Blogs as e-Portfolios

I came across a very interesting article by Prof. Peter Baumgartner: Competency-Based Education with Weblogs and e-Portfolios: A Challenge for Developing a New Learning Culture. He describes the

[...] need for a special meta-language, which effectively supports the training of competencies and capabilities. In the area of the progression of scientific thinking, of the knowledge acquisition procedure and the control of the own learning process we lack an important tool – a training language supporting teaching activities.

Weblogs and e-Portfolios could be this training language, since the entries are dated and chronological, short (containing mainly one idea), and those single ideas can be linked and tracked back.

I would not say Weblogs and e-Portfolios, I would say Weblogs as e-Portfolios. Ever since the session about e-Portfolios at the educamp, I am convinced that a Weblog would provide all the functions needed for an e-Portfolio.

In addition to the functions mentioned by Baumgartner, all the entries of such a Blog/e-Portfolio can be tagged in multiple ways and organized in categories.

Especially important for a language e-Portfolio, digital audio and video files can also be uploaded or pdf-files can be linked to an entry. Hence an entry can contain material demonstrating the language skills, and the reflection on the language acquisition, learning process, and strategies…

Here is a Blog entry from the EduTechi.com Blog (written by Jeff VanDrimmelen, Academic Computing Expert from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), naming advantages of an e-Portfolio with a foreign language focus. He also gives a list of possible tool for creating or adding to such an e-Portfolio, besides using Weblogs.