LU_5 Electronic Portfolio Systems

What are your impressions of the EPS you examined – strengths, weaknesses, features?

The portfolio system I reviewed was Foliotek.

Strengths:

 Applicable for multiple grades, subjects and all levels of learners.

 When creating a portfolio, the user goes through guided prompting, that makes it user
friendly and easy to navigate/create.
 Design templates chosen in the beginning are not set in stone and can be changed
later.
 Templates help show and guide students in designing a clean, visually appealing
portfolio.
 Many choice features within templates that allow for individual creativity.
 Users are able to upload files, documents, images, videos, embedding content such as
maps
 Users have 4 sharing options and still able to edit content after it’s shared.
o Community share: Given a code and shared in and with a small group/specific
group.
o Public Share: given/create a public url. Ability then to share on social media.
o Private Share: Sharing with a specific individual (possibly your teacher). Can give
this individual(s) a specific length of time that they can view your portfolio.
o Collaborative Share: Inviting participants to contribute in creating your
portfolio.
 Users can create multiple portfolios.
 Users can add a feedback form to their portfolio and can receive feedback from
viewers.

Weaknesses:

 While it’s user friendly, it may still be hard to manage for students in elementary school.
 No auto save which would be difficult for my students as they are used to using google
tools which auto saves everything for them.

How could students be actively involved in addition to the teacher?

The variety of share features allows for multiple ways of interaction amongst teachers and
students as well as peer to peer interactions. Here are two scenarios that I thought may occur
within a middle school classroom:

 Scenario 1: Students are asked to create their own individual portfolios that includes
criteria provided by the teacher. Student uses the private share feature and shares it
directly with the teacher. Teacher can use the feedback form on the student’s portfolio
to provide feedback to the student. The student may use the community share feature
and share it to those in the community who are most likely his/her peers. Or student
collaboratively shares it with the teacher and the teacher now has access to edit the
portfolio as well.

 Scenario 2: A group of students are working together and have been asked to create a
group portfolio. All members of the group can actively be working on the same
portfolio when shared collaboratively. Teacher can also be a member of the
collaboration or can view their portfolio after it’s published.

All in all, students would be actively involved throughout the whole creation process. In the
beginning, since the creation of a portfolio would be new (at least to my students) the process
would need to be modeled, monitored, and students would need specific instructions until
they were ready to do the process alone.

Is reflection and self-assessment important? Support your position by citing literature or

research findings and personal experience.

Reflection and self assessment is important can provide students with actionable learning
goals, and ultimately make them own their learning. Kathy Dyer wrote a post on the NWEA
blog called, The Importance of Student Self Assessment that highlights two strategies that
involve student self regulation and self reflection. These strategies she highlights come from
Dylan Wiliam’s book, Embedded Formative Assessment which are: 1. Activating learners as
instructional resources for one another and 2. Activating learners as owner’s of their learning.
Kathy mentions, “by engaging in the process of thinking about and assessing their own work,
they act on the evidence of their own learning and take responsibility for it” (Dyer, 2015). I
think far too often, and this goes back to “what do grades mean?”, when a student doesn’t do
well in a class they state it’s because they are just not “smart” in the subject. However, if they
really had to reflect throughout the semester and had visible learning goals, they may be able
to redirect themselves during the learning process and ultimately believe in themselves.

How involved are your students in assessing their own learning? Describe the process and
share a specific example. Did you use technology? If not, could technology improve the
process?
I’m still working on involving my students in assessing their own learning in ways that
are more meaningful aside from just seeing their grade and reflecting upon it. As stated
in a blog posted by Mary Bigelow on the NSTA community, she states, “But if you ask
middle school students to “reflect,” you may get puzzled looks or blank stares. Students
don’t necessarily have this skill. They may initially think that an assignment or project is
good simply because they spent a lot of time on it, they enjoyed it, or they worked very
hard on it.” I resonated with this statement, because when I have had my students
reflect on an experience or their learning, they do need a lot of guidance (which is
understandable and I will give them guiding questions to answer). This would be done
through google docs.

My goal for next year is to clearly outline to my students their learning targets and ask them to
do more self assessing and reflecting on whether or not they’ve met the goal and to think
about what they did to meet the goal, or what they can do next time to met the learning goal.

I would like to get to the point where I have my students create a portfolio because I do think
my students would enjoy it, especially because it’s about them, and they would essentially get
to be creative. At first I would probably start by simply having each student create a portfolio
and have them create a section for each learning unit. After we’ve completed a unit, I would
ask them to upload a piece of work they are proud of, or discuss their greatest accomplishment
during that unit, or maybe something that they learned. I think technology could improve this,
as they could make a portfolio such as foliotek to do this and it would make it a lot more
personal, and engaging then just a written paragraph on google docs. This would be a great
addition to parent-teacher conferences and student lead conferences are/have been a trend in
education which show success and student engagement (Education World).

Bigelow, Mary. “Students' Self-Assessment and Reflection.” NSTA Blog, 31AD, 2017,
nstacommunities.org/blog/2017/07/31/students-self-assessment-and-reflection/.

Dyer, Kathy. “The Importance of Student Self Assessment #Edchat.” Teach. Learn. Grow., NWEA, 21 July
2015, www.nwea.org/blog/2015/the-importance-of-student-self-assessment/.

“Student-Led Conferences: A Growing Trend.” Education World ,

www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin112.shtml.