A workshop by Hilarie Bryce Davis, Ed.D.
Nicholas Negroponte
Portfolios, those portable collections of the artifacts and reflections of learning, have been changing the way we think about assessment, and more importantly, the way we think about learning. When the learners have all the tools for collecting, organizing and presenting their learning in the context of what they were thinking and feeling, everything changes.
Ironically we have longed for students to take more responsibility for learning at the same time we have coveted the tools for learning, the sources of knowledge and the control over when and how something is learned. They say you have to be careful what you wish for, because you may get it. Today, students are growing up digital and they are ready to take charge of their learning. This is a gift to us as teachers, allowing us to return to a much earlier way of being with students, asking them to think out loud and work together to solve problems, to make meaning and to know what they know without us telling them.
The challenge of digital portfolios is more than the management of the information, the scheduling of students, the access to equipment or the storage medium. The challenge is the mindware we need to install in ourselves and our students to shift our energy toward student learning and away from prescribed lessons, toward thinking about learning and away from completing assignments, and toward tracking the process more than any given product of learning. Howard Gardner has suggested processfolios. An idea which suggests a move toward "by-products" of learning, rather than products. The greatest of these by-products will be the portfolio itself.
Cyril Burt once suggested that the only thing we have to offer one another and the world is our individual vision, our idiosyncratic view of the world and the meaning we make from it. He acted on this belief by being on the lookout for the ideas which "pushed his hot buttons" the ones which got his attention, made him mad, or made him smile.
Just as we have helped students find their voices in writing, our challenge in a digital age is to help them find and sustain their visions of what is good and true and beautiful. This is constructivism made whole, not learning driven from without, but one which emanates from within the student.
As you develop the procedures and plans for using portfolios, hold this vision - the student portfolio is an external brain, in which students collect and reflect, organize and synthesize and present what and how they are learning. Your role is to create a dialogue within that thinking made visible - to scaffold it, to connect it to tools and resources and to nurture its development.
Your task today is to explore the stories of those who have used portfolios, the possibilities the tools present and to reflect on the ways you can begin to change the culture of your classroom to make your students partners in goal-directed learning.
Portfolios help students "know what they know." So that you will know what you know from today, please take a moment to begin a word processing document in which to collect your thoughts today. If you are diligent in your reflection, you will leave with some thoughts on the following:
Take a moment to copy these questions into your portfolio document now.
We know a lot about portfolios, how to manage them, the different forms they can take, how they can affect learning. The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory has a bibliography. Skim it to see the kinds of thinking your colleagues in education have done. Copy up to five titles which are interesting to you under the question, Where can I learn more? Discuss your choices with a colleague in the workshop. Share why you felt these resources would be valuable..
The links in this section were chosen to give you different perspectives on what a portfolio can be.
Now review some student portfolios to develop your own working definition.
Many teachers work with their students to develop a working definition of a portfolio, its care and maintenance and it use. These discussions not only lead to developing criteria for what goes into a portfolio, but a strong commitment to the concept of a portfolio as representing what and how the student is learning by both the teacher and the student. This stronger conceptual framework means that "decisions on the fly" are more supportive than distracting from the purpose of the portfolio.
How does "being digital" make a difference?
Why take a portfolio digital? In these links, you will read about some of the reasons others are doing it. The benefit which is difficult to capture is the weaving of meaning which occurs when the artifacts of learning are in one medium - digital. When students look across what they have done, delve into it and reshape it, they consolidate and extend their learning.
How is managing a processfolio different than a portfolio? Process folios require new media to be stored and shared. Read about how two universities are envisioning these changes.
What do you need to get started? Are you proficient at portfolios but a newbie in technology? or clueless about portfolios and a technowhiz? Size up your skills and your goals with the questions outlined by Helen Barrett for decision-making about portfolio implementation:
Dave Niguidula of the Coalition of Essential Schools has written a thoughtful essay on digital portfolios.
Continue your analysis with these readings on how others have thought about the keys to implementation:
What electronic resources can be used?
Toys, toys, toys! The technology is fun and friendly. Check out these for a beginning review of your options.
What will be the greatest challenge for me? What do I already do which will help me to learn to do this well?
Take a moment to reflect on what you have learned so far in terms of your situation. Copy these questions into your notes>>>>>>>>
What are you ready to do? What is in place? What comes next?
How will you develop the portfolio as process of thinking about as we achieve progress, as well as a way to measure progress?
How will using multimedia prompt you to think differently about what and how you assess?
How will you integrate the review and presentation processes?
Where can I learn more? Get help when I need it?
Resources, networks and examples are available to you through your professional associations and the Internet. This is only a small sampling of resources. The key is to frame the question and go to more than one source for the answer.
People use porfolios in many different ways. The Online Learning Record is a particularly powerful model based on a well researched method, developed first in England, and then imported by California where it has a strong history of success with teachers, students and parents as a way to focus all their energies in the same direction for the benefit of the child.
Teacher portfolios are a great way to get started yourself.
Portfolios as part of "official" evaluation are a good source of ideas:
Electronic Portfolios from the Learner's Perspective:
How are administrators using student portfolios? Tracking student growth has changed!
School/district portfolios are proliferating as more and more schools develop web pages.
©Copyright Technology for Learning Consortium Inc.
Permission readily granted for use of these materials - just ask and let
me know what you're wondering about!
Hilarie Davis - hilarie@techforlearning.org