Blogs and e-Portfolios: can they support reflection, evidencing and dialogue in teacher training? (Cotterill et al a e-portfolios http://www.aldinhe.ac.uk/ojs/index.php?journal=jldhe&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=97&path%5B%5D=51 ) and
Designing and Building an On-line Community: The Struggle to Support Sociability in the Inquiry Learning Forum (Barab et al a Inquiry Learning Forum
http://scholar.google.ca/scholar_url?hl=en&q=http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.124.8254%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm1An7o9VYbJVAp99Fivs1tb4DBC9Q&oi=scholarr&ei=uuToUMGZO9C0igLHtYG4Cw&ved=0CC4QgAMoADAA ) Creating an online component for my photography course that centres on an inquiry-based approach to teaching allows students to take ownership of their learning. Students will be creating e-portfolios to demonstrate and reflect on the learning outcomes in the course. Collaborative learning groups will create a student-centered resource page to catalogue the best resources for class use. My concerns are participation and engagement with the use of e-portfolio and blogging and the establishment of a sense of community in an on-line environment.
Cotterill et al documented the use of e-portfolios by student teachers to facilitate reflection, supply evidence of learning and provide dialogue among students, peers and instructors in an on-line environment. The study found that the student teachers recognised and valued the e-portfolio use for reflection and evidencing of their learning, but the discussion and dialogue had mixed results. I will be asking my high school students to participate in the same reflection, evidence gathering and dialogue using e-portfolios just as the University required it of their student teachers. The student teachers were engaged and operating under “a culture” of e-portfolios over a three-year period. As Cotterill points out, "there is a general acceptance in education that reflection is a good thing”. I believe this is a crucial observation having witnessed that it took two years to establish "a culture” of accepting an inquiry-based learning approach in my courses. Hence, I may have to reconcile myself to the idea that my first year using e-portfolios may not have the desired high level of acceptance and positive reaction. An interesting finding was student teachers were not always participating in commenting on each other’s blogs but were reading their peers blog entries. Students were hesitant to be critical or add any personal expression to another student’s blog. Most student teachers were more comfortable using social networking sites, such as a group Facebook page, to create dialogue. For my class, it will be interesting to witness if my students will feel comfortable commenting on their peers blogs or will they just be quiet “lurkers”, reading only?
Many articles and blog entries are written about establishing a sense of on-line community with learners. In Barab et al, the article describes the use of “a website to support a virtual community of inservice and preservice mathematics and science teachers that are sharing, improving and creating inquiry-based learning pedagogical practices”. Barab provides a definition of a community of practise as being “a collection of individuals sharing mutually defined practices, beliefs, and understandings over an extended time frame in the pursuit of a shared enterprise.” This definition encompasses what I want my photography classes to be. Barab states that "their commitment to community, perhaps more than any other principle, has shaped the design of the learning forum, and we believe will prove to be the largest hurdle in our work.” If a group of science and math teachers struggle with an on-line community for learning and sharing their work, I wonder how I will be able to facilitate a sense of online community with high school students in photography? The answer may lie in the Barab et al declaration “the important aspect of community is that its members take ownership in the community and work to build it and maintain it.” My photography students will be building and maintaining their resource page and e-portfolios, allowing the students full ownership of their learning.
My conclusions after reading and extracting the relevant points from two articles are: one, expecting full engagement and participation in e-portfolios and blogging at the high school level may be an over-the-top goal, but one that is worthwhile establishing; and two, creating a sense of on-line community with my photography class will happen to a much greater degree if I hand over the control and ownership of the learning to my students.
As scary as all this sounds, I am ready to embark in unchartered territory and hopefully, through documentation of the process, encourage other teachers not only to experience inquiry-based learning, but to stretch the boundaries of the classroom to an online environment and hand over the control so students take ownership of their learning journeys.