Sustaining ePortfolios Through Transition

I have been quiet lately, yet my silence has been for a reason.  I always tell my students that sometimes what you don't say is just as important as what you do say.  I have spent the last two months listening, reading and thinking.  I have listened to my students and their needs from their ePortfolios, I have read pages upon pages of research about ePortfolios, and I have thought.  I am in the unique position of finally feeling as if I am in a good place with all of my students and their ePortfolios.  I feel as if I have everything in place to make them shine and now it is all coming to an end. 

I have been teaching at the International School of Bangkok and I have less than 4 weeks left.  I am finishing a second Master's Degree and all of my research revolves around ePortfolios.  How was I going to do a research paper on something I no longer had any control over?  My husband's job is transferring us to New Delhi, India.  In two months I will be at a new school, with new colleagues, new classes, and new infrastructures in place.  It was less than 36 hours before my proposal was due and as I continued to read, the questions came to me:

Would my students continue with their ePortfolios after all the time and effort we had given them when I was no longer there? 

What motivating factors contribute to ownership of an ePortfolio where it no longer matters if a teacher is or isn't a proponent of ePortfolios? 

The answers were right before my eyes.  I would watch my students and track their process on their ePortfolios as they transition from one class, grade, school, teacher to another.  Since life is taking me out of the equation, I will watch and see what happens from afar.  Isn't that essentially what we are all striving for when we look at the effect of ePortfolios?  How do we get students to buy-in to the process so that ePortfolios are not another thing teachers have to manage, but a part of what they do on their own?  We'll see what happens over the next few months from afar. . .