Community ePortfolios for all?
London (UK), June 2010 - While a great deal of effort has been devoted to research on the individual ePortfolio and its implementation, the idea of a community ePortfolio has hardly been explored. Delegates to the London ePortfolio Conference (05-07 July 2010) will have the pleasure of listening to Darren Cambridge, who will present an "ePortfolio City in Augusta, Arkansas."Sponsored by the University of Arkansas, it builds on two years of print-based community literacy work. The work has yielded significant results: The number of graduating high school seniors in Augusta going on to attend university has risen from 3 to 23."
If we believe that the ePortfolio is the tool of excellence for deep learning, then it would make sense to explore further the technologies that can support the learning of learning communities and learning territories. Some of the elements that seem to emerge (and need to be discussed further) from current reflections on community ePortfolios are:
- community ePortfolios are not the mere compilation of the individual ePortfolios of their members
- it is possible to create a community ePortfolio without having to build individual ePortfolios
- individual ePortfolios can be mere byproducts of community ePortfolios
- individual stories can emerge from the construction of a collective story
- collective stories can emerge from the intertwining of individual stories.
While the use of social computing should contribute to the interconnection between individual and community ePortfolios, we are still far from it: most ePortfolios, even those claiming to use social networking features, are still in the realm of the individualistic ePortfolio. This is not due to technology, but to the fact that the very idea of a learning community, learning organisation, or learning territory tends to remain in the realm of concepts rather than moving into real life!
Most schools, universities, firms, and administrations are still far away from being learning organisations. Moreover, the social fragmentation of our communities does not contribute to the development of healthy learning communities.
Placing the ePortfolio at the heart of the learning community would transform the current vision of those looking at the ePortfolio as a means to link individual competencies with the needs of today's job market. While this certainly has some practical validity, one could also imagine ePortfolio owners not just as job seekers but as job transformers. They are individuals not simply trying to match the needs of a system that already presents so many signs of obsolescence, but to invent our future.
