About EdCube

1 EdCube History 2 What is an EdCube digital portfolio? 3 Student Decision-Making 4 EdCube Student Interface - Personalised and Intuitive 5 EdCube Student Interfaces 6 EdCube File Size Management 7 EdCube Parent Access 8 Getting Started with Digital Folios in your School

1 EdCube History  

EdCube digital portfolio has been under development in Australia since 2002. EdCube's programming team established an alliance with Essendon North Primary School in Victoria to test and inform the development of the program. Essendon North Primary School , one of Victoria 's original Navigator Schools has received international acclaim as a leader in the use of authentic learning technologies in the classroom.

Feedback from teachers and students helped inform the development of EdCube which has ensured that the program is an industry leader in backend programming to compress the file size of student folios. EdCube is pedagogically rich in supporting the celebration of learning.

In essence, the alliance with the school has ensured that EdCube has been developed in Australia by teachers for teachers.

2 What is an EdCube digital portfolio?

EdCube digital portfolios allow students to develop collections of their work to showcase their efforts, progress and achievements. The student portfolio provides a learning journey which can be a springboard to communication and collaboration with teachers, parents and peers.

Many schools use the digital folio to reflect students as learners and to provide evidence of authentic learning which incorporates publishing, communication, collaboration, assessment and reporting.

The EdCube digital portfolio provides the following opportunities:

• Showcase and promote the student as a learner
• The student to reflect on their learning
• Foster authentic conversations about learning (individual and peer)
• The ability to set and track progress
• Represent what, how and why a student is learning
• Create a learning profile over several year levels
• Foster rich assessment and reporting

3 Student Decision-Making

Student centred decision-making is a key objective in the creation of student digital portfolios.

EdCube has been designed to promote student decision making in the following areas:

•  What creations (document or file) will I publish and celebrate?
•  What dialogue do I want to add to the creation to provide a context?
•  How will I promote peer discussion on this creation?
•  What will my interface look like and why?
•  How many layers will I create to my portfolio and why?

To assist students to focus and reflect on their decisions, it is suggested that schools use digital folios to develop a holistic profile of the student and select up to four areas that reflect your school's values or learning outcomes as a basis for the folio.

4 EdCube Student Interface - Personalised and Intuitive

Many other digital portfolio providers simply provide banks of programmed templates that students use to publish their work. The presentation and structure of the portfolio is an integrated part of the learning journey.

EdCube provides a key design feature in this learning journey by allowing students to easily design and publish their own interfaces. Students can choose colours, fonts, and shapes by clicking student-friendly toolbars . The student interface can be easily personalised and changed daily to reflect the published work.

EdCube allows students to tier and scaffold their work through developing a layered approach to presenting work.

Maureen O'Rourke (2004) recommends the following with regard to templates:

"Once focus areas and indicators are decided, it is desirable to develop a template for or with students that both scaffolds and guides their portfolio development. This should still allow them to express their individuality (in more than a design sense) and follow through original ideas."

5 EdCube Student Interfaces

Many schools have selected EdCube due to the flexibility of the interfaces and student-orientated design features.

We are in the process of creating "themes" that will give students additional creative options without the need for the use of "templates" that can constrain students' creativity. The new "themes" will also facilitate customisation of screens with the school crest, title and colours.

6 EdCube File Size Management

It is essential that schools consider the server space they will require to host student portfolios. If not planned or controlled, student portfolios will consume an enormous amount of server space and will become a very expensive initiative.

Most e-folio providers suggest that you limit the size of the folio for each student or teach students to compress their work. At EdCube, we acknowledge that these initiatives will create problems for teachers and students that will affect the quality of the folio or the ease of publishing.

EdCube offers schools a unique technical solution that will manage and compress file size. EdCube offers schools with a server client and a student client. The server client is installed on the school server that hosts the student folios and the student client is installed on school or home computers. The benefits of this technical solution include:

•  The size of each file is compressed automatically as a student uploads the document into their portfolio. The server client compresses all types of files.

•  When students access the file from a home or school computer, the student client works with the server client to enable automatic compression and fast downloads.

•  EdCube allows students to easily work on their portfolio from school and home which can overcome problems of computer access at school.

•  Students simply access their folios by selecting their class and clicking on their name.

•  EdCube allows schools to publish and distribute student portfolios on CD.

7 EdCube Parent Access

EdCube's unique technical solution also offers parents full access to viewing their child's portfolio. Our system means that if parents do not have the same programs on their computer at work or home (i.e. Publisher, Kidspiration, Microworlds etc) they will still be able to view all of their child's work through the password protected EdCube Internet portal.

Most other providers expect that parents will need these applications installed on their computers. Obviously this does not happen and these files cannot be shared or celebrated.

8 Getting Started with Digital Folios in your School

Introducing digital portfolios in your school is an exciting and rewarding experience as you unleash the learning potential in your students. It is important, however, that you consider a carefully planned implementation strategy. Maureen O'Rourke (2004) recommends the following 10 steps when introducing digital portfolios:

1. Clarify the purpose - take time to, scope and audience for digital learning portfolios
2. Start small - identify a pioneering team of volunteers willing to invest time and energy into the exploratory stages of development
3. Develop focus areas - identify cross-curriculum attributes, competencies or skills that are highly valued by the community and necessary for effective learning
4. Develop indicators for each focus area - develop shared understandings of each focus area and two to three indicators of development in that area
5. Include opportunities for goal setting, reflection, feedback and critique - the design of the portfolio needs to provide a scaffold for students to clearly identify their starting points and development goals so that evidence of change over time can be gathered. Obtaining feedback and commentary and acting of these can also contribute to such change efforts
6. Develop classroom management and organisation strategies - this includes developing a template that provides an effective scaffold for students; teaching file management and archiving habits; integrating time for construction into the regular program; working with small groups and facilitating peer or cross-age tutoring/mentoring; and progressively scaling up
7. Continually clarify expectations with students - conversations about the learning, evidence selection and progress are vital aspects of portfolio development. It is not simply a technical exercise
8. Plan logistics of technology provision - this includes skilling of staff and students, access to hardware including peripherals, adequacy of network capacity, software recommendations, and technical trouble-shooting
9. Develop a whole school learning and change plan - this should include ways to support a pioneering team, opportunities to share learning and raise consciousness about the work, professional learning of staff and a long term plan for scaling up.
10. Provide opportunities for students to communicate to interested audiences - the social process that encompasses the use of digital portfolios is generally more valuable than the portfolio product

There is a place for digital learning portfolios in schools, used purposefully in tandem with other ways of documenting student learning. Provided they are focused, involve students in design, decision-making, goal-setting and reflection and concentrate on holistic development of the person rather than cumulative curriculum outcomes - they have much to offer. Not only do they provide a richer picture of what students know, understand and can do, they can be a catalyst for genuine learning partnerships between teachers and students and an assessment and learning tool that is a more adequate match for the complex learning goals, pedagogy and curriculum of the 21 st century.