Bromley ICT Forum Blog

An informal survey of Naace members on ePortfolios from Ian Usher
A few weeks ago I sent a message to the Naacetalk Advisory list - the general mailing list for members of Naace. 36 people filled in the survey to some extent. (See original article for links to a Google Spreadsheet summary):

• There’s an approximate 50-50 split between those who have selected and have yet to select their ePortfolio system;
• Most respondents are planning on using the same system for both primary and secondary phases;
• The majority of respondents plan on offering an ePortfolio to both pupils and staff;
• Two respondents anticipated that their system(s) would have more than half a million users; the majority anticipated under 100,000 users;
• Most respondents anticipate supplementing their core provision by allowing their ePortfolio system to access other (external) online storage services;
• Unsurprisingly, there’s a vast range of ideas about storage capacities for staff and pupil users at primary and secondary phases.

It’s worth pointing out that these issues of storage, capacity and availability aren’t all I am / we are thinking about as regards ePortfolios, however they’re critical so that we can enable things, hence my interest in the answers to the above questions.

Summarised version of http://moodlea.blogspot.com/2007/10/informal-survey-of-naace-members-on.html

Two cans of lager and a well-managed VLE please
Over the last few weeks Geoff L and I have been working in a number of our secondary schools, both re-visiting some who we offered training to last term and visiting some other schools for the first time. It’s been an interesting experience and some common threads have started to emerge.

• effective and involved leadership at a senior level is essential if
• the role of ICT support staff is crucial
• school staff should do what they’re employed to do - in the case of a VLE I would surmise that this means:
  • Senior Leaders providing much of the vision, leadership and resourcing for the use of a Learning Platform - without necessarily having the technical know-how of how to run the thing, although they should be aware of what it can do;
  • ICT Support Staff ensuring that everyone in school has an account and can access the system;
  • Administrative Staff ensuring (where necessary) that class lists, year groups etc, are up to date and accurate;
  • Learning Resource/Library Staff (where the school is enlightened enough to include them in its planning) being involved in planning, organising the management of and encouraging students and staff to use the VLE;
  • Teachers using the VLE to support their teaching. They should use it to enhance, extend and challenge their students and teaching;
  • Students having the (optional) role of challenging all of the above to see how things could be better… maybe.
• if the above isn’t in place to a greater extent, any learning platform implementation will not succeed, at least not on a whole-school, embedded basis.
• as has been written elsewhere around here, primary schools will drive practice in secondary schools.

Summarised version of http://moodlea.blogspot.com/2007/10/two-cans-of-lager-and-well-managed-vle.html

Reprinted from NAACE Newsletter October 2007