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Different Approaches To Using Student Blogs And Digital Portfolios – The Edublogger

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Different Approaches To Using Student Blogs And Digital Portfolios – The Edublogger

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More and more educators are discovering the importance of having their students build some form of digital presence. Blogging is an excellent way for students to create their own online space, but what do you call this?

Simply a student blog?

Digital portfolio?

ePortfolio?

Learning showcase?

Blogfolio?

When I first started teaching in 2004, each of my grade one/two students had a scrapbook where they would paste their work samples each term. The goals of this process were: documentation, reflection, assessment and sharing with parents.

Often the same goals apply to the online equivalent of this scrapbook. But if we aren't doing things any differently than 10-15 years ago, why are we bothering with student blogs? Why aren't we still cutting and pasting in a scrapbook?
When blogs are used as more than substitution, they offer many advantages.

Research tells us that student work is of a higher quality when it involves an authentic audience.

The opportunity for feedback and discussion through an online presence is greater.

There are many skills to do with writing online, using technology, understanding digital citizenship etc. that are not only useful for students to know, but required in most curriculum standards.

Influencing your own digital footprints from a young age can be a powerful experience.

This post explores a range of approaches to student blogs and digital portfolios. We have included classroom examples, and encourage you to share your approach to student blogging in the comment section.

When To Set Up Student Blogs?

When I first started blogging in 2008, I didn't really know what sort of blogging framework would work for me, but along the way I came up with a model that suited the age of the students, our combined experience, our objectives and our equipment.
The model I adopted was as follows:

1. I established a class blog and wrote the posts, while teaching the students to write quality comments.

2. As students became more familiar with blogging, some students start publishing guest posts on the class blog and learned posting skills.

3. When I was teaching grade two, had limited computers and was new to student blogging, I didn't think it was practical for all students to have have blogs. Instead, certain students who had demonstrated enthusiasm, parent support and blogging skills, earned their own blog. This added a new layer to the skill set of commenting and posting: maintaining a blog.

4. When I was teaching grade four, had a one to one netbook program and had experience managing student blogs, I set up blogs for all students, as digital portfolios.

Throughout all four stages, quality commenting and parent participation is taught and encouraged.

Many teachers begin their blogging journey with a class blog and perhaps progress from there. However, you can jump in at any point of this framework.

You might only be comfortable with having a class blog initially. There is certainly nothing wrong with this approach, although keep in mind that aiming to have more student involvement at some point in the future can be advantageous.

At the other end of the spectrum, you might have the confidence, experience and equipment to set up student blogs from day one. Go for it!

Whatever your approach, a class blog always complements a student blogging program. It provides a home base where you can post assignments, showcase student work, publish recounts, communicate to parents, establish community/global connections and more.

How To Set Up Student Blogs

We have many resources in our Edublogs Help Guides that will walk you through the process of setting up student blogs. Sue Waters' five step guide to setting up student blogs is a good starting place.

One really useful feature on Edublogs, that takes the hassle out of the logistics of student blogs, is called My Class. This is a tool that allows you to:

Easily create your student blogs after you've set up your class blog

Control the privacy of the blogs and control moderation settings

Read and/or moderate student posts and/or comments right from your own dashboard (no need to open up 25 tabs in your browser to keep track of what your students are up to)

Install a widget to the sidebar of your class blog and student blogs which links to all the student blogs in your class. This means students and readers can easily visit all the blogs, without searching, bookmarking, or adding links individually.

Digital Portfolio Expectations and Frameworks

Many educators refer to their student blogs as digital portfolios.

Academics and thought leaders often debate the meaning of the term digital portfolio. What does this mean? What does it look like?

Perhaps an useful alternative term is 'blogfolio' which Silvia Tolisana describes as the glue that can hold it all together in learning.

Blogfolios are the glue that can hold all curricular content, goals and objectives as well as support school initiatives, observations, assessment and accountability requirements or personal passions, interest and projects together.

For the purpose of this post, we are less concerned with semantics and more concerned with exploring the different frameworks that teachers adopt. Hopefully considering how other teachers approach student blogs will give you some ideas on what would work for you and your students.

I have observed differences in how student blogs work in a variety of areas. There appears to be a spectrum in at least six key areas:

Let's break these down and consider where you might sit on each spectrum.

1. Duration

Some student blogs are only active for a year. The student might move up to a non-blogging class and their individual blog remains stagnant. This can be frustrating for teachers who invest time in establishing an effective system for their student blogs. It can also be disappointing for students.

Other institutions think ahead with a whole-school approach. At The Geelong College, which operates their own Edublogs CampusPress platform, there are long term plans.

Director of Teaching and Learning, Adrian Camm, explains the philosophy:

...each student from Year 4 to Year 10 at our College will have a digital portfolio that follows them throughout their time at the College and has a unique identifier accessible on the web.
The ability to export their content easily when finishing Year 12 to be used in the tertiary admission process or in future work endeavors has also been a key point...

Consider: If you're investing time in establishing student blogs, how can you showcase this to the wider school community and motivate them to establish a school wide plan?

2. Privacy

Should blogs be public or private? This is always a contentious issue.

Ronnie Burt raised some excellent arguments about the advantages of public blogs a few years back, including the power of an authentic audience, ease of access, and the potential for collaboration. Ronnie noted,

If you hide student work behind passwords, then you might as well have them print everything out and hand it in the old-fashioned way. You are losing out on connections, extended dialogues, and the motivating factor of working for an authentic purpose.

In the comment section, there were some well considered opposing views.

J. McNulty argued the consequence of permanence,

Try to imagine that every stammering oral presentation, every 5th grade writing sample and every stick finger drawing you ever made in a classroom was permanently posted online, forever. As a teacher how would you feel if your class of iPad toting students were surfing through your complete "virtual portfolio" while you were trying to assign them an essay? ... Blogging is great but this new information era needs educators who fully appreciate the long term consequences of posting everything publicly.

There is a middle ground. At The Geelong College, students are encouraged to decide for themselves whether their blogs will be public or password protected.

Another option is to create a public blog but password protect certain posts or pages.

Consider: What are the pros and cons of having student blogs as public? Some schools seem to default to the private option if in doubt. Does this mean you're giving up all the powerful advantages of posting publicly?

3. Content

What will form the content of your student blogs? What will they actually publish?

At one end of the spectrum is total freedom where teachers are less concerned about what the students are writing about, and more concerned about the students simply blogging and finding a voice.

At the other end of the spectrum, some teachers see the blogs as a space that must be in line with the curriculum and demonstrate what is happening in the classroom.

Certainly not always, but sometimes the age of the students influences this issue.

Julie Moore in Tasmania, Australia, teaches grade 2/3. The students begin by contributing to the class blog before some students establish their own blogs. Julie says,

Mostly - the children have a free spin on what they would like to write a post about. It gives them an outlet for writing about their passions/interests, and it then gives me an "in" for feedback and improvements to their writing.

She also finds this approach opens up a very wide range of possibilities to meet certain individual's requirements.

For example:

Julie understands that the students do require some explicit teaching around blogging. She finds The Student Blogging Challenge a great way to achieve this. In addition, she runs a lunchtime club and a weekly timetabled blogging session.

Heather Alexander in Florida teaches year 9-12 ceramics. Her students use their blogs purely to document and reflect on their own art work, and respond to the curriculum. Teaching the same class multiple times, Heather has come up with a logistal framework to organize the student blogs,

What I have done is name all the students' blogs with their class period prefacing the name so they appear in order on the page.

Heather encourages students to comment on classmates' blogs and set up an effective system after finding students were taking too long to find a post to comment on.

I have students work in "peer blog mentor" groups. They self-select a group of 3 -5 peers and then I match their group with a group in another class. I moderate the comments so I can check for accuracy and completion before they are published.

This idea touches on the additional issue of feedback. Who will provide feedback to your student bloggers? Will you set up a peer system like Heather? Or will you personally visit blogs? What are your goals for feedback? Simple encouragement and conversation? Or scaffolding to reach learning goals? All questions to consider.

Can your blogging framework involve set tasks and freedom?

Somewhere in the middle of the freedom/structure debate, is the approach adopted by Adam Geiman, an educator from Pennsylvania. He used the first 30% of the school year to provide structure around tasks for his fourth grade students.

The students were given guidance, yet also had some freedom of choice in how they'd present set tasks. Some would do a Google Doc, while others would present their task as a comic, infographic etc.

For the remaining 70% of the school year, students were given more freedom and many came up with their own ideas on what they wanted to publish. For example, Jackson announced the new school trout, while Brooklyn talked about her new glasses.

Consider: What are the needs of your students? Are you trying to engage them in the blogging process and help them find a voice? Or are you wanting the blogs to be a vehicle to demonstrate curriculum outcomes? Are these two things mutually exclusive?

4. Reflection

Some form of reflection is often a key feature of digital portfolios or blogfolios.

Educator Jabiz Raisdana, has documented some compelling thoughts on student blogging. He advocates for freedom, stating that:

If you want your students to blog effectively, give them the freedom to experiment and write about what interests them.

Stay away from portfolios and forced reflections on their learning, at least until they get the hang of it.

Wait until they find a voice, find an audience... before you push your agenda of meta-cognition and reflective learning.

Perhaps on the other end of the spectrum is the argument from Matt Renwick in his blog post 'Think You're Doing Digital Portfolios? Think again'.

Of course, all of the posted artifacts of student learning are accompanied with reflection, self-assessment, and goal setting for the future.
Otherwise, it's only sharing content. Nice, but not necessary for students' education.

Many teachers use a mixed approach

Teacher, Lee Pregnell, from Moonee Ponds, Australia, described how they include some set tasks in their grade 5/6 blogging program. One of these tasks is a weekly 100 Word Challenge response ( see student Carah's example) and a report on a Behind the News article (see student Mariana's report on dreaming).

While the Behind the News task has some element of reflection, there are other set tasks that involve more meta-cognition. One of these is based around term goals. Check out the example by Alexis to see the format of this reflective entry.

What about our youngest students? How can they reflect?

Using tools like voice recordings can offer students with emerging literacy skills the chance to reflect. Kathy Cassidy is well known for providing all of her six year old students a blog. The students regularly used tools like Book Creator to document their thoughts and learning. Here is Gus reflecting on his writing.

Another idea is to collate social media posts in a Storify like kindergarten teachers Aviva Dunsiger and Paula Crockett. Short student interviews and reflections offer a rich insight into learning. These innovative teachers have created a special section of their blog called 'The Daily Shoot'. This is something Aviva has done with students from K-6. It is worth checking out.

Following in her students' footsteps, Aviva even uses a blog of her own to reflect. What a mighty combination!

Consider: Most teachers agree that some sort of student reflection on learning is powerful. How can you incorporate this into your student blogs without making the process a chore or turn students off the enjoyment of blogging?

5. Quality

Would you like your students to document their learning journeys or their best work? Will your student blogs be process portfolios, showcase portfolios or hybrid portfolios?

This is a tough decision, but also one that can evolve as you go along. It also links back to the public/private debate. Do your students want every evidence of learning as part of their digital footprint?

Again, there is certainly middle ground. George Couros reflects on his dilemma about what end of this spectrum he would sit on: 'growth' or 'best work'.

Since there are benefits in both options, it was tough to decide on one, so we ultimately went with the decision to go with both. The "blog" portion of my digital space allows me to share things that I am learning (like this article I am writing) while also aggregating my best stuff into solitary "pages".

Consider: Is George's approach something that could be worth exploring in your own blogging program?

6. Control

Many of these five areas are underpinned by the question of control. Who is in control? The teacher or the students?

Can there be a gradual release of control as the students become older and more experienced?

Perhaps there are some aspects of their blog that even the youngest students can have some control over?

For example:

Their title

Theme

Choice of tool or post format

Where they leave comments

Most teachers would agree that it's important to consider how students can be in charge of their own learning. Digital portfolios and blogging offers a lot of potential for student-centered learning.

The My Class tool also allows you to hand over responsibility as you choose. You can begin by moderating all student posts and comments, and then turn off these settings as appropriate.

Conclusion

Are your student blogs igniting a passion for learning or are they just another chore to be completed?

How can you set up digital portfolios or blogfolios that allow for rich learning, creativity, excitement, deep reflection, collaboration and authenticity?

These are some key questions to ask yourself but in the end, sometimes you just need to throw in the canoe and start paddling.

Figure it out as you go. There is a big blogging community and support behind you.

Don't let fear or indecision around student blogs freeze you into inaction. Worrying too much about whether you're 'doing it right' can lead to not doing it at all. At any level, student blogs provide benefits. Embrace them.
We would love to hear your ideas. Please comment and share your thoughts on student blogs.

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Different Approaches To Using Student Blogs And Digital Portfolios

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More and more educators are discovering the importance of having their students build some form of digital presence. Blogging is an excellent way for students to create their own online space, but what do you call this? Simply a student blog? Digital portfolio? ePortfolio? Learning showcase? Blogfolio?

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Examples of Rubrics - University of Wisconsin Stout

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Examples of Rubrics - University of Wisconsin Stout

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Examples of Rubrics - University of Wisconsin Stout

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Grading rubrics precisely describe performance expectations. Rubrics offer explicit criteria to help students meet learning objectives. Rubrics also make meaningful feedback and evaluation more efficient. The sample rubrics below address discussion, eportfolios, group projects, blogs, wikis, and more!

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EPortfolio Rubric (Digital Portfolio Rubric)

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EPortfolio Rubric (Digital Portfolio Rubric)

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EPortfolio Rubric (Digital Portfolio Rubric)

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Schedule of Online Courses, Online Certificate Programs, and Graduate DegreeFollow us on

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EdTechTeacher Student Digital Portfolios: Redefining Assessment with iPads & Google Apps with Holly Clark - From Jen Carey - EdTechTeacher

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EdTechTeacher Student Digital Portfolios: Redefining Assessment with iPads & Google Apps with Holly Clark - From Jen Carey - EdTechTeacher

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This post first appeared on Jen's blog.

The first session of day two that I am attending is "Student Digital Portfolios: Redefining Assessment with iPads and Google Apps" by Holly Clark. You can view the slides from her presentation here.

Holly highlights the fact that we have to think forward and progressively, "Are you Blockbuster or are you Netflix?" While people originally thought that mailing movies to you was "crazy," ten years later Blockbuster is now dead.

Disruptive innovation isn't just for businesses, it's something that we can, and in fact should, be doing in education! Traditional models are dinosaurs and leaving students behind in the real world! With digital content and tools, we can learn so much more about our students and their families.

Holly began to implement Digital Portfolios as a means for students to reflect on their work and experiences with their educational material. So often we learn it and move on - you are directed by the curriculum or the textbook. With iPads and digital work, students were able to create at new levels and retain it (well, except when IT would take it and wipe it).

Digital Student Portfolios = Digital Citizenship

When people hear " digital citizenship" then think " cyber-bullying." We need to change that. Digital citizenship is about understanding how to navigate, interact, and communicate online. When students take their work and curate it, then populate it on the internet, they learn that nothing is private and that their online presence can be incredibly powerful (in positive and negative ways).

Controlling your online presence is important. If you don't put up content about yourself, someone else will. What do you want online, that documentary you made for class or a silly picture from college that someone tagged you in from Facebook?Online curation also requires that you think about how you present yourself; this includes not only content, but fonts, colors, presence. This is about selling yourself and building your online presence.

By encouraging students to populate their online presence through intentionality, we encourage them to think about what they put online and how that can direct their future. Here is a great project that student put online about California Missions:

This is a student that, at a very young age, is learning how to cultivate and foster a positive online presence. We need to ensure that this content is housed somewhere so that not only do students retain ownership, but so that it is enduring.

3 Types of Student Portfolios

There are three categories of student portfolios: process (This records the steps you took in building a project), showcase (This is showing off your final work), and a hybrid model (a combination of the process and final project showcase).

Holly advocates a hybrid model as it records the process and allows students to show off their final projects. Additionally, it allows students to reflect on their learning experience. Holly also highlights that when creating portfolios, you must keep several considerations in mind:

Holly uses Google Drive to collect and store content (text, images, videos, and more). You can store content on the camera roll and then upload it to Google Drive. Then students organized the content and published to a Google Site.

Holly Clark

If you would like to see a teacher using Explain Everything on the iPad to help students collect, curate, and reflect on work check out this short video by David Malone:

Holly highlights that this type of rich information can demonstrate to teachers and parents a child's educational growth throughout the year. Capturing a student's voice is important to record their experience; we need to hear it in order to better assess them. It's powerful information.

The reflection piece is probably the most important. Holly uses a Google Form that she links to the assignment. Using Google Forms means that all of the content is in one place (not in separate folders). If you use Google Apps, then you know how important workflow is to maintaining sanity!! Holly recommends that you keep the form simple, because if it is too detailed then students can get easily overwhelmed and you won't get the information that you want.

When students publish their content, they need to ensure that it looks nice. It should be professional, not have outrageous fonts/colors (pink background and green font!!), and attract people to their content. Holly encourages this by providing the student some basic templates to reign in some of their creative tendencies. As students get older and more mature, then they will have the skills for leaning towards a more professional presentation on their own.

Holly's student portfolios include the child's reflection, subjects, and a showcase of their work. This not only highlights their growth but allows them to show off some of the content that they are most proud of. Students take ownership of these pieces - they are proud of what they showing off to the world.

With publication, there is also the debate of whether or not content should be public. Schools, parents, and students have a strong opinion in terms of safety and exposure. Holly encourages discussing with parents and sharing with them the importance of Digital Footprints and an online presence.

There are other tools that we can include as they develop. Another great tool to explore is Touch Cast.

The nice thing about digital portfolios and online tools is that they are constantly evolving. We need to ensure that we are adaptable and flexible going forward.

Start Small

Collect everything you can into Google Drive

Then make a goal to do one project a grading period

Have students reflect using Google Forms

Have students publish using Google Sites

As you improve, you can expand to more sophisticated projects and bigger steps. What's important is that you build at a comfortable pace with an objective and goal in mind.

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Student Digital Portfolios: Redefining Assessment with iPads & Google Apps with Holly Clark - From Jen Carey - EdTechTeacher

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This post first appeared on Jen's blog. The first session of day two that I am attending is "Student Digital Portfolios: Redefining Assessment with iPads and Google Apps" by Holly Clark. You can view the slides from her presentation here. Holly highlights the fact that ... Read more

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Colleges have come to realize the need to assess and improve student learning and to report their efforts to students, faculty, administrators, and the public; including policy makers and prospective students and their parents.

The question is how to accomplish this. The roar of yesterday's Spellings Commission and its vision of accountability is background noise to today's cacophony of calls for more transparency and campus-based, authentic assessment of student learning. Some of the advocates for more authentic measures, such as Carol Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, have suggested using electronic portfolios -- collections of a student's work products, such as term papers, research papers or descriptions, and the student's written thoughts ("reflections") about these work products and curricular experiences that are bundled together on an electronic platform. The presumed merits of portfolios, such as their supposed ability to drill down into the local curriculum, have been extolled elsewhere.

Portfolios are simply not up to the task of providing the necessary data for making a sound assessment of student learning. They do not and cannot yield the trustworthy information that is needed for this purpose. However, there are approaches that can provide some of the information that is required.
Portfolio Assessment's Inherent Limitations
There are three major reasons portfolios are not appropriate for higher education assessment programs: They are (a) not standardized, (b) not feasible for large-scale assessment due to administration and scoring problems, and (c) potentially biased. Indeed, course grades, aggregated across an academic major or program, provide more reliable and better evidence of student learning than do portfolios. Here's why.
Lack of Standardization
Standardization refers to assessments in which (a) all students take the same or conceptually and statistically parallel measures; (b) all students take the measures under the same administrative conditions (such as on-site proctors and time limits); (c) the same evaluation methods, graders, and scoring criteria are applied consistently to all of the students' work; and (d) the score assigned to a student most likely reflects the quality of the work done by that student and that student alone (without assistance from others).

Portfolios do not and cannot meet the requirements for standardization because by their very nature, they are tailored to each student. AAC&U's attempts at "metarubrics" are not even close to being an adequate solution to address this problem. Portfolio advocates simply ignore the evidence that valid comparisons in the level of learning achieved can only be made when students take the same or statistically "equated" measures (such as different versions of the SAT).

Without standardization, faculty and administrators at individual campuses cannot answer the fundamental questions: Is the amount of student learning and level of achievement attained by the students at our campus good enough? Could they do better, and if so, how much better? For example, are the critical writing skills of our students on a par with those of students at comparable institutions and if below, what might be done to improve their performance?

The reason that campuses using portfolio assessment cannot answer these types of questions is that determining how much learning has occurred has to be measured by comparison to some type of standardized benchmarks. For example, to assess whether seniors write better than freshmen, both groups need to respond to the same essay questions within the same time limits and have their answers mixed together before being graded by readers who do not know whether an answer was written by a freshman or senior.

The same standardization is needed to assess whether the students at one school (or in one program within a school) are more proficient (or learned more) than students at similar schools. In short, learning has to be measured by some type of standardized, controlled, and unbiased comparison. There is no absolute scale (like weight and height) that is interpretable in and of itself.

Descriptions of scoring criteria are not sufficient to ensure comparable grading standards even when benchmark answers are used to train raters. In order to answer the good enough question, performance comparisons -- "benchmarking" -- is necessary. But benchmarking cannot occur without standardization and benchmarking is necessary to interpret differences in scores between programs within a campus and between peer campuses. Without standardization, differences might be due to variation in portfolio content, rater background and training, assistance provided to students for building their portfolios, bias (see below), and a host of other factors.

Valid interpretations of differences in scores between students, programs, and schools can only occur when the assessment is standardized. Only then can institutions monitor their students' progress toward improving their skills and abilities relative to (a) their school's academic standards, (b) the progress made by their classmates, and (c) the improvements in performance made by students in other programs and similar institutions. Ironically then, by eliminating the standardization that is necessary for benchmarking learning, the portfolio method prevents making the kinds of comparisons that are essential for assessing improvement.

We recognize that there are roles for portfolios. For example, they might be used to provide information about the range of tasks and activities students engage in and their views about the importance of different aspects of their education and campus experiences. This information may have heuristic value in providing possible insights into areas for improvement.
Not Feasible for Large Scale Learning Assessment
By their un-standardized nature, portfolios (even electronic ones) are not practically feasible on a large scale. A moment's reflection reveals why this is true. Because of their length, a single grader will typically need an hour or so to grade a single portfolio. To assure adequate score reliability, each portfolio needs at least two independent graders (and major differences between them should be resolved by a third). In addition, due to the potential interdisciplinary nature of a portfolio's contents, raters with different areas of expertise might be needed which could lead to even more scoring time and feasibility problems.

For portfolios to be truly authentic, they have to relate to each student's academic major or combination of majors. Hence, different teams of graders (and most likely different scoring rubrics) are needed for students with different majors. These and related concerns preclude combining results across students with different and perhaps unique combinations of majors.

Computer technology cannot solve portfolio feasibility and reliability problems. For example, computers with natural language processing software have been shown to provide a cost-effective and accurate way to grade large numbers of student responses to essay questions and other open-ended tasks. However, these machine grading methods require standardized prompts. They require that thousands of students respond to the same prompt and thus they are not applicable to portfolios.

Simply put, the time, content expertise, and other challenges -- and hence feasibility -- of grading portfolios substantially exceeds that of grading constructed responses (e.g., essays) that are administered and scored under standardized conditions. Incidentally, the solution to this problem does not lie in having local faculty grade portfolios, even when justified as a professor's instructional and professional development responsibilities. The evidence is clear: in large-scale programs, portfolio assessment overwhelms faculty, and is a source of faculty resistance and low morale. Portfolio assessment, then, is simply not a feasible or practical tool for large-scale assessment programs.
Bias
A portfolio may include a photograph, videoclip, or other information about student identities. Their gender, race, ethnicity, and other characteristics also may be known by those evaluating the portfolio. This lack of anonymity may bias results.

Faculty are understandably skeptical of standardized tests. In an article last year in Academe, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein pointed out that many faculty erroneously equate standardized exams with the highly questionable multiple-choice tests that characterize the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. Professors and administrators rightly celebrate the diversity of American higher education and therefore do not see how the same standardized test could be used across this range of institutions. However, colleges may share some important goals. For instance, virtually all faculty and college mission statements agree that critical thinking and writing skills are essential for all college graduates to possess. Graff and Birkenstein put it well:

A marketing instructor at a community college, a biblical studies instructor at a church-affiliated college, and a feminist literature instructor at an Ivy League research university would presumably differ radically in their disciplinary expertise, their intellectual outlooks, and the students they teach, but it would be surprising if there were not a great deal of common ground in what they regard as acceptable college-level work. They (these instructors) would probably agree -- or should agree -- that college-educated students, regardless of their background or major, should be critical thinkers, meaning that, at a minimum, they should be able to read a college-level text, offer a pertinent summary of its central claim, and make a relevant response, whether by agreeing with it, complicating its claims, or offering a critique.

If standardization is possible, the question arises as to whether it is possible to standardize "authentic" tasks. David C. McClelland's 1973 paper, provided the key to authenticity with standardization. He argued for a "criterion-sampling" approach to assessment in which students confront "real-world" tasks like those they may face in their further education, work, and private and civil lives. As McClelland said, if you want to know if a person can drive a car, observe and evaluate his performance on a sample of tasks like starting the car, pulling out into traffic, turning left, parking and the like. Moreover, you can evaluate performing these tasks in a standardized way. Put succinctly, he provided a strong argument for gaining authenticity through the assessment of criterion performances.

Performance assessment, then, represents an authentic, standardized testing paradigm in which students craft original responses to real-life (criterion-sampled) tasks. For example, most state bar examinations now include tasks in which candidates are given a realistic case situation and asked to use a library to perform a typical task, such as prepare deposition questions or a points-and-authorities brief, draft instructions for an investigator, or write a letter to opposing counsel. Candidates are given a "library" of documents and told to base their answers on the information in these documents. The library might include the opposing counsel's brief, excerpts of relevant and irrelevant case law, letters, investigator reports, and other documents... just like they would review in practice. Performance tasks also have been used in credentialing teachers.

We applied this testing paradigm in developing the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). This testing tool taps critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem-solving and written communication skills of college students with standardized analytic writing and performance tasks that have been described elsewhere. Over 450 colleges with 200,000 students have participated in the CLA. Faculty and students recognize its authenticity and report that its tasks tap the kinds of thinking and reasoning they expect a college education will help students perform.

We are concerned about the suggestion to replace standardized higher education measures with electronic portfolios as a means for assessing the effects of campus' programs and as a response to the demand for external accountability. Because of the inherent problems with portfolios, they do not and cannot provide trustworthy, unbiased, or cost effective information about student learning. This is just not in their DNA.

Gathering valid data about student performance levels and performance improvement requires making comparisons relative to fixed benchmarks and that can only be done when the assessments are standardized. Consequently, we urge the higher education community to embrace authentic, standardized performance-assessment approaches so as to gather valid data that can be used to improve teaching and learning as well as meet its obligations to external audiences to account for its actions and outcomes regarding student learning.

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Colleges have come to realize the need to assess and improve student learning and to report their efforts to students, faculty, administrators, and the public; including policy makers and prospective students and their parents. The question is how to accomplish this.

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digital footprint – The Principal of Change

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digital footprint – The Principal of Change

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In 2015, I wrote the following article entitled, " 3 Things Students Should Have Before They Leave High School ". Here are the "3 Things" that I suggested:

As I was speaking at a school in North Broward Preparatory School in Coconut Creek, Florida, and was talking about this, one of the teachers, Jason Shaffer, said, "We already do this." I was so pumped to hear more.

I asked him about what he is doing, and he shared that his school has a required course on "personal branding" for students. Not only are they doing the "3 Things", but they are going way beyond. Here is a snippet from the Huffington Post article written on Jason and the course:

Personal Branding and Digital Communication has been in place at North Broward since summer 2012. The course has evolved over time but the message has remained the same. Identify your passions, stick to your moral code, focus on your goals and tell your personal story through a variety of social platforms. Today, Jason's curriculum is rich with interactive exercises focused on matching your passions with your online identity. One of his favorite teaching tools? Music.

"A teen's language is music," Jason says. "Music allows them to express their identity. There's no better way to chronicle the stories of their lives."

In the Personal Branding classroom, students develop a playlist of songs they feel represents the different aspects of their lives. This playlist is eventually published publicly on Google+ - hence the clever name of the exercise, "My Sound Track." (Fun fact: The most common song on playlists is "Man in the Mirror" by Michael Jackson.)

Once this, and a series of other self-discovery exercises are complete, students build a digital portfolio across various social media sites like About.me, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Jason encourages students to leverage brand assets, like photos and logos. Students are also advised to showcase their passions, backstory, extracurricular activities, and accomplishments.

What I loved about this course, is that this was also with the vision of the administrator at the school, and Jason, along with Dr. Joan McGettigan, came up with the vision to make a course that was much more relevant to students' needs today and in the future.

Up until this course was created (in 2012), our school pretty much like every other high school. Offered a required computer applications course. They learned PowerPoint and it was about dinosaurs most of the time.

My mentor and my advisor at school Dr. Joan McGettigan, had a vision, to make a course that was more relevant to what today's teen are using. What tools they're going to need for college and beyond.

It was a fantastic idea and when the opportunity presented itself to create the curriculum even though they didn't give me much time start. It really did present a course that kids have fallen in love with.

Jason gives" Five steps for high school students looking to develop a personal brand ":

1. Find your passions
From the court to the stage each of my students is asked to identify what motivates and interests them from both an academic and extra curricular perspective. This requires reflection and goal setting with an eye on the college admissions process and potentially more long term dreams. Come up with a list of your various interests and start from there. Along the way your list is sure to grow as you begin to realize the vast information that exists and is being shared.
2. Learn from others
A few years back I had the pleasure of meeting Pat Williams, the Executive Vice President of the Orlando Magic. At the time, he told me, "Anyone can become an expert if they are willing to read ten books on a particular topic." I wanted to apply this to the art of digital communications.

Through the web students should access video tutorials, blog posts, hashtags and even experts. Combining their own personal experiences, students can use the web to accumulate a wealth of knowledge and become the type of expert Pat Williams described.
3. Share your learnings
In order to build a reputation and a personal brand you will need to make your learning visible. Use social networks to retweet others and leave meaningful, constructive and thought provoking comments on the blog posts that you find interesting. Join chat rooms and discussion forums so that you can share in professional dialogues and gain an experience usually reserved for those in "the biz". This helps to both catalog and present what you have learned.
4. Create Original Content
While consuming is great for digesting knowledge and understanding various viewpoints, true learning, understanding and "branding" comes when you are comfortable enough to share your own thoughts, experiences and knowledge on a specific topic. Try shooting and editing a video tutorial or crafting an interesting blog that helps readers connect with you emotionally. Here is where you will find your voice and build emotional connections with your audience.
5. Connect Your Networks
Managing the social networks was a challenge for many students until the discovery of about.me which they now use to tie everything together. For the first time, anyone with a link can follow along in the individual experience that has been crafted. Consider adding an about.me link to your signature line and point visitors in the direction that they can best learn about your brand.

Once students begin to use social networking for professional purposes and understand the power of their voice they are far less prone to the potential hazards of the digital world. Making decisions based about what they post and share becomes easier once they understand their own values have a channel to express them. I would argue that developing a personal brand that best represents who you are is a lifelong process. Although the audience may change over time, the message that your brand presents will remain consistent and provide insight into your personal passions and expertise.

Such great stuff and honestly, five steps that could help anyone reading this set up their own course for students.

Although this is a private school, shouldn't this be a norm in all schools? We can no longer say we are preparing students for "the real world", when what mean is "the real world" that we grew up in, not recognizing current needs of today. The next time a conversation breaks out on whether we should be teaching "cursive" in schools, I suggest asking how much time we are taking time to prepare for the reality of them all being "googled" continuously throughout their lives.

Kudos to Jason and the team at their school that took a vision, and made it into a reality.
(If you have followed Jason on Twitter already, I would suggest you do! He is doing some great stuff!)

Working with students recently, we were discussing digital footprints. A few students were fine with me googling their names in front of the group, and there was nothing that they were embarrassed of at all. Lots of social interactions; nothing bad, but nothing good.

I then asked them the following:

Me: Have you been told not to do bad things online?
Student: Yes.
Me: How about good things?
Student: Never.

These particular students were telling me about things that they were doing in their lives that were absolutely amazing and made an impact on so many others, but their online presence would never tell you that. To share some of the things that they were passionate about and how they served others, was not on their radar.

When I asked them why that was, the "cool factor" came to light. They shared that as a teen, sometimes sharing the positives of what you do might be up for criticism, and that they were so influenced by their peers. Sharing the "positives" was not what social media was for.

Is this perhaps because this is a generation being guided only by their peers, and not getting input from adults?

There is part of me where I struggle with suggesting how others use social media. One part says "leave it alone" because your space is your space. Kids gravitate towards things like snapchat, and then all of sudden educators are trying to figure out how to use snapchat for education. It reminds me of this scene from 30 Rock with Steve Buscemi:

The other part of me says in a world where the majority of our students will be googled for jobs, university, or other things, the more we educate the better. Would it better if people seeing these footprints were going "Wow!" or "eh"? In an article that is already five years old, Forbes wrote " 5 Reasons Why Your Online Presence Will Replace Your Resume in 10 years "; how have we helped with this reality?

Here are few thoughts that I think are crucial when having these conversations with students:

1. Is your footprint positive, negative, or neutral? What would others say that don't know you?

2. How do you want to be perceived offline? How about online? Is there a difference in your actions in those spaces?

3. It is important to show who you are as a person, but to also understand that this is a an open room and to be thoughtful of others. Have fun but not at the expense of someone else.

I tweeted the following while listening to Alec Couros (my brother) and Dean Shareski at ISTE recently:

The notion of "digital citizenship" is so messy. All the more reason educators have to be in on these conversations with students. #ISTE2016

- George Couros (@gcouros) June 28, 2016

The whole notion of "digital citizenship" is a messy conversation, but it is definitely one we need to have with our students to ensure that they have all of the opportunities to find and create their own path moving forward.

I can still remember moments from school when I started in 1980. My first teacher was Mrs. Stock, and I still keep in touch with her to this day (thanks Facebook!). There was no one better to invoke a love for school than her. I remember being so excited that in grade 2 or 3, we would actually start cursive writing. This was not because I was thinking of all the opportunities that it would provide for my future, but because it seemed like a rite of passage. The "big kids" wrote cursive, and so you would wanted to be like them.

Yet as a student in 1980, and an educator in 2016, so much has changed in our world, but one thing hasn't changed at all (and never will); the amount of time we have in our day.

The reason I was thinking about this, is based on a tweet that I shared the other day regarding "cursive writing" in schools.

Reading - 'Irrelevant and obsolete'? Schools moving away from teaching cursive writing https://t.co/oZ2cVodKMh

- George Couros (@gcouros) June 25, 2016

I have written about this topic before, starting back in 2011 with a post called " Thinking About Cursive" (seriously...if anything, read the comments thread. It is pretty fascinating). Here we are five years later, and the debate continues. In fact, Louisiana just made it state law to teach cursive handwriting. In this one response, the author wonders out loud the relevancy of teaching this from 4th to 12th grade (I didn't even have to do cursive past the 8th grade):

Is this handwriting requirement based on anything other than the argument that we learned it and turned out fine?

It would be nice if my daughter learned cursive, but not at the expense of her falling behind her counterparts around the world whose fingers will be flying over keys.

And when she's a high school senior, I hope she's wholly focused on the future and not being held hostage to state officials' glorification of the past

Here is the other argument for teaching cursive in schools that many have heard. T his article titled, "The Benefits of Cursive Go Beyond Writing" from 2013 (Thanks for sharing Adam Woelders!), the author shares the "brain development" that happens when writing cursive.

Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.

Yet if you read past the article, and into the comments, this one REALLY stuck out to me:

I'm dubious about there being hard evidence showing that cursive provides some significant benefits in brain development, and would want to see some real studies and numbers on that, not just claims that could be mere correlation. Moreover, if the relevant activity is putting pen to paper, why should cursive be any better than simple neat printing.

Beyond all that, however, I don't think it's simply a question of whether cursive has some tangible educational value - the really important question is whether it has MORE value than something else that could be taught in the same time. There are many subjects to cover in class - what will be omitted to make room for cursive , and what is the argument for that omitted subject being less valuable than cursive?

This is anecdoctal, but I look back on the time I spent learning cursive in grade school and find it was completely wasted - I never write in cursive and instances where I am called on to read it are vanishingly few. I would have got significantly more benefit had that time been used on foreign languages or math, for example.

If time was no object, and schools could instruct on all subjects equally, then sure, why not teach cursive? But time is a scarce resource, and if you're teaching cursive at the exclusion of some other subject, there better be a good reason to favor it beyond appeal to nostalgia or aesthetics, or the vague invocation of educational benefits over printing. I'm not seeing that good reason.

When I look at this ongoing debate, this is about more than cursive. This is the constant fight in education between asking if we should let go of some things from the past in anticipation of the future. I have used cursive more in the last year than I have in the previous 30 because of people wanting me to sign the book I wrote. I cringe a little each time because my writing is so poor, but hopefully it is legible. Yet not one note from that book was ever written on a piece of paper. It was either notes on my iPhone, or written on my computer. The "signature" argument is also changing. People that have bought my book in person through credit card on my phone, don't sign with their pen, but their finger. And really...if we are teaching kids about writing their signature, I hope it doesn't take us to focus on this practice from grade 4 all the way to grade 12!

Some think that we should replace cursive with "typing", and I struggle with this. Do you know of any school that teaches kids how to type on an iPhone? Yet many kids are not only fine with this practice, but excel it. Quick hypothesis...when you care about what you are doing, you will do whatever you can to figure out a way to become good at it on your own. Many kids learn to type when they actually care about the project they are doing, not simply focusing on how to type. I personally can type so much better than I ever could when I was taking classes in school because I get to write about things I am interested in. This matters.

The world has changed a lot, but are we taking a good hard look at what our kids need right now, let alone ten years from now? Many students are learning cursive in schools to this day, while we ignore their digital footprints in school, and many are less than positive to say the least. What do you think an employer is more likely to do in 2016; ask for a sample of their cursive, or google the candidate? What are schools doing about this in schools other than telling kids not to "be bad" online?

With the constraint of time always being a factor in our schools, we need to take a serious look not only at what we teach, but what kids need to learn to be successful not only in the future, but even in the world today. Let's spend more time not only talking about "what" we teach, but asking "why" we teach it. Many schools get tested on writing a "newspaper article" while the industry is dying all over the world. Would you invest your lifesavings in a newspaper? Yet we still invest our time, and the learning of our students doing this practice. We definitely want kids to be able to write for different audiences, but are they learning to embed media, hyperlink sources, and effectively communicate to an audience where anyone in the world can have access to the ideas they share? There is only so much time we have with our kids, so we need to make the best of it.

The debate continues...I wonder if I will be writing about this five years from now.

I will be working with a class at the University of Regina tomorrow and I thought I would share my slides with everyone. This presentation is based on the post, " What Makes A Master Teacher ", while also discussing an educator's digital footprint. I hope this can be of some help to anyone working with new teachers.

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In 2015, I wrote the following article entitled, " 3 Things Students Should Have Before They Leave High School ". Here are the "3 Things" that I suggested: As I was speaking at a school in North Broward Preparatory School in Coconut Creek, Florida, and was talking about this, one of the teachers, Jason Shaffer, said, "We already do this."

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First of all, as a principal, I rarely if ever looked at a person's marks from university when hiring them. It was not a determining factor especially since I saw that some of the worst teachers from my time in school had the best marks in university.

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Telling a 21st Century Learning Story Through Digital Portfolios | School of Thought

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Telling a 21st Century Learning Story Through Digital Portfolios | School of Thought

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Last time I posted, I discussed Dodge City Middle School's (DCMS) student-led conference initiative, which places students at the center of their own learning. This post, I will share how we've continued this important work and integrated digital portfolios that help students apply their learning experiences to the real world and foster digital citizenship and 21st-century learning skills.

In 2016, four years after DCMS implemented student-led conferencing, o ur faculty considered ways to expand the program's original goal of student ownership to include 21st-century learning preparation and digital citizenship, inspired in part by the Kansas Can initiative for Individual Plans of Study and our own school's data.

In our discussions, we talked about how today's students are "wired differently." 21st-century students want to understand why they are learning something and know its real-world application. They take connectivity and social networking for granted. They are natural collaborators and multitaskers. Perhaps, most significantly, today's students would rather "do to learn" instead of "learn to do."

So how could we adapt our successful student-led conferences to accomplish these new goals? The solution our faculty determined was to replace the three-ring binder of physical artifacts with a digital portfolio, which would allow students to:

Receive digital badge awards to highlight individual accomplishments.

Use social media as a self-promotion tool and share accomplishments and goals.

Track academic, personal, professional, and volunteer projects.

Share experiences in real time with parents and teachers, and invite mentors and family member to view feeds and receive notifications.

Reflect on required career assessments, and choose skills to develop to fulfill goals.

Understand the importance of maintaining a positive digital footprint, and practice safe and responsible social media and internet use.

Acquire "netiquette" literacy skills to become responsible contributors to social media.

The digital format allows students the same opportunities to reflect on their own learning like the three-ring binder did, but it does so in a 21st century format that engages students more and has a greater real-world application. Furthermore, the digital portfolio gives educators a way to foster digital citizenship and to stress the importance of maintaining a positive digital footprint.
The Digital Portfolio as an Individual Plan of Study
To assist students in creating their digital portfolios, we use our daily 26-minute advocacy period where teachers coach students to update their profiles, post their achievements, and challenge themselves with new learning goals. The digital portfolio is an electronic record of each student's individual plan of study in these four distinct categories:

1. Academics/Achievement Goal: Students will demonstrate an understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses and how they have grown as an independent learner.

2. Relationships- Personal & Professional Goal: Students will demonstrate an understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses and how it affects their relationships with others.

3. Careers- Awareness & Real-World Applications Goals: Students will identify their personal skills/interests to help them explore career/life opportunities for the future. Students will demonstrate what they have learned in their classes and how it applies to the real world.

4. Community/School Involvement- Service Learning Goal: Students will reflect how they have been a productive and positive citizen within school and our community.

Students use their digital portfolios-like they did with their three-ring binders-to showcase their accomplishments and give evidence of their learning during their student-led conferences every 10 weeks. The 2016-17 school year was the first for the digital portfolios, and it was a big success. Students, teachers, and parents alike raved about the new format. The digital portfolios tell a powerful story of 21st century learning where students have choice in what and how they learn.
How do you promote 21st-century learning skills in your school? Could digital portfolios help your students apply their learning experiences to the real world and foster digital citizenship? Mike King is principal of Dodge City Middle School in Dodge City, KS. During his 38-year career in education, he was named a 2012 NASSP National Digital Principal of the Year, and his schools have been recognized with numerous awards, including the Medal of Excellence, designation as an Oklahoma National Blue Ribbon School, and various Kansas educational honors. Mike is committed to advancing learning with technology and firmly believes that digital tools can help students unleash their creativity and construct knowledge.

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Telling a 21st Century Learning Story Through Digital Portfolios

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Last time I posted, I discussed Dodge City Middle School's (DCMS) student-led conference initiative, which places students at the center of their own learning. This post, I will share how we've continued this important work and integrated digital portfolios that help students apply their learning experiences to the real world and foster digital citizenship and 21st-century learning skills.

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Getting Started with Learning Journals on Vimeo

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Getting Started with Learning Journals on Vimeo

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This is "Getting Started with Learning Journals" by Edge Gain on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

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We are being asked to post "essential questions" in our classrooms this year. I'm not sure of what makes a question "essential" and how this would help students. Would I need a different question each day for my biology course?
-John, Boston, Massachusetts

My knowledge and experience with essential questions relates to the Understanding by Design framework from McTighe and Wiggins (see the end note). But there are other interpretations, so you should ask your principal what she has in mind. (Perhaps she could model this in a faculty meeting or professional development event?)

Basically, whether you use the term essential questions, big ideas, key understandings, or themes, the purpose is to focus student learning on important concepts that unite and underlie the lessons or chapters in a unit or course. They help students make interdisciplinary connections and see the bigger picture of science beyond the vocabulary and facts. Most models suggest using them at the unit level, rather than for every lesson.

Essential questions, big ideas, or themes provide a context for the topic and address "Why are we learning this?" During each lesson, students revisit the question, connecting new content or experiences with previous learning. For example, an earth science teacher I observed posed the question "How does the surface of the earth change over time?" As students investigated processes such as plate tectonics, erosion, deposition, or asteroid impact, she guided them to reflect on the question and record their connections in their notebooks.

I've seen teachers display the questions on the white board, on a bulletin board, in a PowerPoint, or on a flip chart. In some classes, students put them in their science notebooks. The location should not be as important as how students use them.

Both the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and A Framework for K-12 Science Education describe and focus on a limited number of core ideas and crosscutting concepts-the big ideas of science. As I learned more about the NGSS, I found examples of questions in the "Storyline" narratives on the website. These questions could be adapted for your units. For example, these are life science questions for secondary grades:
Performance Expectations by DCI [Disciplinary Core Idea]
From Molecules to Organisms: Structure and Processes

How can one explain the ways cells contribute to the function of living organisms?

How do organisms live and grow?

Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

How does a system of living and non-living things operate to meet the needs of the organisms in an ecosystem?

How and why do organisms interact with their environment, and what are the effects of these interactions?

Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits

How do living organisms pass traits from one generation to the next?"

How are characteristics of one generation passed to the next?

How can individuals of the same species and even siblings have different characteristics?

Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity

How do organisms change over time in response to changes in the environment?"

What evidence shows that different species are related?

Structure, Function, and Information Processing

How do the structures of organisms contribute to life's functions?

How do the structures of organisms enable life's functions?"

Growth, Development, and Reproduction of Organisms

How do organisms grow, develop, and reproduce?

Inheritance and Variation of Traits

How are the characteristics from one generation related to the previous generation?

Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems

How do organisms obtain and use matter and energy?

How do matter and energy move through an ecosystem?

Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems

How do organisms interact with other organisms in the physical environment to obtain matter and energy?

How do organisms interact with the living and non-living environment to obtain matter and energy?

Natural Selection and Adaptations

How does genetic variation among organisms in a species affect survival and reproduction?

How does the environment influence genetic traits in populations over multiple generations?

Natural Selection and Evolution

How can there be so many similarities among organisms yet so many different plants, animals, and microorganisms?

How does biodiversity affect humans?

Unfortunately, some principals may think of the questions as something to check off during a walkthrough. I had a principal who noted that while he was in my class, I did not address the essential question. I responded that the 10 minutes he was there did not include the beginning and end of the class, when we did indeed make the connections!

Additional readings:

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We are being asked to post "essential questions" in our classrooms this year. I'm not sure of what makes a question "essential" and how this would help students. Would I need a different question each day for my biology course?

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Microsoft Word - Enduring understanding.doc

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Microsoft Word - Enduring understanding.doc

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Scaffolding Student Reflections + Sample Questions | Edutopia

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Scaffolding Student Reflections + Sample Questions | Edutopia

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Scaffolding Student Reflections + Sample Questions

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Scaffolding Student Reflections + Sample Questions

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Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind: 16 Essential Characteristics for Success

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In Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind, noted educators Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick present a comprehensive guide to shaping schools around Habits of Mind. The habits are a repertoire of beh

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10 Tools to Create Online Student Portfolios

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10 Tools to Create Online Student Portfolios

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1. Kidblog

This is an excellent tool which was actually built by teachers with online student portfolios in mind. Kidblog is a unique proposition in the sense that it aims to empower teachers to fully embrace the advantages of the digital revolution in education by allowing students to become creators, not mere consumers of knowledge. Kidblog offers functionalities which perfectly match the goals of online student portfolios.

Moreover, it grants teachers administrative control over student blogs and accounts to ensure the efficiency and security of the project - the platform doesn't require any personal data for registration. A word about security - Kidblog is private, but teachers can make posts available to the public or protect them with a password so that parents can have access to their kids' blogs.

2. Edublogs

At a first glance, Edublogs seems to offer a similar blogging platform to WordPress, but it differs in its core character as a tool meant exclusively for students. What does it mean in practice? Simpler interface and full functionality. Edublogs is a secure platform where blogs can be private or accessible to teachers, classmates and parents.

Another great thing about Edublogs is that they don't display any ads, making it a good alternative to WordPress which might not work in certain schooling institutions. Edublogs is very student-friendly and provides a smart guide on getting started with the platform which covers all the key basics required for digital portfolios.

3. Three Ring

4. VoiceThread

This free app for iOS is another interesting tool for creating digital portfolios. Teachers and students can work together and add work samples which are then organized to form separate streams and narratives. The app supports different types of content, ranging from audio and video to images and other kinds of files or documents.

The creators of this app were clearly interested in collaboration - teachers and students can leave comments with varied input (text, video, audio) in relevant sectors on digital portfolios. The only problem is the fact that the app requires constant access to the internet to work properly.

5. Weebly

Weebly is a platform which helps students to create websites with the use of specific visual templates. As you can imagine, this tool can easily serve as a digital portfolio creator, helping students to navigate through its simple interface and easily update their portfolios. Students can add content with a simple drag-and-drop - this means that the tool will work for younger students. Weebly offers a look into portfolios made by other students as well, helping to inspire students and their peers in creating captivating online spaces.

6. WordPress

Using forms like posts and pages, students can document their work throughout the year. They'll be able to revisit their creation later in life too. While for some students WordPress may generate a slight learning curve at the beginning, having a blog set up and managing it is really simple. Teachers interested in introducing WordPress to their classroom should remember to choose WordPress.com - WordPress.org is a bit more advanced and requires payment for each domain name.

7. Google Sites

8. Evernote

9. Easy Portfolios

An interesting feature of Easy Portfolios is that it allows to easily share portfolio items through email or Dropbox upload - this is how teachers can keep and manage all their younger students' portfolios in one place.

10. Wikispaces for Education

Each student receives their own username and password, but they won't need to add their email for registration. These communities can be set up as private, so there's no privacy concern here.

Digital portfolios empower students and help them see the path of their learning experience. This is how they can grow to appreciate and manage their achievements. Moreover, by introducing digital portfolios to a classroom, teachers can foster digital skills to make out of their students true digital citizens.

For more on portfolios, check out:
Hannah Dickins Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update is a Community Manager at Directorstats.co.uk. Follow Hannah on Twitter, @DickinsHannah.

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10 Tools to Create Online Student Portfolios

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This is an excellent tool which was actually built by teachers with online student portfolios in mind. Kidblog is a unique proposition in the sense that it aims to empower teachers to fully embrace the advantages of the digital revolution in education by allowing students to become creators, not mere consumers of knowledge.

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Last week, we took a benchmark test in Science class. I scored an 88 on the benchmark.

Here's my item analysis:

What I noticed about the questions that I got wrong is that two out of the three of them are about the layers of the earth. I'm not totally surprised that I missed those: We studied the layers of the earth a long time ago. But it does mean that I need to go back and check that content out again. That's worth reviewing for sure.

I think I'm most disappointed in myself for missing question 25. It asked why the inner core of the earth is a solid ball of iron. I answered that it was because of extreme temperature. I should have realized that when I want something -- think snow or sand -- to be "more solid," I don't add heat to it. Instead, I add pressure to it. I think that's a question that I could have gotten right if I had thought a little more carefully.
What I'm proud of, though, is that I made mastery on almost all of my other objectives. What I do the best is ecosystems stuff. Food chains and food webs are easy for me -- and I'm also good at biotic and abiotic factors.

I think what I enjoy the most is talking about how humans impact the environment. That stuff is really interesting to me simply because I know that humans are having an impact and if we think about our choices, we can make sure that our impact is a positive one instead of a negative one.

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Last week, we took a benchmark test in Science class. I scored an 88 on the benchmark. Here's my item analysis: What I noticed about the questions that I got wrong is that two out of the three of them are about the layers of the earth .

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Search Results for “portfolios” – The Principal of Change

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Search Results for “portfolios” – The Principal of Change

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Digital portfolios are something that are really starting to take off in schools. There are different software programs that will make "portfolios" easy to share, yet do we truly embrace the power that a digital portfolio can bring into our schools? Since it is "digital", we need to go beyond a portfolio that only represents one year of learning, but can show the progression over time.

Here are some questions for you to consider as you look into the process.

1. Is this a learning portfolio, showcase portfolio, or combination of both? - Does this show the student's progression over time (learning), or just the best stuff (showcase). There are huge benefits to both for learning and opportunities over time. A combination of both in my opinion is best.

2. Who owns the learning? - Is this a portfolio that only shows "school" work, or does the student have the opportunity to display what they are passionate about, or is it simply for items to be displayed based on what the teacher wants? Is it a combination of both? If the student feels no ownership over the process and product, the results will not be as powerful as if they do.

3. How will it be exported after the process? - For starters, see the question above. Secondly, if there is no plan to ensure that students have the opportunity to put all of this learning into their own space eventually, you are missing another opportunity that digital provides.

4. How will you make the audience eventually go global? - A lot of parents and educators are worried about the work of a student getting "out there" (for various reasons), but if the portfolio is only available upon request, we are taking a very "paper" mentality, to a "digital" platform. This does not meant the whole world has to see everything from the beginning, or the student needs to share it with the world if they do not want to, but the progression plan to share it with the world should be there. Will the audience be limited long term?

5. What brings people to the portfolio? - Is there any mechanism that brings people to the portfolio other than telling people to come? Simple things like email help to build an audience. Is the portfolio more likely to be seen and more valuable to the learning if it goes to people, other than people coming to the portfolio?

6. What impact will this have on the learner's digital footprint? - Will Richardson suggests that by the time kids graduate grade 12, you should be able to google them and find good stuff about them (see image at the top of the post). Does the portfolio help in this endeavour when every student we work with now will be googled for jobs, university, or a myriad of other things.

7. What about next year and other classes? - This is a HUGE question. If the portfolio only lasts for one year, then you are missing a great opportunity. What professional learning is in place for teachers to support a connection of learning over time for the students? What will the students work look like over time and how will they be able to google or search for their own learning? If the plan is not in place to grow this over time, we lose so much from the process.

If these questions aren't considered, I am wondering if we are just doing a digital version of "school", or rethinking the opportunities digital now provides for learning in school? This is more than just thinking about the software, but thinking about the potential of what this process can bring to our students and ourselves.

In Alan November's 2012 book titled, " Who Owns the Learning? ", he states the following:

Today, very little of the work we give students in school provides them with a sense that they are making a contribution to anything other than their own educational progress toward graduation. Indeed, once the grade is recorded, a huge amount of student work is thrown away. It has no more value. Now that we have powerful, easy-to-use design tools and a capacity for worldwide publishing, we have an opportunity to restore the dignity and integrity of a work ethic with redefining the role of the learner as a contributor to the learning culture.

This thinking was evident in my development of our digital portfolio project. As more and more educational technology companies try to break into the "portfolio" market, they seem to be more concerned with where the data is stored, then the students actually having access to keep their information. Both should be considerations, but we often are more concerned on how we report to parents than we are about students developing and contributing learning that we have ownership over.

As we thought about helping staff feel safe with students putting their thoughts out there, while also ensuring students would have ownership over their learning, we decided to go with a blogging platform (specifically Edublogs but this will work for any WordPress hosted domain). I have written extensively on the use of blogs as digital portfolios (please feel free to click to learn more about this process), but one of the considerations I haven't share was how students would be able to take everything they have done in this space and create their own domain at any point, either during of after their time in learning.

What the hope of the project is a student will be able to share their learning their entire time in school, so you can see them (and they can see themselves) develop over time. At the end of their time with their portfolio in school, they can go into their blog and do the following.

1. Go to your WordPress Dashboard.

2. Under "Tools", select "Export". It will then download an XML file.

3. Open your own domain.

4. Go to the WordPress Dashboard and under "Tools", select "Import".

5. Upload the XML file.

6. Done.

The point of this post is not to "sell" you on Edublogs or WordPress, but more focused on a few questions:

1. How do you create a space where if something goes wrong educators feel comfortable that they have "control" and can intervene if necessary?

2. Are your "digital portfolios" something that are created simply for school, or something more meaningful that the world could have access to see if the student chooses?

3. Is the process of moving from one space to another, something simple enough and can be done by the students themselves?

As you move forward with your own projects, these are questions we should be asking to be proactive, not have students create years of work, only to delete or have under the control of the school. If that is the case, the learning was never theirs in the first place.

Digital Portfolios are becoming a "big thing" in education (as they should be), and people are starting to think about how this can change assessment practices. Although it is a great idea, there are still a lot of districts and schools struggling with implementation at the student level.

So what is the biggest road block towards this initiative being successful? In my own experience it is our own lack of experience that is holding our students back. If we have never done this practice ourselves, "digital portfolios" become nothing more than digitized paper portfolios. It quickly becomes a "digital dump" of our work where we simply add links to what we have done, with not much else added to the process. A "digital" portfolio should be something more than a replication of what we could simply do offline.

If we are too really move forward with this type of initiative, it is imperative that time and support are given (this is true with everything) to make it happen. This is not just showing us the possibilities of what a "digital portfolio" could do (which many tech companies are trying to do right now), but to actually have the time to play and see the opportunities that a different type of platform gives us for areas like assessment, open reflection, developing a digital footprint, literacy, inquiry based learning, and a whole host of other things. The real power is not in what we can currently do with digital portfolios, but what we can do in the future. As digital tools tend to develop, so do the opportunities, as well as our thinking. Digital portfolios are less of an endpoint and more of a beginning of what we can create for learning, but time is needed for support and play.

Many teachers have seen with the development of their own digital portfolios is the power of having their own "thinking" space, while also developing their own digital footprint. What's powerful about this process for teachers is that this is their own space. This is crucial in the planning for student portfolios. So when we are moving forward with this process in our schools, we have to ask think about is this something students are making in school, for school purposes, or is this something that is being created to make an impact both during and after school. If it is truly "their portfolio", then shouldn't students be able to have ownership over the majority of the content and who has the ability to see it? I know that if someone were to decide for me what I put in my portfolio and who was allowed to see it, I probably wouldn't put much effort into it Wouldn't students be any different?

One of the most important aspects of a digital portfolio is that it is (and should be) a very personal process. If I am knowingly having other people look at what I am sharing, I should be able to have an enormous say in what I share and why I share it. But I am not sure I would have come to this conclusion unless I created my own space. The process has led me to be empathetic of what the learner would want from this process, and I would much rather do a portfolio than have a portfolio done to me. And that is why I see the roadblock of many educators (although there are seeming more and more doing this themselves which is awesome!) not having done this process as more of an opportunity than a problem. Doing something from the viewpoint of the learner will dramatically change this process of digital portfolios in schools, and if we put ourselves in the place of our students, I wonder how much different this opportunity will look for our students if we are to jump in first.

Just my thoughts...
Just in case you are looking to go deeper into the topic, here are some articles and resources that I have written on the topic of digital portfolios: 5 Reasons Your Portfolio Should Be Online 5 Reasons Your Portfolio Should Be A Blog Our Digital Portfolio Project Blog As Portfolio (Video)
Blog as Portfolio (Workshop)

As more organizations and classrooms are looking at "digital portfolios", I wanted to compile some of the information I have either curated or created on the topic. I really believe in creating a blog as a digital portfolio, which is more than simply a blog, and more than simply a portfolio, but a combination of the best of both worlds. The blogging component is hugely beneficial to show growth of learning over time, while also developing multiple facets of literacy, while a "portfolio" adds a component that gives us an opportunity to show our best stuff.

A Blog/Portfolio (perhaps a "blogfolio"), is great for learning purposes because it gives the creator of the space an opportunity to showcase learning while building a digital footprint that will be beneficial long after their time in schools. It also allows students multiple ways to showcase their learning since basically anything I can see or hear, I can now make digital and link into their space. The possibilities are endless.

If you want to learn more about this process, please feel free to check out the links below.
7 Important Questions Before Implementing Digital Portfolios What does your digital portfolio show? "Who Owns the Learning" (Discussing why it is important that students have ownership over their portfolios) 5 Reasons Your Portfolio Should Be Online 5 Reasons Your Portfolio Should Be A Blog Our Digital Portfolio Project Curation as Portfolio Activity Blog As Portfolio (Video)
Blog as Portfolio (Workshop)

I had a great question asked by Ray Tolley, wondering about the "portfolio" portion of our blogfolio project. Summarized, Ray knew that blogging alone is NOT a portfolio, and there needed to be more evidence of learning. Ray also asked how we would address all of this student work being done at our school being continued after a student leaves. I created this short video to help explain this project further in depth.

The saying, "The customer is always right," has been around forever and one that I have known since I was a kid. Switch this to the context of education, and many schools are focusing on the question of "What is best for the learner?", which is a "learner-centered" approach to education.

What is essential to understand when you are looking at starting with a "student-centered" approach is that serving the adults in the building IS how you serve the students. In the business world, many companies have shifted to the thinking that you treat your employees like you would your best customer. This thinking puts the people closest to those they serve in positions where they are most likely to be successful in the venture of helping learners.

Management is a crucial part of leadership. Leadership is focusing on people, but management is focusing on the "stuff." You can have a tremendous vision for what you would like to do within your school, but if you are not able to do things such as manage budgets, or create meaningful professional learning opportunities for staff, the vision becomes that only. A thought of what we could do instead of it becoming a reality.

I thought of the following three layers in creating amazing schools that are crucial to leadership. They are the following:

1. Focus on Environment

2. Development of Talent

3. Learner/Student Experience

Although they seem obvious, the "simple" sometimes need to be stated. In each area, I would like to focus on three areas, creating a 3 X 3 model for innovation.

Before I go into each one, there have to be two statements that filter in all three levels. The first is relationships. No matter what level you work or who you serve, relationships are crucial to learning. In fact, as content is now everywhere, relationships are are more important in education than ever. The second focus is innovation. At each level, we should always look at new and better ways of doing things in the environment, talent development, and the learner experience. This does not mean "best practice" is ignored, just that we never become comfortable with "that's the way we have always done it."

Here are the three areas of focus that I am looking at initially and will give you some brief thoughts on each point.

Professional Learning - Do the professional learning opportunities mirror the learning that you want to happen in the classrooms? Is the learning for the year done in a way that is thought out over time, or is the year just a bunch of "one-offs" with no clear direction? Professional learning should focus more on depth, than breadth.

Personalization of Learning - Do we know our students and do we tap into their strengths and passions, or focus only on where they need to grow? Knowing our students and tapping into their desires, helps develop their resiliency. Is school about fitting students into a box, or adjusting to the needs of the learners in front of you?

As this 3 X 3 model is something that I am working on, I would love your feedback. What did I miss? Where do we need to focus to create schools that serve and empowers all learners to make incredible things happen both in and out of the environment?

What is important to understand is that this is not meant to be an "admin" model, but an "all-hands-on-deck" process. Part of the disconnect in each of these areas is that they have happened in isolation. How do we know the environment needed in classrooms for our students and staff to survive if they are not active, contributing members of the conversation?

Hopefully, these three layers start some conversations in helping move schools forward together.

I have a passion for digital portfolios. I think that if we look at doing them in a way that is across grades, subjects, classrooms, and a shared platform in different teacher classes, they can be transformational to a school, district, and more importantly, to the learning of our students.

So I am often frustrated when the first question that I hear regarding digital portfolios is about the technology, not the learning. "What platform should we use?" is usually the main focus, instead of, "How will this shape learning in our classrooms in a way that we are not doing currently?"

The simple shift here is having the learning shape what technology a student uses, not the technology shaping what learning can be done by the student. Obviously, there is room for both as a "digital" portfolio can do many things that paper cannot (media, information over the years in one place and easily searchable, etc.).

For example, when I first looked at portfolios, I thought about "learning portfolios" versus "showcase portfolios." From a previous post:

When I started to look at what was the best place to start a digital portfolio, we looked at two types of portfolios; a learning portfolio and a showcase portfolio. Here is the easiest way to differentiate the two in terms of student learning:

Learning portfolio - If a student were to take a video of them reading in four consecutive months, you would see all readings over time to see development and growth.

Showcase portfolio -If a student were to take a video of them reading in four consecutive months, they would pick the best one from the four samples.

Because of that, I focused on using blogs as a portfolio, even though blogs were not set up as a "portfolio." The learning helped shaped the way we used the technology, and eventually, the technology can transform the learning to do something we couldn't do before. The order here is imperative.

For example, here is an image regarding " 8 Things to Look for In Today's Classroom ":

If you took those 8 things, how could you bring those elements alive in a digital portfolio?

Here are two examples:

Voice
How do we create an opportunity to create a digital footprint, through different mediums (video, audio, written, visual, etc.) it allows them to share their voice in ways, and on topics, that are meaningful to the learner?

Choice
How will students share their work, both in and out of the curriculum, which allows them to take different pathways in their learning? This could range from how students share their learning (assessment as learning), or even, what students choose to learn.

Could you figure out elements of learning for the other six that could be exemplified by a digital portfolio? If you can, what platform would THEN best serve the learning?

As I write this, I struggle with a "chicken and egg" scenario. I know I am biased on what can be done with a digital portfolio because I have done it myself. I know the technology can shape what we do in learning. What I am trying to work through in my head is asking, "What platform should we use?" the equivalent of "What apps should I download on my iPad?" It limits a focus on a bigger picture and narrows in on the technology, not the learning.

I had the opportunity to listen to Will Richardson recently, and he said something that I will paraphrase (and maybe messing up) that stuck with me:

"I don't know the answers; I am just trying to ask better questions."

If we start with trying to ask better questions instead of immediate answers, we seem to be starting in a much better place.

In March of 2015, I wrote the post, " 3 Important Shifts in Education ", and focused on moving these three conversations:

1. "Digital Citizenship" to "Digital Empathy"

2. "Student Voice" to "Student Leadership"

3. "Growth Mindset" to "Innovator's Mindset"

The focus of the original post was not moving on from the former to the latter, but building upon and moving conversations forward. Almost three years later after writing that post, I wanted to share three new conversations that I see education moving towards currently, and in the future. These three are based on my travels working with educators all over North America, and hearing where they are taking their schools and their students. While many lament the slow speed of change in education, I would argue that it is happening in many schools at a rapid pace. In this recent post from "The Washington Post" by Ted Dintersmith, he would suggest that he is observing some amazing examples of innovation in classrooms and schools as well:

Second, I was blown away by the many inspiring examples of great innovation I encountered - in classrooms, schools, districts and states. In these classrooms, teachers help kids develop essential skill sets and mindsets. Instead of checking off endless content boxes (AP U.S. History, for example, covers five centuries, allowing a whopping 30 minutes for the U.S. Constitution), students master what they learn, apply it and teach others. Much of the learning is hands-on, tied to real-world projects. Students have voice in creating initiatives and in defining their path forward. Teachers are trusted, and students approach schoolwork with a sense of purpose.

With this being stated, here are three progressions I am seeing being at the forefront of many great schools:

1. Shifting from a focus on "product" to "process".

"Change" is not something new to our generation. The rate of change though is at an unprecedented rate. Because of this, we need to think a lot more about what students can do, not only what they know.In Thomas Friedman's book, "Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations," the author challenges how we look at the process of formal education:"Another big challenge is the way we educate our population. We go to school for twelve or more years during our childhoods and early adulthoods, and then we're done. But when the pace of change gets this fast, the only way to retain a lifelong working capacity is to engage in lifelong learning."
Think about it this way. Many of you reading this, when you were young, Pluto was a planet. Some information changes over time, but the ability to learn is forever, and more organizations are focusing on moving from "engagement to empowerment" in their schools.

What many people will challenge is that I am saying "knowledge" is not crucial in education, where in fact, I have argued that content is crucial to innovation. It is just not enough.

AJ Juliani and John Spencer, put it succinctly in their book, " Empower ":

Change is not going away, and will only happen at a faster rate. As people continuously ask, "What's next?", we should be able to say as educators and learners, that whatever comes next, we will be able to adapt, embrace, and take advantage of what lies in front of us. This shift on "process" to "product" is underlying in the next two conversations.

2. Shifting from a focus on "assessment" to "self-assessment."Part of the job of an educator is to give an accurate assessment of where students are at and where they need to go. But what happens when the teacher is not there to provide feedback and guidance? If we are shifting in education to focus more on the "process of learning," our learners will have to be able to assess their progress through their unique journeys.One way this can be done is through the use of digital portfolios. Since it is much easier to store years of information in a digital format versus paper, this allows us to see where we have been and where we are going. For example, right now you are reading an entry in my digital portfolio, and I can look on something that I wrote three years ago, and to see what has changed in my thinking, and what has stayed the same.
We will have to look at our assessment practices as educators, and understand, that there is so much more to learning than could be summarized in a letter or a grade. When we focus, both as educators and learners, too much on the "number," we often lose sight of our strengths and where we need to grow. Learners will need to be able to evaluate their own progress if they are going to truly focus on the process of learning.

3. Shifting from "technology-integration" to "innovative teaching and learning."When we focus on "edtech," it seemingly is more focused on what technology we should use as opposed to what learning we want to happen. For example, many schools moving towards digital portfolios are focused more on what tool they want to use, as opposed to what type of learning they want to happen. If you focus more on the type of learning you want to happen, you can often shape the technology to what you want. "Learning" should always lead the conversation. Innovative teaching and learning, places focus on new and better ways of teaching and learning, with or without technology. As I have written in the past:"If you have people embrace a different mindset and create something better for our students, while still working within the constraints of the system, incredible gains can be made within the present of what is expected, and the potential of what can be created in the future."
Innovation is not about getting rid of what works, but about ensuring that we are meeting the current and future needs of our students. "Edtech" sometimes puts "traditional learning" into digital packages, whether they work for students or not. As schools focus more on innovation, their starting point should always be the learner in front of them, not the "shiny and new".

I have been inspired by many conversations with educators, online and offline, and feel the progression I have seen in many schools has been directly related to so many of them focusing on their own learning and continuous growth. They are not waiting for professional learning days or conferences to get new and better ideas, but are jumping into their own development when it makes sense for them. The ability to learn anytime, any place, at any pace, is only valuable if we take advantage of it. Many educators are leading the way by doing just that, and even within the constraints that are placed upon them, are doing amazing things.

If we want to continue this rapid growth though, it is essential we start by having these conversations that help us grow and become better as organizations, not only as individuals. Once we as individuals or organizations think we are "there," we are already falling behind. Kudos to the many educators that are modeling change happens by starting with yourself, not merely thrusting it onto others.

Posted in: Tagged: Embodying Visionary Leadership, AJ Juliani, conversations for education, edtech, george couros, innovative teaching and learning, john spencer, process and product, shifting away from edtech, shifts in education, ted dintersmith Leading a Learning Community, Understanding and Responding to the Larger Societal Context

I am past the seven-year mark of my digital portfolio (you are reading it right now), and I would say that both personally and professionally, nothing has made more of an impact on my career or learning. If I would have known what this endeavour would have led to in both growth and opportunities before I even started, it would have been a no-brainer for me to start. The hard part is convincing others on why it is so powerful to create a blog as portfolio and stick with it.

One of my favourite quotes:

If you do this and stick with it consistently (2-3 times a week), it will make a tremendous difference in your learning.

So why a "blog" as a porfolio?

When I started to look at what was the best place to start a digital portfolio, we looked at two types of portfolios; a learning portfolio and a showcase portfolio. Here is the easiest way to differentiate the two in terms of student learning:

Learning portfolio - If a student were to take a video of them reading in four consecutive months, you would see all readings over time to see development and growth.

Showcase portfolio -If a student were to take a video of them reading in four consecutive months, they would pick the best one from the four samples.

What is beautiful in using a blog as a portfolio is that you do not have to choose; you can do both. ( For more information on blogging as portfolio, please feel free to look through these links.)

Trying to think what my porfolio has "shown" over the last seven years, here are four things that stick out.

Show my work - This is something that is important to me. When I first started this portfolio I had a few blog posts, and an "about me" page. Now if you look under " presentation resources ", you can see things that I have created and collected over time. Not only do I create these pages as references for others, but references for myself.

Show my thinking - A lot of times when I share ideas, I am blogging to learn, not to share learning. There is a difference. Part of the reasoning why I do this is to see my own evolution of thought over time. I know for example, at one point I wrote about how "technology is just a tool", and later on writing that "technology is not just a tool". As I took time to reflect, my learning shift, and hopefully will continue to grow and develop.

Show my influences - When I wrote my book, " The Innovator's Mindset", the process was accelerated because I did not just have access to my own learning and words, but the ideas and thoughts of others. When I find a good article, video, or quote from a book, I blog about it so that I can share my thinking at the time, but so that I can also find it later. Google " George Couros Barry Schwartz ". What you will find (probably) is all of the blog posts that I have written that I have tagged with the word "Barry Schwartz" over the last seven years. This portfolio has also become a library for me over time and I use it with that thought in mind.

Show my past while helping me understand my future This is a little bit harder to understand. When I first started to share on this blog, I shared a lot on the topic of " Social Media for Administrators". I did not really know that I had an interest in the topic until I looked back on how much I wrote about it. My book, " The Innovator's Mindset ", was born in this space as an idea, and eventually became something more. This space has helped me find my interests through the process, which eventually led to a product. What is key here is that I wrote about what I was interested in, not what I thought would get clicks. That being said, if you are passionate about what you write, that passion will bring people in eventually. Start with your own voice, and eventually, people will want to hear it.

As I have said, if I would have known what this could have been, there would have been zero reluctance to start in the first place. My hope is that just by sharing this, that I inspire others to find their voice through the process. The possibilities are endless if you start. If you don't, you will for sure get the same return of what you put in.

Does this happen in your school or district?

One teacher prefers google sites.

Another blogger.

A different teacher prefers Edublogs.

One teacher started their students on seesaw.

So for the sake of "teacher autonomy", we have students with minimal amounts of learning exhibited in a multitude of spaces. This also leads to students spending a lot of time learning technology instead of learning with technology. There is a difference.

What will this do for a student long term after they graduate from school? Will their footprint show that they tend to jump from one site to another, but not have the ability to not stick with anything over time? Is this ultimately our fault, yet they have to deal with the consequences long term?

One of the things that I truly believe is that schools need to come together (both at the school and district level), to figure out a platform that a student can utilize over time. In an earlier piece, " 7 Important Questions Before Implementing Digital Portfolios ", I provided these questions for people to consider when implementing digital portfolios:

1. Is this a learning portfolio, showcase portfolio, or combination of both?

2. Who owns the learning?

3. How will it be exported after the process?

4. How will you make the audience eventually go global?

5. What brings people to the portfolio?

6. What impact will this have on the learner's digital footprint?

7. What about next year and other classes?

These are all important things to consider.

What is important to understand though is that I do believe there still should be teacher autonomy, but that would come through what you are putting into a portfolio, not necessarily what platform you use. What is crucial is the portfolio that you choose allows outside services to be embedded into the process (YouTube, Instagram, Slideshare, SoundCloud, or anything else that has an embed code). For example, if you are teaching a language, using something like SoundCloud (audio service), might be the best way to show development over time, yet this should be able to put back into the platform of the student.

The importance here is that we have a shared vision over time. This decision should not be made in isolation, and should not be made solely by the IT department either, although I believe they should contribute to the conversation. This space (my portfolio) that you are reading now is something that has developed over seven years and has been the most beneficial thing I have ever done for my own learning. It has allowed for depth of learning, instead of focusing on surface level. I do not wonder how I need to post something, or embed an object; the hardest part for me now is the quality of the content that I produce, not the ability to create and share. Is that not the challenge we want to provide our students? That they can focus on quality learning, not learning every new technology is out there.

It is important that we help our students produce something that is not only valuable to their learning, but valuable to them long term. We will need to come together as a community if we are going to pull this vision together.

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Digital portfolios are something that are really starting to take off in schools. There are different software programs that will make "portfolios" easy to share, yet do we truly embrace the power that a digital portfolio can bring into our schools?

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Over the last year, I've been working on a committee in my school district to think about the role that digital portfolios can play in helping students to document their learning. I LOVE that our district is committed to the idea of portfolios simply because they promote more reflective learners and help our schools to move from a culture of grading to a culture of feedback.

That's kinda my jam.
The defining moment in my own thinking about digital portfolios came in December, when I listened to my buddy George Couros explain the difference between Learning Portfolios and Showcase Portfolios at Convergence - a meeting of the professional minds hosted by our district's Media and Technology team.
According to George, Learning Portfolios are all about giving students chances to collect evidence of their own growth and progress as learners over time. They aren't about spotlighting perfection. They are about promoting reflection. Showcase Portfolios, on the other hand, are designed to give students spaces to spotlight their very best work. Both types of portfolios have value to learners - but both serve very different purposes.

George went even further, arguing that blogging tools make for perfect homes for digital portfolios primarily because they allow users to house a Learning Portfolio and a Showcase Portfolio in the same space. For George, the constantly updated stream of posts that stands at the center of a blog space is the Learning Portfolio. It should house regular reflections - celebrations of progress made, plans for moving forward, evidence of current levels of mastery, questions for consideration.

Static pages on a blog - which are almost always found listed in a header under the Blog's title - are perfect for housing Showcase Portfolios. It is a place where kids can do deeper thinking around what they have actually mastered. Students can link to their best evidence in their Showcase Portfolios - and can update the content on each page as they demonstrate additional mastery over time.
That's BRILLIANT thinking, right?
The truth is that encouraging students to keep a Learning Portfolio and a Showcase Portfolio promotes different kinds of reflective behaviors. We DO want our kids to get into the habit of regular reflection on what they know in the moment. And we DO want our kids to get into the habit of organizing their BEST evidence that they've mastered important outcomes. Making those two different practices manageable starts when we use ONE tool that can create separate spaces in the the same digital home.
I've finally decided to take George's advice and start a Digital Portfolio Pilot Project with my students. Here's what I've done so far:
I spent a ton of time creating a sample of a digital portfolio.

You can check it out here. Remember: The posts in the body of the blog are a part of a hypothetical student's Learning Portfolio. They show progress in the moment. The pages listed across the top header underneath the title are a part of the same hypothetical student's Showcase Portfolio. The are evidence of mastery of bigger curricular ideas.

This sample portfolio has been SUPER valuable in helping kids to understand just what it is that they are going to be doing as a part of our portfolio project. The sad truth is that few had any idea what I meant when I said, "Anyone want to create a digital portfolio to document your learning?" Those are practices that we haven't prioritized in schools.
I've created several resources for the PARENTS of participating students.
Perhaps the two most important resources are my digital portfolio permission slip - which details some basic expectations that participating students have to follow - and my Digital Portfolio Tips for Parents - which outlines ways that parents can get involved in supporting the reflective work that their students are about to begin.
I've whipped up a list of every essential question that students are supposed to master in their core classes this year.
Those are listed in documents posted at the top of each Showcase Portfolio page. Here's a sample. My plan is to have students use those questions as starting points for content that they can put on their Showcase Portfolio pages. I figure that if they can answer those questions AND link to evidence in their Learning Portfolio of places where they were wrestling with those essential questions, they'd have something really impressive to "showcase" for the important adults in their lives. The questions almost serve as prompts for kids who are working to build out their Showcase pages.

Along with my buddy Pete Caggia, I've created several different types of posts that I want students to try writing in their Learning Portfolios.

The hardest part of this work for my kids is going to be understanding what in-the-moment reflection looks like in action. Again, that's a function of the fact that reflection has been pushed aside in schools in favor of rushing through required curricula. To facilitate better reflection, Pete and I whipped up four different kinds of thinking that we'd like to see in student portfolios. This handout details those different kinds of thinking and includes samples that students can use as models.
I've settled on a blogging tool and started to introduce it to the students participating in our project.
The tool that I'm using is Blogger. That's not because I'm in love with Blogger. In fact, I think that Blogger templates are kind of boring. Wordpress has templates and formats that are WAY more polished.

But Blogger is approved for use by middle school students in our district - a key factor in making ANY tech decision - AND my students are already using Google products (think Docs, Classroom, Drive, Photos, Slides) for darn near everything else. That makes Blogger the right tool for this project. Familiarity + District Approval = Winning for Everyone!

I also put backups of my sample blog's template and content onto jump drives and had every student install both my template and my original content when they were getting started. Here's why: By pushing all kids to install my template and content, I can introduce the different kinds of portfolios by looking at an actual exemplar. All they will need to do to make their own portfolio "personal" is delete my content and posts whenever they are ready.

Finally, I've started to create a bunch of quick tutorials that students can use to learn more about simple processes and practices in Blogger. They are posted on the Portfolio Tools and Resources page of my sample blog - which also ends up on each STUDENT's blog after they import my template and content. My hope is that these tutorials will be enough to get most kids started with their portfolios. They are pretty smooth operators, after all - unafraid of tinkering to figure out how things work.
So whaddya' think of all of this? Does it sound useful to you? What questions do you have? Suggestions? What resources do you like? What resources can you share?

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Over the last year, I've been working on a committee in my school district to think about the role that digital portfolios can play in helping students to document their learning. I LOVE that our district is committed to the idea of portfolios simply because they promote more reflective learners and help our schools to move from a culture of grading to a culture of feedback.

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Create memorable learning archives

Your students are creating fantastic projects to show what they know. You can take their learning, and your ability to assess their achievement, to an even higher level using digital portfolios. Portfolios have long been a mainstay in the visual arts, where skill and expertise cannot be accurately represented by percentage points and letter grades. Electronic portfolios have been around for years, but the advent of powerful new technologies makes building, maintaining, sharing, and archiving student learning in digital form easier than ever before.

A digital portfolio is a computer-based collection of student performance over time. Portfolios make classroom learning more accessible to parents, administrators, and other district support staff because they provide a window into student learning. A portfolio showcases both student achievement and student learning over time. To demonstrate growth, a portfolio will often include similar work done over the course of several years.

What Should a Digital Portfolio Include?

When used as a student assessment tool, digial portfolios should demonstrate that "the student is involved in meaningful performance tasks; there are clear standards and criteria for excellence; there is an emphasis on metacognition and self-evaluation; the student produces quality products and performances; there is a positive interaction between assessor and assessee." (Burke, 1999) The performances students include in their portfolios should be related to the curriculum and evidence their engagement in meaningful learning.

Students should choose the content of their portfolios with the clear understanding that the items must include examples of their best performances, demonstrations of achieving a particular objective, and examples showing personal and academic growth. The content should be indicative of a wide range of skills and abilities and provide clear demonstration of student ability.

One of the most important ingredients in a portfolio is the student's reflection on their work. Students should include reflections on each performance to clarify why pieces are included in the portfolio. This is perhaps the most valuable part of the portfolio, since it provides a much clearer window into the learning of each student. Student reflections help us "discover and observe what our children are really experiencing, thinking about, questioning, wondering about, trying, and attaining." (Niguidula, 2002) In the words of John Dewey, "We don't learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience." The tools used for creating digital portfolios make it easy to type or record a voice reflection.

A portfolio should also include clear criteria for judging the merit of each performance contained in it. Portfolios should include a detailed rubric explaining the effectiveness and overall value of each performance. The rubric helps students understand expectations and provides a guide as they reflect on the different aspects of their performance.

What Is the Teacher's Role?

Because portfolios include a collection of performances that demonstrate growth and include student reflections, they provide additional assessment information beyond what can be gleaned from a traditional letter grade. In the same way that a simple letter grade may not capture learning that has happened throughout the process of a technology project, a portfolio provides a more comprehensive view of each student's learning.

A student's digital portfolio also provides a vehicle for regular feedback and dialogue with their teacher(s). As students consistently gather and reflect on their work, instructors develop a clear picture of the learning that is taking place and are better able to identify areas that need attention.

Why Go Digital?

Computers and authoring programs provide students with tools to compile a digital portfolio. Using multimedia tools, students can create portfolios that demonstrate performances using text, sound, graphics, and video, making them highly representative of a varied body of work. Self-reflections can be recorded, as can oral presentations, dramatic performances, musical compositions, and more. In today's connected world, a digital portfolio is easy to retrieve, to store, and to share.

How Do You Begin?

Before students begin working on portfolios, be sure to determine your assessment goals, priorities, and outcomes. You need to develop clear definitions for the selection of content. You will want to start by creating a shell, or template, for the portfolio. This will help ensure that students effectively organize the information in their portfolios and will guarantee that reflection and assessment criteria are properly represented. You can organize a successful portfolio around your state's proficiency goals, or by your district's curriculum content.

Just because students start with a template does not mean their portfolios should be formulaic and dull! Be sure to leave room for students to showcase creativity and personality. They can do this when they create the self-reflection and by their choices for portfolio content. You may also want to leave room for them to decorate or personalize their portfolios with photographs, illustrations, music, and original artwork.

In Summary

Electronic portfolios require a large investment of time and effort, but the dividends for improved assessment are worth it. As you incorporate electronic portfolios into your classroom or school, remember that you will want to revise the format and content as you become more practiced at assessing performance and students become more proficient at metacognition and portfolio management.

Bibilography

Niguidula, David. (2002). The Digital Portfolio: A Richer Picture of Student Performance. Oakland, CA: Coalition for Essential Schools.

David Niguidula. Digital Portfolio: A Richer Picture of Student Performance

Barrett, Helen C., Ph.D. (2001) "Electronic Portfolios = Multimedia Development + Portfolio Development: The Electronic Portfolio Development Process." Electronic Portfolios. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.

Burke, K. (1999). How to Assess Authentic Learning. Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Professional Development.

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Your students are creating fantastic projects to show what they know. You can take their learning, and your ability to assess their achievement, to an even higher level using digital portfolios. Portfolios have long been a mainstay in the visual arts, where skill and expertise cannot be accurately represented by percentage points and letter grades.

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Digital Portfolios: The Art of Reflection | Edutopia

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Digital Portfolios: The Art of Reflection | Edutopia

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Portfolios allow students to regularly reflect on their learning process—deepening their connection to content.