Reflection on E-Portfolios in Education
REFLECT: Portfolios, in general, seem to be a more meaningful way of assessing learning that all of the mentioned alternatives, although similar maybe to student presentations.
Quizzes and tests assess how much a learner can retain the information they have studied and limit the way the learner can regurgitate that information back to the teacher/evaluator. They also limit the learner’s ability to access information during the assessment period (in most cases). This is growing more and more unrealistic in an age where most information is a few clicks away via an online search engine like Google. Portfolios do not have many/any of these limitations. While an evaluator might have a time limit on when certain components of a portfolio are due, the access to resources is never limited, nor the ability to reflect. Also, portfolios do not have limitations on the way the learner can present the information learned back to the evaluator. In this sense, portfolios are more relevant sources of evaluation.
Essays and research papers allow a student to reflect on certain information and use creative thinking to show an evaluator their learning. While these are fair assessments of learning, I believe that they often limit the reflection on the actual process of writing. When students write an essay or research paper, they often do not reflect on the actual process of writing the essay. Instead, they reflect on the content of the essay. They might not ever compare/contrast how they evolved from one essay to the next, which is a vital process in improving writing skills. A portfolio would allow for this kind of comparison, making it a better assessment tool for both the evaluator and the student. Essays and research papers are necessary, I believe, but not complete enough to constitute stopping there.
Similarly, student presentations, homework, and worksheets pose equal problems. These assessment tools, while popular, limit the amount of reflection from the learner, thus making them inferior tools of learning. When the bulk of the evaluation is on the evaluator’s end, the learner is limiting their ability to grow in that they often do not care about where they came from vs where they are now in the learning process.
I believe it would be a much more relevant and meaningful experience to articulate what I know and have learned about educational technology from my academic, professional, and other experiences and providing evidence of that learning with a collection of artifacts I’ve created. This is because connections are a way that most people are able to provide meaningful reflection. While a beginner to some of the educational technology might lack some of the experiences needed in order to connect, most meaningful learning happens when the learner is able to connect what they are learning about to what they already know in order to build upon their experiences. During reading this week, I was able to connect with the texts by thinking about the types of eporfolios used in my district already. By thinking about what I already knew and had tried when it came to eportfolios, I was able to think of ways that I already did many of the things in the texts as well as ways to improve in that area. That experience while reading allows me to remember and use the information that I read about to actually improve as a teacher and student much more than answering relevant questions assigned by an evaluator (no offense intended!).
As far as which I would prefer, I think my answer is probably the same as which I find more meaningful to my learning. I enjoy making those connections between my own previous learning and my current learning. I’m able to have conversations with my peers at work and even my friends at home in order to show mastery of learning and an interest in further learning. When students are able to take their learning outside the classroom (or outside of the e-school course), I think it shows a devotion to learning that only comes from personal connections.
Compared to digital portfolios, physical portfolios have a lot of limitations that make them difficult for anyone to keep track of. I’ll use an example from my district to illustrate my point. My students keep a portfolio of their writing work throughout the year. These portfolios are (ideally) supposed to travel from their middle school to their high school and then from their freshman to sophomore to junior to senior years. In the past, many students have come to my room without a previous portfolio file (it was either thrown away by a previous teacher or never created). In this case, I made a new portfolio for them, but was unable to see any previous writing samples from other years of learning. I was missing a vital piece to understanding them as learners. At the end of the year, I was required to give the students’ portfolios to the next year’s teachers, but this was a gigantic process that required a classroom full of alphabetized bins and a lot of man hours. Often, the portfolios weren’t collected by the next year’s teachers and thus the same gap was created year after year in a teacher’s understanding of their student populations. Alternatively, when we switched to eportfolios, students had the works in their Google Drive which did not require any teacher to keep track of them. They were able to reference their own previous works and do their own reflection from year to year, no matter what campus they hailed from or went to. Physical portfolios, while allowing for creativity often, limit the abilities of the learner and evaluator in that they have to physically keep track of the works, unlike online portfolios. Eportfolios afford for a learner and evaluator to access them regardless of geographical location, which has grown in importance yearly as we grow into a global community of learners.
While I have used Google Drive as a way of creating an eportfolio before, I realized that it posed some difficulties now as an assessment tool for both myself and an evaluator. The major difficulties I discovered were that organization would be confusing for me as I am not yet completely sure what components are necessary for my own eportfolio. I also know that I will have some choice on which components are necessary. Unlike my INVEST evaluation, where there are 4 domains and examples of what might be included in these folders, my own teacher eportfolio didn’t have as many restrictions and thus less direction (at least for now). Because of this, I decided to abandon Google Drive and pursue Google Sites due to some conversation with peers at work. I enjoy using Google programs because they are so intuitive and this was true of Google Sites. I was able to create my own sub pages in a way that reminded me of the blog site I chose, Tumblr. I was even able to link my Tumblr for reflections to my Google Site in a way that was seamless! That excited me!
I’m surprised that I never considered using Google Sites with my students but I think it is because my district requires that our students use Google Drive to keep track of their writing. I like a lot of parts of Google Drive for creating an eportfolio with students. I can tell students which folders to create and why. I can help them learn to organize their information. I can instruct them on reflection and allow them to look at previous work from either previous years or from the current year. With high school students, a lot of them are preparing to enter college or the work force and need instruction on how to organize their thoughts and work in order to be marketable to colleges or companies. I think that Google Drive allows for some personal freedom there based on what they intend for their future as well as allows for different types of media to be included (Google Docs, pictures of writings, annotations or comments on different works, etc.). While this is a useful tool for my students, as a working professional I think that Google Sites works better for me as I attempt to market myself to both in-district evaluators and out-of-district employers. On Google Drive, only the people who have access to the Google Folders are allowed to see them. You can limit editing privileges or viewership privileges easily based on who you have shared any folder or document with. This can be at times limiting while also protecting privacy. On Google Sites, I am the only one (so far) that I have allowed to edit the website yet anyone with the link can view it and browse my documents and reflections. I am unsure about whether this is a tool that is necessary for my students, though I’d like to try using it this year to see how it works with them. I think that it is more useful for a student presentation than for an eportfolio, at least for now.
Website ePortfolio Link