News

28 October 2005 - E-portfolio 2005, Cambridge

Run by ElfEL (the European Institute for e-learning), the conference was preceded by a plugfest and it was good to see the progress that has been made in getting systems to inter-operate together. There’s an emerging consensus that the bigger technical problems are on their way to being solved, and it’s refreshing to see that inter-operability is no longer the biggest issue now for e-portfolios. So rather than asking: “Will they inter-operate?” people can begin to focus more on how they are used in a learning context.

MyKnowledgeMap’s Managing Director, Rob Arntsen, presented a tailored e-portfolio solution for a complete industry sector to the conference. He described a system, tailored to a client’s needs, that could support every kind of user, and that could focus especially on those with little time and few IT skills.

The presentation met with an enthusiastic response. Many delegates felt that in the past there had not been enough focus on work in vocational learning, and saw the presentation as a powerful demonstration of the way things could go in the future in this area.

Delivering the keynote speech was Helen Barrett, self-designated “Grandmother of e-portfolios”, who has promoted the idea of e-portfolios for many years and who must be credited with working hard to make this a central idea in the world of education.

While it was exciting to hear from the people who are influential in the drafting of the new e-learning standards, it was also very rewarding to hear from people actually using e-portfolios.

A good dinner, and an enjoyable ceilidh at Chilford Hall made the conference an enjoyable, as well as exciting, experience, and it was good to see so many familiar faces from the learning technology sector.