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My
Cyber Folder:
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An
E-Portfolio Package for the Elementary Classroom
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"A portfolio is a purposeful collection of student work that exhibits the student’s efforts, progress, and achievements in one or more areas. The collection must include student participation in selecting contents, the criteria for selection; the criteria for judging merit, and evidence of student self-reflection." (Educators in the Pacific Northwest- Northwest Evaluation Association, as cited in Paulson, Paulson, & Meyer, 1991)
Portfolio assessment is easily integrated into the learning process and provides a forum thorough which children can show what they can do. Work samples can target the assessment of higher order thinking skills rather than focusing on simple memorization. Objectives from different cognitive domains can be included as learning tasks included can be multidimensional. Students can take responsibility for determining how to demonstrate what they know and can do. The sample artifacts included in a portfolio provide valuable information to teachers and parents and future individualized instructional planning can be based on the learning evidenced within.
Why should I create electronic portfolios for my students?
Electronic Portfolio collections:
Electronic portfolios offer unlimited possibilities. However, it is important to determine the purpose and audience you want to address. This particular package is intended to function as a showcase portfolio so students will select samples of their best work. The purpose is to document instructional progress. Similar work samples will be gathered at several intervals throughout the year so that work can be compared and growth evidenced. The intended audiences are parents, teachers and the students themselves.
Changes in Assessment Practices
The intent of this package is to encourage myself and others to implement new assessment practices. Prior to this project, I had never used integrated technologies to document or evaluate student progress. By adopting the principles contained within this project, I will be able to utilize current technologies as a vital component of comprehensive student assessment. The result will be a more dymnamic, motivating, interesting and informative format for communication.
The electronic portfolio format makes it possible to address all three domains of the taxonomy of educational objectives. Teachers can easily structure entries to focus on specific types of objectives. For example, student work showing mastery of objectives from the cognitive domain could include entries where students solve mathematical problems, construct charts and graphs or write well organized themes. Assessment activities that demonstrate psychomotor learning objectives (i.e. musical or dance performances) could be video taped and included in the portfolio. It is a bit more difficult to identify measurable assessment performance tasks for the affective domain. However, the portfolio entry selection process that is required of students demonstrates the ability to appreciate and identfiy quality work-- an example of this type of objective. Infinite other possibilities exist and can be identified by teachers as deemed appropriate.
This portfolio package can easily accomodate diverse learners. The variety of presentation formats (written, recorded, photographed, scanned, typed, handwritten, videotaped, etc.) would allow students with any number of disabilities the ability to participate. Specific portfolio entries should be modified so that the format is appropriate. For example, if a student has difficulty writing an explanation of how he/she solved a math problem, the explanation could be recorded. The flexible nature of format provided by portfolio options is ideal for meeting the needs of all students.
Specific accomodations depend on the disabilities and capabilities of individual students. If necessary, special needs students could be paired with regular students when working directly with digital technologies and adding portfolio entries. Support personnel (i.e. resource room teachers, volunteer parents, peer tutors, etc.) could be used to help physically, behaviorally or intellectually challenged students. The electronic portfolio experience might be motivating for students previously incapable of or reluctant to become actively involved in traditional instructional practice.
Informal Assessment Procedures
The nature of this particular project limits the degree to which informal assessments can be used. Teacher observation about how well the students plan and work independently could be documented using anecdotal records kept in a simple file system. Although a group project could be included if desired, there isn't any group work directly included within this portfolio package. A checklist could be created so that the teachers and students could assess the success of collaborative efforts. My fellow CTER students have some fine examples. Liz Sanford's teacher and peer assessments are particularly good (permission provided for hyperlink).