More on ePortfolios

A few weeks ago I mentioned ePortfolios and since then I have been thinking through the different items that would make up such a tool. An ePortfolio allows a learner to to develop a portfolio of work/artifacts that show their learning, skills, accomplishments and development. Blogs provide a framework publish these items and when the blog is outside a corporate environment can move with the writer. The draw back of blogs is there is no easy method for others to "certify" the work, once the learner has completed a learning session. The certification allows others to see that the artifact has a reputation that can be trusted. However trackback and comments allow an ad-hoc peer review process but this is not "complete" enough to certify the learner has actually achieved to the stated objectives.

Harold Jarche talks about some of the different components that might form the framework for an ePortfolio system, however he does not mention ePortfolios. He mentioned a tool called Ping that seems to be developing in the right direction.

Some of the tools being developed by Technorati might be augmented to assist, however new ones would be required to fully enable an ePortfolio. Maybe the vote extension could be enhanced to provide a framework for others to certify the qualify of the work. The XFN framework could help develop peer networks during the course of a learning activity.

I have been looking at Plone as a possible tool to use as the framework for a ePortfolio (thanks to George Siemens from eLearnSpace for pointing me in the right direction). The tools seems very similar to MovableType, I hope to get some time soon to install it and see where it takes me.

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