Alen November’s article was certainly a rationale for how to create a culture in our schools where students take more responsibility for their own learning, foster a global work ethic and understand how to organize teams of people from around the world to solve complex problems. Although he didn’t specifically mention E-Portfolios, it is certainly something that embodies the school culture he is describing. He had a few helpful suggestions and links for how to do create this culture in an actual classroom. Dr. Barret’s information on using Google Sites and Google Drive to organize student portfolios enabled me to visualize using them in a classroom setting. Going through the exercise of providing our own artificats enabled me to visualize how I would organize in my classroom, possibly for a final exam experience. I wasn’t sold on Google Sites necessarily, but I did watch the short video on “Google Drive iPad Portfolio” and realized the many options for downloading work students have which they can showcase, including Notability, Explain Everything, Book Creator and iMovie. By the end of the year, my students will have used each of these programs in English class, and could use them as artifiacts in a portfolio.
On the Edutopia website, there was an article called “Digital Portfolios Pull Double Duty” and a teacher Martin, believes that preparing digital portfolios can also help students prepare for college, because they can be organized like a job portfolio. Today, when people apply for jobs and college, it is mostly on line and being able to represent knowledge, understanding and student work in a presention that is visually appealing is a useful skill in landing a job. The exercise we did this week where we viewed student E-Portfolios made me realize the challenges of doing this large scale, especially across content areas. While I believe is would be a valuable experience for our students at the high school, it takes so long for change to really happen, that it is doubtful it would happen large scale. Where is could happen is within departments, with the leadership of a department head, or within a program like Learning Alternatives. This week has motivated me to start small scale with E-Portfolios, and use it within my English and possibly Ecology class as a final exam.
Here we are up against the common enemy of teaching: time. We see the value of things that require commitment of class/learning time and need to somehow find space for it among all the other things we must do. That's why November advocates radical change, not adjustments, to the education system, as do many others.
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