Eportfolio Project

Students will be creating their own eportfolios and journals. This will give my students an opportunity to display their work to a broader audience and teach them valuable technology and critical thinking skills.

The eportfolio allows students to work on something authentic and create an impressive final project. Too often students focus on the daily tasks, but don't have a chance to look at the big picture and see how they are learning and changing. By compiling their work in this eportfolio, with the purpose of publishing for a broader audience, students learn to organize and evaluate their work.

An electronic portfolio developed for this purpose includes technologies that allow the portfolio developer to collect and organize artifacts in many formats (audio, video, graphics, and text). A standards-based electronic portfolio uses hypertext links to organize the material, connecting artifacts to appropriate goals or standards.

A framework for electronic portfolio development can be gathered from two areas: portfolio development in K-12 education and the multimedia or instructional design process. These are both essential for effective electronic portfolio development. Creating an electronic portfolio can develop a student’s multimedia development skills. The multimedia development process usually covers the following stages; developed by Ivers & Barron in 1998:

The portfolio development process covers the following stages taken from the work of Danielson & Abrutyn, 1997.

"Many people discover that one of the most important and long-lasting outcomes of producing a portfolio is the self-esteem that comes from recording and reflecting on achievements and career success. Experienced teachers and administrators are finding that the benefits of developing a portfolio include the opportunity for professional renewal through mapping new goals and planning for future growth." (Danielson & Abrutyn, 1997)
 

Issues of posting Electronic Portfolios to the World Wide Web

-- Security and access - What information in a portfolio should remain confidential? What happens when the private becomes public? (Big Chalk allows us the opportunity to use password protected websites)

--Do portfolios belong on the public Internet? (I believe that if more reflective than personal, than it can)

--What happens to intellectual property rights when portfolio artifacts are posted online? (I am researching this)

In the October, 1998, issue of Learning & Leading with Technology, a process for developing electronic portfolios in contrast to the process normally used to develop multimedia presentations was provided:

Develop a collection of exemplary portolio artifacts for comparison purposes.

Steps towards completing the eportfolio project:

Perfect using the "save as html" feature in Microsoft Word 2000. Once I have mastered this task my students will be able to easily publish their work though Word.

Create a web portfolio template.

Research  how other educators use student portfolios.

Develop a grading rubric for the eportfolio.

 

Tools Needed:

Microsoft Word 2000

Networked Laptops

    
Access to Big Chalk Learning Community (Web Space)

Internet Explorer

Digital Camera
 
Adobe Acrobat 4.0

Classroom Television

Eportolio Design for Seventh Graders

Purpose:

The purpose of this project is to provide students with the opportunity to evaluate eportfolios and create useful portfolios of their own.

Project Timeline:

Session 1       

The teacher will display sample portfolios on the display T.V. while students watch. These will be preselected sites that demonstrate well developed and poorly developed examples. The teacher will ask students to orally evaluate each  site. The teacher will go through each section of the evaluation and ask for a rating and reasoning.

After completing the evaluation and discussion of 4-5 different  sites the students will then complete the web evaluation worksheet by themselves on a preselected web site. After students are done with this there will be a whole class discussion about their ratings and why the students gave the ratings.
   

Session 2       

The teacher will introduce the software Microsoft Word (saving as html) using the T.V. display. First showing an example created with Microsoft Word, then the teacher would have the students start the program.

The teacher will cover how to:
 

1. Change the background color
2. Formatting text
3. Insert an image
4. Inserting Horizontal lines
5. Creating a table
6. Inserting and saving new documents
7. Allowing students to experiment with each new concept after teacher demonstration.

Session 3       

The teacher will continue teaching the students to use Microsoft Word covering the following:
 

1. Creating lists
2. Inserting links to web sites
3. Creating a second page and linking them together
4. Students will once again experiment with each new concept after the teacher demonstrates the technique.

Session 4       

The teacher starts the class by bringing up the Big Chalk page on the classroom display television. The teacher than discusses the school’s and server’s policies on pictures, names, addresses, etc… and gives an example for each so it is clear to students what they can put on a  page they create The last ten minutes of class the teacher will hand out the students’ first web page development project. This first project is to create a personal web page. 

Session 5       

The teacher starts the class by showing, on the display T.V., preselected personal  pages. While showing these pages the teacher will have class discussion on what different items should appear on a  page and what shouldn't appear on a web page. The students then start creating their personal eportfolio page.
 

Sessions 6 - 8       

Students continue working on their eportfolio project while the teacher helps individual students.
 

Session 9       

Students are given the first half of class to put the final touches on their personal web pages.

The last half of class the students have their portfolio page creation on display at their computer station. Each student then rotates in order from one computer to the next (teacher tells students when to move to the next computer, 1-2 minutes)
 

Session 10       

This class period will be used to finish viewing the student’s web page creations. The time remaining at the end of class will be used by the teacher to discuss different web pages and the various parts that students liked about other’s web pages. The teacher will then use the rubric to grade the students’ web page. Other assessment tools will include self-assessment and peer assessment.

Example Criteria

School activities they are involved in
Extra curricular activities 
Links to favorite web sites                                                                                                           Class projects (Powerpoint)                                                                                                          Class journal

A - Thorough Understanding

B - Good Understanding

C - Satisfactory Understanding

D - Needs Improvement