Welcome from Instructor

Welcome to this resource for learning about Implementing ePortfolios in K-12 Education with GoogleApps. I am Dr. Helen Barrett and I designed this workshop and online course. I am in the process of writing a book on Interactive Portfolios to guide K-12 schools as they implement learning portfolios for students and teachers.

I've been studying the implementation of electronic portfolios since 1991, when I wrote a report for the Alaska Department of Education. Just think about what technology was like twenty years ago! The Internet was just invented by Tim Berners-Lee, and would not be available to the public for several years. I studied electronic portfolio tools that were developed in Hypercard, HyperStudio and a commercial system from Scholastic! All of those portfolio systems were desktop-computer-based. 

Since that time, I have witnessed the evolution of electronic portfolios from desktop computers (1991) to CD-ROMs (1995) to DVDs (2001), to the Internet (2004), to mobile devices (2010). I started a website on electronic portfolios at the University of Alaska Anchorage in 1995, and moved it to my own domain name in 2001: http://electronicportfolios.org. In more recent years, I have created more than 20 public Google Sites to support training activities and general information on electronic portfolios for the public.

I have developed several versions of my own electronic portfolio:

• My Retention, Tenure and Promotion portfolio in PDF on CD-ROM with embedded video (1996-2002) 

• http://electronicportfolios.org/samples/Barrett2K.pdf with my artifacts accumulated in a separate PDF file http://electronicportfolios.org/samples/artifacts.pdf

• My Blogger blog, which is really my learning portfolio (2004-now)

• http://electronicportfolios.org/blog/now http://blog.helenbarrett.org/

• My Online Portfolio Adventure, where I experimented with a variety of online services/tools/strategies for presentation portfolios:   http://electronicportfolios.org/myportfolio/index.html

• I created a portfolio in 2004, and recreated it over 39 times since then. I recently added new versions using some of the tools you could try for your portfolios:

  • Google Sites (in my own GoogleApps site): http://sites.helenbarrett.net/portfolio/ (2008)

  • WordPress.com: http://hbarrett.wordpress.com/my-portfolio/ (2006)

  • Weebly.com: http://hbarrett.weebly.com/ (2011)

  • Yola.com: http://hbarrett.yolasite.com/ (2011)

• My Portable Presentation Portfolio on my iPad converted to Keynote from Powerpoint (2010) (iWork Version)

I implemented CD-ROM-based electronic portfolios with our graduate students at the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2000-2001, when I wrote several successful Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to use Technology grants (PT3). In 2001, I wrote another PT3 grant with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), which allowed me to work with Teacher Education programs throughout the country on the implementation of electronic portfolios (2001-2005). When the grant was over in 2005, I spent two years conducting a high school research project for Taskstream, one of the commercial providers of Assessment Management and ePortfolio tools, primarily for the education community. After that research was over, I have been focusing on national and international training and consulting, in both K-12 and higher education, and writing a book. I discovered Web 2.0 in 2006, and have focused a lot of my training and presentations on how to implement ePortfolios "in the cloud" (so to speak). I started teaching a course on "Issues and Advances in Educational Technology" for Seattle Pacific University after seeing how they have adopted my Web 2.0 strategies, with their students developing bPortfolios (blog-portfolios) using WordPress.com.

I am also an Apple Distinguished Educator, and privileged to participate in ADE events and trainings. At last summer's ADE Institute, I saw how schools were using iPads and iPod Touch devices to support student learning. My current research is on how to implement ePortfolios with mobile devices:  https://sites.google.com/site/mportfolios/  I did a workshop entitled, "Hands-on mPortfolio Development with iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)" at the ISTE conference in Philadelphia on June 25, 2011. My latest presentations are asking the question, "Is the future of ePortfolios in your pocket?" I love my iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch!

I am looking forward to working with you on implementing portfolios with GoogleApps, from collecting digital work in one place "in the cloud" to helping your students build their own digital identity so that they want to use the portfolio process to support their lifelong learning. Through this process, I encourage you to create your own professional portfolio using some of the same GoogleApps tools your students will be using.

For those of you who have never published a video online, I will also share with you the power of adding voice to a portfolio using digital storytelling. I am convinced that there is a lot of power in the digital storytelling process, and I will share some of my examples and a video development process that you can enter at whatever your level of technology competency.