It's time to really think about digital portfolios. They are a place for students to
archive work, reflect on their growth as a learner and publish their best artifacts of learning. This is their learning journey in the era of Common Core.
Blog Posts on Portfolio's
Portfolio's must also provide a feedback loop from teachers, peers and parents. This helps create student ownership. Clearly this leads to concerns regarding social media and digital citizenship. However the portfolio can be like the "training wheels" for other media platforms that exist. Students will have years of work archived, and it can help develop social media maturity as they will need to constantly make
decisions on what they are adding to their digital footprint.
The portfolio belongs to the student so it is important to have a simple platform that easily allows them to use it across content areas. This requires some type of consensus about what platform to use. It should be easy to organize all subject areas, allow embedding of other work, and provide an audience for the published pieces. In addition, the portfolio needs to easily transition from year to year. As with all technology, there are a million ways to accomplish this. The most obvious being sites, blogs or digital portfolio sites. All have pros and cons.
Sites
- Google Sites
- Integrates Well With GAFE
- Easy to post digital content
- Free
- Privacy Settings
- Easy to create templates
Blogs
- Blogger
- Integrates Well With GAFE
- Creates A Chronological/Thematic Log
- A Public Forum (Kidblog and Edublogs have paid subscriptions that allow privacy settings)
- A Clean Appearance
Digital Portfolio Sites
- Nureva Troove - subscription based digital portfolio site.
- Not Free - An ongoing cost to maintain every year
- Built In Features Like Rubrics
- Software designed for Digital Portfolios
Think about the big picture of digital portfolio's and share your thoughts on this post. What concerns, ideas or suggestions do you have when considering creating a place for students to archive their work for the remainder of their school career?
