Eportfolios

By

Jason Bates

EDPsy 387

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.

Developing The Electronic Portfolio

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:

• Decide/Assess - determining needs, goals, audience for the presentation
• Design/Plan - determining content, sequence of the presentation
• Develop - Gather and organize multimedia materials to include in the presentation
• Implement - Give the presentation
• Evaluate - Evaluate the presentation's effectiveness

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

• Collection - save artifacts that represent the day-to-day results of teaching and learning
• Selection - review and evaluate the artifacts saved, and identify those that demonstrate achievement of specific standards or goals.
• Reflection - reflect on the significance of the artifacts chosen for the portfolio in relationship to specific learning goals.
• Projection (or Direction) - compare the reflections to the standards/goals and performance indicators, and set learning goals for the future.
• Presentation - share the portfolio with peers and receive feedback.

"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:

• Determine portfolio goals based on learner outcome goals (which should follow from national, state, or local standards and their associated evaluation rubrics or observable behaviors).
• Determine and describe the assessment context.
• Determine and describe the audience(s) for the portfolio.
• Who are the stakeholders?
• Determine content of portfolio items (by context) and the type of evidence to be collected.
• Determine which software tools are most appropriate for the portfolio context.
• Determine which storage and presentation medium is most appropriate for the situation.
• Gather multimedia materials that represent a learner's achievement (preferably linked to standards and in a relational database) and include them in the portfolio.
• Record student self-reflection on work and achievement of goals.
• Record teacher feedback on student work and achievement of goals.
• Organize the material using hypermedia links between goals, student work samples, rubrics, and assessment,
• Record portfolio to appropriate presentation medium and store.
• Present portfolio to appropriate audience (by student in age-appropriate situations).
• Evaluate portfolio's effectiveness in light of its purpose and the assessment context.
• Depending on portfolio context, use portfolio evidence to make instruction/learning decisions.

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

Portfolio Scoring Rubric

A - Thorough Understanding

• Choice of entries and number of entries are appropriate to represent student work.
• All entries are complete and of high quality.
• Sum of entries demonstrates a thorough understanding of unit concepts and content, or entries demonstrate a marked improvement over time.

B - Good Understanding

• Choice of entries and number of entries are appropriate to represent student work.
• Most entries are complete and of good quality.
• Sum of entries demonstrates a basic understanding of unit concepts and content, or entries demonstrate improvement over time.

C - Satisfactory Understanding

• Sufficient entries are present for assessment.
• Sum of entries demonstrate at least a partial understanding of unit concepts and content, and entries demonstrate improvement over time.

D - Needs Improvement

• Portfolio contains some entries.
• Sum of entries demonstrates improvement over time.