Creating Personal Learning Environments AKA Students and Their ePortfolios

The ePortfolio has moved beyond being a document holder and marketing tool for displaying career paths and acquired skills. It has become a dynamic mixed media site evolving and developing with videos, wikis, blogs and social networking links. This poster presentation focuses on the use of ePortfolio as a productive instrument for use by students and teachers as a collaborative learning-teaching tool that benefits students during the learning process and afterward during their career path. It is an electronic resource to connect educational and academic goals with personal and professional goals and experiences. Using both intrinsic or extrinsic motivation and "portfolio thinking processes" ePortfolios created by students provide them the opportunity of designing and developing their "Personal Learning Environment" for continued self directed lifelong learning. It is a media-rich showcase where individuals reflect on their prior learning experience, document achievements, develop strategic plans for growth, and promote awareness of needed developmental skills for better growth outcomes. It is a project builder and assessment tool which serves as both an application of their individual "Personal Learning Environments" and then as a media tool presenting them through social networks which move across intra and inter professional boundaries and communities of lifelong learners. It is an evolving showcase of stored personal bests, reflective of current developmental strategies, and a glimpse of future visions, professional growth and opportunities.