Pebble mill begins to grind

24 hours on and PebblePad is a little less of a pretty mystery. I think my initial responses were derived from the tension between two aspects of its self-presentation. Although it is an e-portfolio tool (and therefore has a limited purpose), the interface and some of the training suggest that you can do almost anything with it.

The initial video presents an imaginary university faculty member trying to make sense of her CPD portfolio, her meetings, her teaching, her appraisals, her collaborations, and demonstrates piles of paper being reduced to zero by the power of the pebble. So the impression is given that this can be a tool for controlling all of your work. Well I just checked the Documents folder on this computer - my home computer. I'm not going to tell you how many thousands of documents it has. My work computer is similar. Even if I acknowledge (unwillingly) that I ought to trash half of it, PebblePad is not going to control my entire work or home environment.

So, doing some more of the exercises, I created a 'webfolio' around the specific theme of my song writing. This would be a way of creating something in which I explored my basic skills with words and music, reflected on the experiences of writing and performing, and presented some of the results. It becomes more than a reflective journal, and could be presented to someone who was interested. It remains private unless you choose to share it with named users or publish it to the Web.

I am therefore getting a feel for one of the ways in which you could build up something that could be evidence of learning and achievement - and that may be the most appropriate / main intended use for this. In fact, that is really the reason I chose to look at it in the first place. I will want to see / experience more evidence before I concede that it is a really useful collaboration tool, except (for example) for students working collaboratively on a project that would end up in both of their portfolios.

I'm still trying to be positive - and the sound effects haven't entirely lost their charm yet.