Thursday, May 30, 2019


Thing 16:                               Glossary of Education Reform: Portfolio
E-portfolio are a great way to collect student work and share it with others.  These portfolios allow teachers to view student work and allow students to organize and manage their activities better.  In the past, students in my class were given folders to organize their assignments but folders required more organization, space and a delivery system for every class which takes time away from instruction.  All student work can be kept in an e-file and this allows for more activities to be accessed and managed way better than folders.  E-portfolios are safe for students because paper assignments can get lost or unidentified if students did not complete their class heading.  E-portfolios are backed up every time the student uses their chrome book so there are no accidental deletions. 
Student progress is the best way to keep student work rather than only keeping the student’s best work.  Keeping a series of essay draft copies can show the process the student is comfortable with instead of looking at a finished essay that has been edited and spell checked by the program or teacher.  When students only see the final essay product, they tend to forget all the hard work it took them to get to their finished product. 
Whenever we begin a new DBQ project, students need to organize what they will write in their final essay and they will create a strategy that will follow the directions for the essay.  A portfolio provides students with their work in process and they have a sense of accomplishment and pride because they are not trying to write a 4-5 paragraph essay the night before their project is due.  Students in my classes can keep their essay work on their portfolios and I can have access their portfolios whenever I need to view them for their content or progress.  
As we are using more google classroom activities, student files could be shared with other students and they could access it as well.  The parent connection can also be very important because the files could be shared with parents on-line or if the parent happens to be in for a conference, teachers could easily bring up work samples to share with student parents or guardians.




Digital Student Portfolios
Since portfolios should be more than just a teaching tool, students should be encouraged to use photos or work samples to help them bring back positive memories they had in school.  School or personal photos would enhance that type of experience and give the student a basis to show off their portfolio with other individuals.
After reading this article I did some research regarding the Evernote app.  It is an amazing tool and it’s amazing how much stuff is available to the user.  Although it was a great tool the down side to me was my inability to hand over complete control of decision making on what to archive to the kids.  I understand sharing the control, but not having physical control would be difficult for me.  I don’t think my students would always make good decisions when it comes to archiving items and my fear would be for them to keep something insignificant and delete something I thought would be important.
After looking at a couple other tools, I will set up portfolios for my struggling students and allow these students the option of completing their activities partially in class and at home.   I like the bulb app because it is teacher controlled, and students have the choices over what goes into it and who can see it.  I also like the security of the tool as well as the compatibility.  This tool seems to work with any operating system that we have access to such as Microsoft products or those that want to work with google can utilize it.

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