Making eportfolios Real and Simple
- 1. E Portfolios Keeping them real and simple Karen Linyard Hampden Street School, Nelson
- 2. What are they? An E Portfolio is a digital collection of student work and interactions with others that shows the student's efforts, progress, and achievement in one or more areas. They can be made using a variety of tools including; Power Point, Photostory 3, Blogs, Wikis, Inspiration and using specific software such as Mahara. http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_portfolio http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/eportfolios.htm
- 3. Why make E Portfolios? It gives the students something to be really proud of. Is a great record of their learning and more likely to be kept that a paper profile/learning log. Allows the opportunity for student input. Would be a great thing to send home along with reports or before parent conferences. Would be easy to send on to future schools. Depending on the software used, could potentially be attached to school SMS systems and hence provide a more seamless transition to new schools.
- 4. Examples of E Portfolios Power Point Blogs Wikis http:// eportfolios.weebly.com Photostory 3 (see Photostory Examples)
- 5. Key steps in making an E Portfolio COLLECT SELECT (and reject) REFLECT (and assess)
- 6. What we did Throughout the year I collected examples of student work (projects, poetry anthologies, writing samples etc) and stored them away until term 4 when we started putting together the E Portfolios. We then photographed the samples and put the photographs into our classroom folder on the server. The students decided what other curriculum areas they wanted photos for and we collected those and put them in folders under those headings.
- 7. What next? Originally I was going to get the students to use Power Point to make their E Portfolios but instead chose to use Photostory 3. The students were able to import the photos they wanted to include into Photostory 3 from where we had them stored on the server. The students manipulated the photos, put them in to the order they wanted, altered the transitions, added headings etc. While this was going on the students also wrote their own evaluation for the year’s work and then matched the order of their evaluation to what they wanted in their E Portfolio – some chose to change one, others the other, some both. I gave them ownership of their E Portfolio.
- 8. And then… We used Audacity to record the students’ evaluations of their work. Then I worked with each student individually to import their evaluation on to their E Portfolio. This was a little fiddly, sometimes involving changing the slide transitions to ensure that the whole evaluation was heard and nothing was cut off.
- 9. Sharing of Their E Portfolios The students were incredibly proud of their E Portfolios and enjoyed sharing them with each other. I then either emailed them home or put them on disk for the students to share them with their parents. The feedback that was received was great, especially when some of the parents realised that their child had put together the evaluation and E Portfolio themselves.
- 10. Where We Are At Now … I’ve created an E Portfolio samba share on our server which the teachers only have access to. This is a place that they can store pictures of student work, recordings etc until they are ready to help the students put them together. Photographs of interactions on class trips, camps etc can be stored on disk until it is time to put the E Portfolios together. Once the teachers are ready to start working on the E Portfolios with their classes they can move/copy their E Portfolio folder into their class folder so that the students can work on it. Completed E Portfolios will be moved back in to the E Portfolio samba share for safe keeping.
- 11. Things to Consider Before Getting Started! How will the E Portfolios be stored eg. on school server, web based etc? How will parents/caregivers/students etc have access to the final product? Who will be putting them together? Obviously younger children will need a lot more assistance than older children. Collecting and selecting a wide range of samples. Where will the collected items be stored until the students/teachers are ready to put the E Portfolios together? What software will you use? Will staff be allowed to trial a range and share their results before initialising any school wide policies. Until staff at various levels have a go – you won’t know the full pluses and minuses of the various options available.