Education Investigation

Through my readings I had been informed (and warned) that for ePortfolios to be truly effective they must remain the student’s. Ownership = greater motivation and use. Therefore ownership is paramount or it can become another “task” for the student resulting in the teacher becoming the slave driver.

When my class found out that they could finally login to their new ePortfolios a jubilant “HOORAY” erupted from the students. For us the rubber was finally hitting the road. :+) We had discussed the ePortfolio concept together as a class from the beginning of Term 1. During this preparation period we put together a written list of the samples we thought would be good to share with our Parents or peers and that would show what we are learning. I was impressed with the discussions and samples the students were suggesting. The list of samples looked like this:

• Special Things About Me: 
  • X-Factor movie
  • Our “Smarts” (a pictorial representation of our Multiple Intelligences)
  • Power points I have made about me
• Term Goals
• Maths Basic Facts tests
• Reading (audio recordings and comprehension activities)
• Writing:
  • Audio recorded or published Pirate narratives
  • Accompanying assessment rubrics
• Handwriting
• Topic Studies:
  • Pictures of our Pirate projects or the Pirate project powerpoints and their accompanying assessment rubrics

Over the last 3 weeks we have been busy setting up our ePortfolios and archiving our work samples (listed above). I continue to offer suggestions and guide my students. While I do this I have to be careful not to “take over” otherwise I rob them of the ability to own the ePortfolio. This is not an easy task. 

I have found the following ways to be effective in building student ownership:

1. Allow students to upload things that are of interest to them eg: sport pictures, power points they have made or to create links to other pages they enjoy visiting.
2. Show students how to design their own ePortfolios so that they become personalised eg: the different ways they could create an avatar, change the layout of their portfolio, colour schemes, etc.
3. Always include the students in discussions about their ePortfolios. We all contribute, then discuss ideas and finally solutions are arrived at together.
4. Give options for the different ways you can come to the same conclusion eg: in Term 1 we wrote Pirate narratives together as part of our Pirate topic. Together we discussed the different ways we could publish these. Some students choose to type them while others choose to record them orally.