http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-digital-identity.html
To borrow some comments from Helen Barrett, who cites Gary Brown, one aspect of e-portfolio technology is a shift from the idea that a learner takes a course from a particular institution or that a learner has a particular source or a particular authority that is teaching them or representing the state of the world to them. (Grush, 2008) More and more learning is happening online and, according to Brown, 50 percent of students are studying from multiple sources, multiple institutions, often at the same time. So the very idea that any system like a learning management system or an e-portfolio system as something that is created and managed by the institution seems in a way seriously misguided. If people are taking things from multiple institutions, then if we have an application that is a single point of reference for their learning, then that application must be of multi-institutional.
Brown also suggests that the ePortfolio is becoming or adapting to Web 2.0. The idea here is that the ePortfolio resembles less and less a content management systems (CMS) and is less and less a single place or location where students put all their work, and becomes more and more what is being referred to as a personal learning environment (PLE). The personal learning environment adapts, adopts and embraces Web 2.0 methodologies and in particular applications that can make inquiries of other applications using things like AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) and REST (Representational State Transfer) based technology. (O'Reilly, 2005)
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Think about two people with two identical properties? Two hockey playerers may have the property of having 'scored 32 goals', say. For one player, that's a great achievement, the peak of his career. But for another player, it's his career in decline. He's going to have to retire now. The present is informed by the past; what we understand of the present entity is informed by that entity's past states. And there's also the future, what one could be.
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So the idea of generating a resource profile - the idea of creating an identity, whether for a person or a resource - is pooling this metadata together. A person persists through time and space, projects through time and space. In the same way, and for much the same reasons, resources also persist and project through time and space. Different people with different needs and different perspectives may pool different bits of information, from different sources. A prospective romantic partner will be interested in different properties of an individual than will a prospective employer. So the idea of generating a resource profile - the idea of creating an identity, whether for a person or a resource - is pooling this metadata together. A person persists through time and space, projects through time and space. In the same way, and for much the same reasons, resources also persist and project through time and space. Different people with different needs and different perspectives may pool different bits of information, from different sources. A prospective romantic partner will be interested in different properties of an individual than will a prospective employer.
So with this link and the contents of Stephen's assertion, I believe that we need to rethink our use of "ePortfolio" and consider our initiative to be one that addresses the PLE. Much more powerful and less rooted in the old school static world of a more "traditional" portfolio. Thoughts?
I feel we have been taking steps towards the PLE model. I remember when Carla and the group started talking about renaming "blogs as portfolio" to "personal learning communities".
One aspect of this piece is that identity comes from many sources. PSU and blogs@psu is just one such source. Students are going to be wanting and needing to craft their identity by pulling in pieces from places other than just PSU. Where do they do this? Using a PSU system?
Well, that is the question I have -- especially in light of Scott's diagram of the future "VLE" notion. I see the blog as the centerpiece. Is that what you see? It is the place where it can all come together. How far are we from making that leap?
The blog could be the place where it comes together. But is that the right place? Will students want to have their actual identity be hosted at PSU? Or does PSU just host their PSU portions of their identity? Do we even care about other elements of their identity (I think we do, to some extent).