Mission (Statements) Impossible

On this week's episode of Mission (Statement) Impossible...
Cue the music (bum...bum...bum-bum...bum...bum...bum-bum), light the fuse, push play on the cassette player. {Play this Youtube video while you read this post to get the full effect.}

"Writing powerful, meaningful and useful mission and vision statements can be dangerous business. One false move and you could be stuck with a mish-mash of flowery language and hyperbole that leaves you meandering through your profession career with no clear direction and no end goals to work toward. Creating these statements will be difficult. You will be tempted to imitate some useless junk you came across on the Internet just to complete the assignment. Don't be lead astray! Do some self assessment to figure out what is really important to you as a professional. Rely on your team (cohort) to help you - they are the only people you can really trust. Work hard, revise, evaluate, revise again and you may just come up with something that will guide you on your professional journey and just might save the world!
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to write a professional vision statement that has actual meaning and value. As always, should you or any member of your cohort be caught or killed during this exercise, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck everyone. This blog will self-destruct in five seconds."

My apologies to Mission Impossible producer Bruce Geller and any of my cohort members who is too young to recall the original Mission Impossible TV series which ran from 1966-1973. Great stuff. If you've never seen it, it's worth grabbing a couple of episodes on Netflix. I've enjoyed the movie series with Tom Cruise, but nothing compares to the original TV series.

ePortfolio = The New "Demo Tape"

The last time I had to create a portfolio of any kind was when I was finishing up my bachelors degree in broadcast communication at Marquette University. Back then, I had big dreams of becoming a TV news anchorman and my portfolio was essentially a collection of video clips of me anchoring the news on the closed-circuit campus television station. This became an electronic portfolio of sorts in that it was captured on 3/4" video tape then copied to VHS and mailed to TV stations in tiny towns all over the country in hopes of landing that elusive first job. As it turned out, I never made it in front of the camera due primarily to the fact that I have a face made for radio.

Clear to see from this screen shot (circa 1987) why my on-camera TV career was so short-lived

I got much better results from my news writing portfolio which consisted of scripts typed on a manual typewriter. As a result, I spent 10-years in the TV news business behind the camera as a writer and producer.

I haven't thought much about portfolios since those days, but I can certainly see the advantages of creating online portfolios for student, teacher and employee evaluations, job-seekers, professional development and consultants looking to demonstrate their areas of expertise to prospective clients. In my virtual school, where administering a multiple choice exam as a summative assessment is not the best option, having students create an online portfolio seems to be a much better way to evaluate their progress.

One of the pioneers in the development of ePortfolios is Dr. Helen Barrett. She delivered a very interesting Ted Talk on the subject in February 2010.

She has written extensively on the use of ePortfolios in K-12 education on her blog and teaches an online course called REAL ePortfolio Academy for K-12 Teachers if anyone is interested in learning more about how to use ePortfolios with your students. Very interesting stuff!