How to Make ePortfolios Work for You

What's an ePortfolio? 

Check out this amazing explanation by Heather Stuart from the YouTube Channel of Auburn University: Office of University Writing:

What are some problems the advent of the Digital Age created for teachers & students?

While students may be sufficiently more well-versed in basic computer technologies, they too have pitfalls to avoid. For one, they must be increasingly aware of their personal and professional digital personalities. This might require making multiple ePortfolio versions, social media profiles, and drastically different content. However, multiplicity will not work if each of those personalities is not maintained. In other words, students should take just as much time to construct their digital professional personalities as they do their personal ones. This can require a surprising amount of time and effort. Consider taking a look at TeachThought's 11 Tips for Students to Manage Their Digital Footprints.

Teachers face an entirely different set of problems when faced with digital mediums. I chose to construct my own website (using Wix basic formats as a template for my own work) because I'm tired of seeing teacher ePortfolios that look significantly out of date when compared to other successful businesspersons. For a sample of what I'm talking about, take a look at THIS EXAMPLE pointed to by one of my fellow classmates as their “expectation” of site design. As you can see, in this Google-based ePortfolio: there's no clear design scheme, the layout is sparse, the text is informational and bland, and the overall layout contains little more barely tolerable HTML shell formatting. What expectations--and we all know expectations are built on visual cues--does this present to firms, multi-million dollar businesses, and even simple at-home entrepreneurs about teachers? That those within the education sector aren't real businesspersons. That educators should not be highly funded. That individual educators are not competent within the new Digital Age. Many, if not all, teachers would rightly disagree with these sentiments, yet paradoxically choose not to modify their approach to their digital presence(s). Since this is the case, I highly suggest you choose to employ modern, sophisticated, design with detailed coding optimizations in your online professional content. Moreover, teachers should consider taking a look at Michelle Manno's Tips for Teachers: Creating a Teaching Portfolio Online. Here, she explains:

• Blog platforms (e.g., WordPress, Blogger, EduBlogs can be used for portfolio presentation and offer quick set-up with a wide variety of templates or themes to choose from so that your site will have a professional look.

• Website creation tools (e.g., SnapPages, GoogleSites) are becoming more intuitive and allow for some customization and different types of content.

• Digital resume tools (e.g., VisualCV, Pathbrite) are also available and require few technology skills to get started.

• You may have used a formal portfolio system (e.g., Chalk & Wire, Optimal Resume, TK20) as a student. If you already have an account, especially one with existing files, check out your options for continuing that account or exporting your documents to another site. If you don't want to pay for a portfolio (some have pricing plans) there are free options available, many of which have features and functions comparable to the fee-based systems. 

How can teachers & students benefit from ePortfolios?

Oddly enough, the benefits provided ePortfolios don't have much to do with your educational position. Rather, as suggests Helen C. Barrett's paper "Balancing the Two Faces of E-Portfolios,": 



ePortfolio building has to do with the personal preference of depicting either a Workspace or a Showcase; Both teachers and student should have digital artifacts of  Progress and Product. However, certain platforms do provide specific services that may appeal to you depending on your expectations surrounding site visuals, social media presence, SEO preferences, and monetization requirements. Instructional technologist, Joe Fahs gives us a glimpse of just some of these companies in his presentation through the use of a cartoon:

However, Helen C. Barrett also suggests that there are two distinct levels of a portfolio:

The simplest examples of ePortfolios include the collection of various artifacts teachers and students may have stored to their GoogleApps, Youtube channel, MSOffice suite, or Cloud that demonstrates the quality and content of their work in specific contexts.

In more complex ePortfolios, a collection of artifacts is connected to various documentations of learning scenarios which teachers and students have experienced, created, or collaborated in as part of their own personal learning environment.

Ultimately, as Dr. Mary Dziorny suggests, ePortfolios are most beneficial when traced in a "lifelong" or "lifewide" manner. By creating a sophisticated archive of digital footprints from educational and professional experiences 

informed by peers and mentors, students can and teachers can both gain new career references and opportunities .

Blogs and their Potential Impact

Most of us regularly interact with social media in some way or another. We hold Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and garner Instagram likes. However, the “blog,” for all its interconnectedness, may still remain a mystery to some of us educators.

So, what exactly constitutes a blog?

In form, blogs differ from discussion boards and a typical web pages in that they follow the editorial format. According to Dictionary.com, editorials consist of:

an article in a newspaper or other periodical or on a website presenting the opinion of the publisher,writer or editor. (2016).

Similarly serialized (in a digital format), blogs feature opinion pieces by an individual or group of editors and contributors. Variations on the blog format include (but are not limited to) glogs (“multimedia interactive posters”) and vlogs (blogs presented in video format).

Primary affordances of various blog hosting sites include the integration of social media, digital multimedia (video, images, live streaming, etc), mobile/remote access, networking opportunities, and resource linking. Depending on the blog site you use or choose to associate your personal webpage with, the services available to you may differ. Matt Banner, a blogger backed by Forbes and Entrepreneur, has created this infographic to assist you in you selecting a blog hosting site based on those features. As for myself, I've found Wix and Wordpress to be the most intuitive sites in terms of networking and design opportunities.

But how can we harness the power of blogs in the classroom? And are they really legitimate learning tools?

Blogs provide a powerful platform for observing a wide range of student work. One excellent example that comes to mind especially for High School students, would be to create a digital reading journal in blog format. However, instead of simply uploading a lesson template here, I'll be using the TPACK Model to identify each aspect of this suggested activity in order to assert the legitimacy of the blog as a tool for educators worldwide.

Reading Journal Blog

Content — In having students write their final draft of their reading journals in an individual blog format, they will be participating in the synthesis step of Blooms Revised Taxonomy. Students will create, design, and develop a holistic piece of work that categorizes and collects their individual writing entries. Before publishing their work students will write, revise, rearrange, and assemble their sites for their classmates, a specific blog reader community, and the general public.

Pedagogy — This approach is very loosely based on my own experiences using digital devices and software as well as the Reader's Theatre scaffold (as discussed by Dr. McCloud). In my own education, very seldom was I able to engage with texts and information on an equal level with my teachers. Even my English teachers disrupted my agency over my own learning by performing seemingly helpful tasks such as reading the selected books of our class aloud. However, in my Computer Skills courses (a requirement for graduation at my California-based high school) I was consistently empowered in that, often, even if I did not understand the particular details of an assignment, I was much more familiar with the physical presence of, and software on, those computers than my teachers. Thus, the presence of relatively new and developing technologies within classrooms proved a way to transform young students into immediate experts and equals when compared to their teacher's relative skill. Similarly, the use of blog technologies upholds this process which is so central to the oft-sought pedagogical stance of Paulo Freire's ideologies in increasingly modernized classrooms.

Technology — Fundamentally, this blog exercise adapts traditional reading journals from the technological Ages of Message Design (where content and form are the primary focus) into the Age of Learning Environments (ALE). This new process emphasis does not discard the traditional elements of content and form, however, ALE design incorporates personal/social interaction (e.g: social media, comment posting, self-publication) and highly developed environmental affordances (e.g: live digital formats). 

Simply put, the aforementioned affordances of social media integration, digital multimedia (video, images, live streaming, etc), mobile/remote access, networking opportunities, and resource linking within the blogger's world are skills many students are adept at. However, many may not have endeavored within these environmental elements for the purposes of scholarly work. Ultimately, this new application process links the student deeply and personally to their intended object of study in a novel and familiar way. Moreover, blogs may be used in classroom settings as a way to introduce other important communicative and networking skills that will be invaluable to students in the future (see: social media marketing, “netiquette”, etc). 

What are the projected advantages and disadvantages of this technology? 

Although, some might argue that students who are economically disadvantaged and/or residing in rural populations may have limited access to the “advanced” platforms suggested here: in my own research and personal experience, I have found the overwhelming majority of students have daily (if not constant) access to blog-ready devices (e.g: tablets, smartphones, computers, or laptops). Moreover, public libraries and schools themselves often offer computer services for little to no expense on the part of the student. Ultimately, there are two major benefits in the integration of blogs and similar digital technologies within the classroom. As Dr. McCloud suggests, student experience gain and comprehension could meet or exceed standards within a significantly reduced time. And, perhaps even more importantly, lesson plans centered around teaching technologies such as as these are not only intuitive to students, but they inspire pupils to take pride in content beyond the established (often narrow) structure of course objectives.

“Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.”

                                 ― Paulo Freire