How can technology make this work? Preservice teachers, off-campus learning and digital portfolios

Utilising appropriate Information Communication Technologies (ICT) as instructional tools in teacher education can be a challenging yet worthwhile endeavour. This paper reports the difficulties and benefits of a recent inter-university project requiring preservice primary teachers to construct professional digital portfolios using the support of ICT. Challenges with regard to communication and learning were numerous as 34 preservice teachers (PSTs) from three universities in NSW (situated in country towns, and in Sydney) worked together as a collaborative learning community. Meeting regularly face-to-face during the 12-month process was not always possible and so ICT resources were employed to facilitate instruction and communication. An action research methodology generated a data set of surveys, observational field notes, and student assessment artefacts. We share the findings in this paper so that others may learn from our experiences in using free access software and commonplace hardware when constructing digital portfolios with students who are some distance from campus.