Portfolios for Assessment

Have I mentioned my incredible teaching partner and team that I work with before?  They are truly amazing!  We have been on the forefront of implementing digital portfolios at our school.  It hasn’t always been an easy road, but to our credit, we have always had a purpose for our portfolio’s driving decisions and policies at our school, and that was reflection. That was always the primary purpose

Having said that, I learned a ton from Holly Clark during our google hangout.  Here are my biggest takeaways from her session.

REFLECTION

Reflection is the most important part of the portfolio.  She talks about the difference between a process portfolio (highlighting the steps taken), a showcase portfolio (highlighting the final product) and the best option … the hybrid portfolio, where reflection is at the core.  

One of the ways I think she simplifies the reflective process is by suggesting that students use Google Drive to collect all of the work they could put into their portfolio and the use screencastify to have students make a video reflection while going through their digital work.  

By reflecting on their work in this way, we can get much richer and detailed assessment from students, and see their own thinking about their process and growth.

VISIBLE THINKING

Holly jokingly (?) wants to rename digital portfolio’s as “visible thinking portfolios” and I love that.   

The idea that a students portfolio visualizes their thinking and development of ideas makes it much easier for us teachers to assess how they are understanding and growing in their learning.Holly talks about how a reflective portfolio is a tool that can be used to get inside a students brain, to see what they are thinking.  

http://kimmia.com/demo/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/portfolio-5.jpg

DIGITAL FOOTPRINT

I teach 6th grade, so my students are 11 and 12 years old.  What is the proper age for students to publish their work online?   

Holly says 4th grade.  She talks a lot about digital citizenship and how teachers need to give students opportunities to practice positive digital citizenship since they might not be doing that in their personal social media lives.  

PORTFOLIO TEMPLATES

Holly suggests giving the students a template for their blogs to reign in their creative tendencies, arguing that there is a time and place for creativity but that a digital portfolio is not it.  By providing templates, students will have a more polished and professional looking portfolio that they can feel proud of.  And when they are older, they can begin designing their own website.

I loved all of her ideas about portfolio’s and she’s really pushed my thinking about how I can better use my students portfolio’s for learning and also for assessment.  One question I had was how to take a student’s rich reflective video and document their learning based on the video in a report card and grade book.  I’m guessing these things are counter productive to one another but it is also the reality of many teachers who are restricted by grading and reporting policies.  So I’d love to hear from others who are using reflective portfolios as assessment.  Comment below or send me a message @laurenteather!