Get All On Board with ePortfolios for Visible Learning

In our school we have been discussing a rationale for doing online portfolios with our students and the big question has been about why and how to combine product showcase and learning process into a single platform.

At this point in HS we have some teachers with a strong focus on the showcase aspect of a portfolio while using Google Sites,  while a couple of other teachers have started exploring blogging  as an ongoing record of the learning process.  On the meantime in our Middle School,  Silvia Tolisano has been supporting students to grow an ongoing blogfolio (portfolio based on a blogging platform). Next school year all students will be required to have an online portfolio, so a strong rationale to engage both students and teachers was necessary.

This Infographic was created to support the conversation about why we should encourage students in making their learning visible in a process portfolio, while at certain stages of their learning journey also selecting artifacts to demonstrate knowledge, ability and learning style. The process portfolio as an ongoing activity is the most challenging but also the one that brings more advantage to learning.

The “Values” that you see at the top of the Infographic summarize the learning gains from engaging in a process/product online portfolio.  “Strategies” indicate the impact in the classroom in terms of support activities to make it happen. The orange links will take you to examples. Symbols are used to identify “Values” and “Strategies” and these are utilized in the “Journey”section of the Infographic. The “Journey” illustrates a possible learning path with points in time where the student will post at the ongoing online portfolio.

If you haven’t heard about the SAMR Model by Rueben Puentedura, it provides a framework to think about how teaching and learning can be redefined in the modern world. The next block in the Infographic utilizes the SAMR model to interpret how different approaches to an online portfolio help a movement towards redefinition of learning.

Finally, you will see an “Implementation” model showing how a natural sequence of steps can actually have different entry points, so you can move as fast or as slow as necessary to allow teachers and students to adapt.