Here are a few features that would excite me:
- It won’t be just a digital folder. The killer eportfolio app will be about much more than assessment.
- It will be used all year long, not just at assessment time at the end of the year.
- It will be a work platform, not just an archive for assessment.
- It will have elements of social networking, featuring personal profiles and a variety of communication devices, such as blogging, micro-blogging, discussion forums, and commenting.
- It will easily and invitingly accept multimedia products.
- All products will be critiqueable with commenting or threaded discussion, by educators, fellow students, and the verifiable community.
- It will also have components of a course management system. There will be curriculum structures within the platform so that work can be aligned, at least implicitly, with instructional objectives.
- There will be a facility to critique work based beyond mere foundational standards. Work will also be judged on inventiveness, collaboration, quality of communication, compellingness, value to an authentic audience.
- “Standards” will play a minimal roll in this product.
- It will facility portability, so that students can carry their portfolios with them to the next grade and/or as a standalone product on CD or other networked platform.
- It will not merely be classroom-friendly. It will be user-friendly, regardless of the location of the learning.
- Students will want to spend time here. They will have a strong voice and hand in what it looks like and how it operates.
- Students will be able to enter products that are not necessarily curriculum related, such as personal video and machinima creations, art work, game scores, business ventures, and products of personal and passionate interest.
- The work will belong to the students.
- Students, teachers, and parents will participate in selecting the work that is assessed.
- Assessment will be school-based, government-based, and community-based.
- It will preferably be open source, but not necessarily so.
- The social aspects will be reasonably open. Students (and teachers) will be able to collaborate across classroom and school (and even national) boundaries.
- Assessment will be based on content, quality & compellingness of the communication, and value.
- All learning products will include an element of reflection by its producer.
- It will become the talk of the town.
