The Eportfolio

Recently a colleague gave me a heads up about a neat course: Networks for Learning. It is taught by Tony Hursh one of the teachers in an online masters program for teachers in The College of Education at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Online Masters of Education program, Curriculum, Technology, and Education Reform (CTER), promotes the integration of technology into the classroom. I followed links to what his scholars were producing in their Eportfolios.


The course outline is fabulous. It is exactly what I want to do with my scholars. I've started them getting a Google account so we can use all the tools. I want to add a wiki, twitter, delicious and some more web 2.0 tools. I want to use the capacity of my imacs to make podcasts and videos using GarageBand and HD movie respectively. Now his scholars are teachers and trainers whereas mine are high schoolers. We've seen success at this level for years. I love the project expectation. This looks like a cool course.

When I start reviewing the projects these teachers created, I was impressed and inspired. They are making magnificent multimedia projects for their scholars. I loved the use of the video, of the hypertext links, and the look of the pages. All the pedagogical concepts we have learned in education have been beautifully interwoven from Dewey to Gardner, from Mann to Papert while all the time Bloom is lurking in the background. Of course Vygotsky and Freire are hovering above cheering them on. The use of all the intelligences, the appeal to all the senses is very Zen.

So many connections and interweaving of past and present occur. Take the Mythology project by Michael Geraghty. The hero's journey is explored. He uses the usual suspects and adds the modern myth to the mix from Urban Legends to the classic American myth of Superman. This project will be inhaled by his scholars.

Going to a Parts of Speech project this greeting welcomes me.

In this Parts of Speech unit, you will watch videos, read articles, look at pictures, and complete activities to review what you already know and increase your knowledge about the eight parts of speech.

All the lessons follows this template of videos, text, and graphics. This is very appealing and effective with our scholars.


Hursh is very adept at using the technology and driving his scholars to also use it, too. This is a very inspiring course and website for us to roam around and be inspired. It is a good model for those of us looking for examples of how web 2.0 is being used in the class and is being used to prepare teachers to use technology in the classroom.

I was not surprised to see Hursh use one of my favorite videos The Machine is Us/ing Us - by Michael Wesch.