EDU 924:
Digital Portfolios

Course Learning Outcome 3:

Define the potential purpose of digital portfolios by co-constructing a definition and locating resources with classmates. 

Reflect upon the course, then set goals for continued growth with digital portfolios.

Artifact

Read Creating an Online Community Through Electronic Portfolios by Elizabeth Potash at ReadWriteThink, powered by NCTE.

Discussion Board Post in response to the following prompt:

• What did you think about this week's article? 

• Would you have students work together in the community on portfolios? 

• How has this article influenced your thinking about integrating portfolios into your classroom?

Overall I liked this week's articles. One of the items that jumped out to me quickly was a quote early on in the second article. "Portfolios allow students to feel ownership. Students can see their work not as a series of assignments that need to be handed in and marked, but as a process that is engaging, informative, thoughtful, negotiable, and self-affirming for all." I'm thinking about this in the context of how do I integrate portfolios in my classroom, seeing as I don't actually *have* a classroom.  I'm working on creating a unit plan based around having teachers create digital portfolios for themselves and their ongoing learning.  As a district, our teachers do a lot of professional development - from first and second year teachers in induction, to ongoing curriculum reviews, to refining pedagogy, and then figuring out how it all works with any District goals and initiatives.  Aside from sign-in forms, I don't think we have a strong way to document what teachers learn from these different trainings.  

I don't want a digital portfolio to just be another file cabinet.  I'm thinking about the feeling I had creating my portfolio, and being able to showcase the things I'm most proud of and explain why.  That's what I want to give to educators - the same thing we are asking of our students.  To reflect and celebrate the ways they are growing.  One teacher may consider success to be a flipped classroom lesson with interdisciplinary collaboration.  Another may consider success as using Schoology for a class for the first time.  Educators deserve to feel warm and fuzzy about their accomplishments and recognizing how they grow AS educators and people.

I think working together in the community on portfolios is an essential part of the process.  We each bring our unique views to every situation, and seeing/collaborating on other portfolios helps foster that sense of community and literally and figuratively learning from one another.  

Reflection

This discussion post was one of the last in the class session.  I found the last prompt question poignant, and I started to think about the changes I've seen in myself through this course.  I am as much an empathetic person as I am a data-driven one.  While early assignments focused on what and how, this helped to reinforce the why.  Reflecting on the article helped reinforce for me how this and other technology tools can transform learning, not just for students, but for all involved.