Nils, I'm very glad my

catherine — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 05:45:37 -0500

Nils, I'm very glad my original post has prompted this long exchange, or "interchange". I would hope that the process has helped us to examine the issues, and our own thinking, far more deeply. Barbara Cambridge would probably argue that the visible changes within a blog or blogs is precisely what evidences individual learning... Yet I still believe this constructivist approach is often at odds with the presentational aspect of portfolios, and that this tension may be compounded by certain professional norms and practices. We may conceive our blog practice in terms of positive values, like community, trust, and transparency. These values are widely shared, but not all cultures and communities define them the same way and (as you've discovered) that is where conflict can occur. As educators, we will fail our students if we do not recognise the nature, and the specificity, of our own cultural norms. I'll blog more about this later.

Blog as ePortfolio-- a request to change my personal history

nils_peterson — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 17:03:06 -0500

The discussion of persistent identity started by Catherine Howell's post has taken another turn for me that she presaged in her reasons not to use blogs in education (see below).

" Persistence: the persistence of blogs (via permalinks, trackbacks etc, to say nothing of the recently-sued Wayback Machine) is at odds with the desire to create a personal repository that can be selectively shared and edited, over time. "

In replying to the thread he started, Andrew Middleton says

"I am not sure how important it is to consider blog entries as being representative of a person. When we read a blog don't we understand that the ideas are transient?"

Stephen Downes took several issues with Catherine, one of which agreed with Middleton

"Leaving aside our ability to read dates, this concern misrepresents blogs as a static information base rather than the stream it actually is."

My take on the discussion was to own up to my past selves and suggest that they are evidence of my growth to my present state

"I believe I am continuing to grow as a learner and that my responsibility to myself and to you the reader is to connect my current self to my past selves and to explain how I understand the evolution. In "The Social Life of Learning: How can Continuing Education be Reconfigured in the Future," John Seely Brown talks about a spectacular failure and what he learned from it. He connects to failure associated with his past identity."

Now this twist. Back in January 2005 I commented on David Supple's quote to the BBC regarding the role of blogs in higher education.

Supple has now written me to request that I pull my post as he has take another position and is trying to disassociate himself from that past. He is asking me to delete from my portfolio an element of my history. Leaving aside Howell's reminders about archives and the Wayback machine, (I've not tried, but) certainly the BBC story, or the EDUCAUSE email news service where I read the story, will continue to exist to remind Supple of his past.

So, David, here is what I have to offer. For better or worse, you said what you said to the BBC and I said what I said about it. Mine reflects on me. And Catherine, this is a counter-example to your concern, I've just extended my portfolio with this post to explain how I am continuing to reflect on, and deepen, my understanding and practice of blog-as-portfolio. That old post is more valuable to me now, than it was, because of this interchange. David, I'd suggest that you get a blog and start building your portfolio, and address, or not, how you have grown in your thinking since the BBC quoted you.

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Nils, I'm very glad my

Blog as ePortfolio-- a request to change my personal history