I immediately found myself drawn to the MichiganPortfolios.org website (Koch, Petterson, Hicks & Zellner, 2015) and the corresponding blog post from Aram Kabodian (2013) for this weeks readings. I was drawn to these particular websites because I wanted to experience what digital portfolios created by students look like, as well as what kinds of problems teachers encountered when they incorporated them in the classroom. The MichiganPortfolios.org website is a really helpful resource when it comes to needing rubrics for digital writing assignments, guidance in positive assessment practices, and resources for teaching in a more diverse way. I particularly liked the “Diversity Book List” which can be found here: http://www.michiganportfolios.org/links-and-resources/diversity-book-list/. But the part of the website I found myself reading and rereading were some of the blog posts which discuss best practices for teaching today. On one blog, this quote is printed across the top: “Is what my students and I are doing at this moment in the classroom something a skilled adult would ever do?” —Laura Roop National Writing Project Michigan, 2010-2011 (as cited in Koch et al., 2015). This got me thinking about a lot of the assessments we give students. How likely is it that someone will ask a student five questions about a book to see if they comprehended what they read? Or how likely is it that your boss will give you a written test with multiplication problems? Not very likely, although I did have to answer Grammar and Math questions on a test as a part of an interview for a subbing job once! Why is it that we are incapable of assessing students in a way that has real world application? I hear CEO’s complain often about the lack of a skilled workforce, and how employees don’t know how to collaborate, invent, or think outside of the box. Perhaps this is because we as educators have been asking them to fill in the box, rather than think outside of it. Digital portfolios seem to be a real world assessment in that many different professions involve portfolios in the forms of websites, blogs, or social media. Many employers look on-line to view someone’s work or read their credentials before ever meeting them in person. By providing students the knowledge of how to create a digital portfolio, how to manipulate the portfolio to look the way they want, and what kinds of information to put in their portfolio we are providing them with the ability to get hired, to communicate their message to others, and to (hopefully) make an impact in the world.
Kabodian’s (2013) article described his progress to integrate digital portfolios in the classroom, but it seems as though some of the issues he encountered did not have to do with the implementation of digital portfolios at all, but rather his students’ inability to understand the meaning of reflection. I personally remember as an Undergraduate being asked to reflect on my teaching, and not truly understanding what was expected of me. Unfortunately, reflections are not like persuasive essays or Haiku’s, which both have a structure to them. Every student’s reflection will be unique to them, and therefore more challenging to explain, describe, and ultimately assess. One of the benefits of having a digital portfolio seems to me to be that it can last forever, unless removed from the internet or we move onto other forms of technology, which doesn’t seem to be in our future anytime soon. I appreciated how Kabodian (2013) listed rubrics from other teachers that helped guide their students, and that he used the examples of other students in the class as good examples. But mostly, I really liked the four questions cited from a blog post by Jeremy Hyler (2013) titled Teaching Students to Reflect on Their Writing.
Connections
While I was looking up examples of e-portfolios, I came across this TED talk from Helen Barrett (2010) which although is a bit dated, I found interesting. I appreciate the ability digital portfolios have to provide flexibility in the assessments of students. In this talk, she discusses how e-portfolios and social media are similar in their motivations, the choices they provide, and a constantly evolving tool. I am choosing to share this video because I think it really emphasizes both the permanence, but also the malleability of portfolios, and how they can provide students the ability to view their progress over time. In the same way that we may search through our Facebook photos to be reminded of trips, people we love, and things we accomplished, digital portfolios can be a time capsule for students to continually add to throughout their academic lives.
Applications to your Classroom Assessment
This week really showed me the potential Digital Portfolios have in the classroom, for both younger students and older. I appreciated how the rubrics from the MichiganPortfolios.org (Koch et al., 2015) website began at the Kindergarten level. Below is a list of kinds of lessons I think would incorporate with digital portfolios using any and all areas of the curriculum. I expect that I will continually add to this list, but the potential thus far is very exciting!
- Student created podcasts and recorded read alouds
- Links to sight words with the option to hear the word read out loud
- Digital stories created about any subject
- Blog posts/reflections can be used both as a journal and as a way to reflect on student progress
- Book reviews about recently read books
- Digital files of student writing (Includes books, essays, poems, etc.)
- Resource pages
- Pictures of artwork, sketches, graphs, etc.
- Class resource page (includes rubrics, resources by subject, useful websites, games)
- Ability for students to comment on each other’s work
References
Barrett, H. (2010, February, 25). Social Networks and Interactive Portfolios: Blurring the Boundaries. [Video File] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckcSegrwjkA
Hyler, J. (2013, February 15). Teaching Students to Reflect on Their Writing. Retrieved from: https://jeremyhyler40.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/teaching-students-to-reflect-on-their-writing/
Kabodian, A. (2013, May 1). Reflecting on the Move to Digital Writing Portfolios. Retrieved from: http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/5015
Koch, R., Petterson J., Hicks, T., & Zellner, A. (2015). Michigan Portfolios. Retrieved from: http://www.michiganportfolios.org/
Dear Courtney,
ReplyDeleteThe comment from Laura Roop National Writing Project Michigan, 2010-2011 (as cited in Koch et al., 2015), was extremely powerful for me. “Is what my students and I are doing at this moment in the classroom something a skilled adult would ever do?” However, what it made me think was, as adults will we ever have and/or continue our portfolios as time goes on? Possibly if we show our students how to create these portfolios we might. Asking the question of reflecting on your teaching was also so relevant to our students reflecting on their writing. It is something that needs to be taught and reinforced.
Your ideas of student created podcasts and read-alouds I think will work well. In Interactive Read-Alouds--An Avenue for Enhancing Children& Language for Thinking and Understanding: A Review of Recent Research, they showed that read-alouds increase vocabulary and comprehension. Plus, as we become more knowledgeable about blogs, it seems to me that we can enhance our students' experience with portfolios, too.
Pat
Lennox, S. (2013). Interactive Read-Alouds--An Avenue for Enhancing Children's Language for Thinking and Understanding: A Review of Recent Research. Early Childhood Education Journal, 41(5), 381-389.