A portfolio is a purposeful collection of student work demonstrating the student's achievement or growth as characterized by a strong vision of content," according to Todd Bergman , an independent consultant and a teacher at Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka, Alaska.
A portfolio is a purposeful collection of student work that exhibits the student's efforts, progress, and achievements in one or more areas. The collection must include student participation in selecting content, the criteria for selection, the criteria for judging merit, and evidence of student self-reflection.
The three most common types of portfolios are:
the working portfolio, which contains projects the student is currently working on or has recently completed.
the display portfolio, which showcases samples of the student's best work.
the assessment portfolio, which presents work demonstrating that the student has met specific learning goals and requirements.
In this unit, you will create an online presence using Google Sites to showcase your academic, athletic, extracurricular, and special interests. Throughout this process, you will:
Learn how to create a website using Google Sites.
Brainstorm and organize the topics and sections you wish to showcase. These might include:
Academic and Career Goals and Objectives
Accomplishments - both academic and extracurricular
Academic work - papers, digital stories, glogs, multimedia
Clubs
Faith
Athletics
Service
Competencies - what are you good at and how will it help you in the future?
Reflections - like an academic journal
Develop and articulate overall learning and life goals and work toward tracking the progress of those goals.
Compile artifacts and work to complement the sections you developed. This could include documents, publications, videos, images, artwork, audio recordings, maps, etc.
Cite any additional resources (images, quotes, etc) you use. Cite the source directly below the resource used.
Materials
Access to Google Sites
Scanner (to scan hard copy artifacts)
Instructions
Plan your e-Portfolio
Before you jump in to Google Sites, take some time to read the following so that you can better understand WHAT should be put into your e-portfolio. Create a Google Doc to start outlining your page elements based on the list below.
Purpose. Decide on the purpose for the portfolio. What are you trying to show with this portfolio? Are there outcomes, goals, or standards that are being demonstrated with this portfolio? In this example, we will use an electronic portfolio to provide formative feedback on student work.
Identify how you are going to organize the portfolio. Will it be around the outcomes, goals or standards that you identified in this first step?
Set up a "parent" page that will serve as the opening page/Introduction to the portfolio
Set up a template for students, if appropriate.
Collection/Selection. What artifacts will you include in your portfolio?
Create a digital archive of work. Offline, this archive would be on a hard drive, flash drive, iPod or local area network server; online, these files can be stored anywhere on the Internet, as long as each document has a unique URL.
Use a simple table to list the artifacts, and assign (classify) each one to the outcome/goal/standard that the artifact will demonstrate. See Dr. Barrett’s GoogleDocs portfolio for an example using a table on a page (Artifacts).
Once these categories are identified, set up other pages for each major category you have identified, and link those sub-pages to the main page.
Add the artifacts (through hyperlinks) to the appropriate page in the portfolio.
Reflection. Reflection is the heart and soul of a portfolio. Reflection provides the rationale for why these artifacts represent achievement of a particular outcome, goal or standard.
Write a brief reflection on each artifact (what is the context in which this artifact was developed? Why was it included in the portfolio?).
You might also write a reflection on each grouping of artifacts (by outcome/goal/standard).
The Introduction page should contain an overview of the portfolio. It serves as a “letter to the reader” and provides an explanation of the overall goals of the portfolio.
Connection/Interaction/Dialogue. This stage provides an opportunity for interaction and feedback on the work posted in the portfolio. This is where the power of Web 2.0 interactive tools becomes apparent.
Teachers and peers can use the feedback features of the software, such as comments, to provide feedback on the work posted in the ePortfolio. Use the Collaborate function in GoogleDocs
Teachers often provide exemplars for different levels of achievement, and provides a rubric for evaluation.
The portfolio developer should be given the option of updating the work, based on the feedback and the rubric.
Presentation/Publishing. The portfolio developer decides what parts of the portfolio are to be made public.
Start Creating your Site
Create a Main Page to introduce yourself and your eportfolio (use a Glog as a splash page perhaps).
Create pages within your site that correspond to the sections you wish to include (Goals, Academics, Faith, Service, Sports, etc.).
Create a navigation system where visitors can EASILY find what they're looking for. Check out the Sidebar.
Locate existing work and files and upload them to your site. Insert Google Docs files directly from the Insert menu. Use CutePDF to convert other files (Word, Publisher, etc.) to PDF format.
Insert content with context.Use hyper-linked writing as the basis of your work. Read more information about hyper-linked writing.
Locate and link to existing work stored online: videos, photo albums, glogs, podcasts, blogs, etc. Links are good, Embedding is BETTER!!
Once you create your site, please visit http://goo.gl/o6XkK and enter your information.
Dr. Helen Barrett, a leading mind for the development of electronic portfolios, has an excellent write-up on how to get started. Please read and reflect how you will start organizing your portfolio.
The video tutorials below were created by Skip Via, School of Education, University of Alaska Fairbanks. He posted the iTunes U links on his course website. In addition, he posted videos on YouTube.