Blogs as Eportfolio Platforms in Teacher Education: Affordances and Limitations Derived from Student Teachers’ Perceptions and Performance on their Eportfolios

At the University of the Balearic Islands, in Ibiza local centre, an eportfolio project in Teacher Education has been implemented since the 2009-2010 school year. This article is based on the research of the two first school years (2009-2010 and 2010-11) of experimental implementation of blogs as electronic portfolios. The results reported are those related to student teachers’ perceptions of blogs as eportfolios and the assessment of their performance. The project is aimed at fostering the construction of an electronic portfolio in order to build student teachers’ networked selves as future Early Childhood Education teachers. Both the project and research are based on the principle that social media empower eportfolios. Data obtained allows us to observe some affordances of blogs as eportfolio platforms. However, data collected during the two-year period of research raises some unexpected issues of blogs as eportfolios.At the University of the Balearic Islands, in Ibiza local centre, an eportfolio project in Teacher Education has been implemented since the 2009-2010 school year. This article is based on the research of the two first school years (2009-2010 and 2010-11) of experimental implementation of blogs as electronic portfolios. The results reported are those related to student teachers’ perceptions of blogs as eportfolios and the assessment of their performance. The project is aimed at fostering the construction of an electronic portfolio in order to build student teachers’ networked selves as future Early Childhood Education teachers. Both the project and research are based on the principle that social media empower eportfolios. Data obtained allows us to observe some affordances of blogs as eportfolio platforms. However, data collected during the two-year period of research raises some unexpected issues of blogs as eportfolios.