students create their own?