Who owns the ePortfolio?

When it comes to portfolios, its obvious that the student/learner is the owner of their content, the process, and product of the eportfolio. Many things in education seem to become acts of "jumping through the hoops", as Harapnuik puts it, when students only reflect on product rather than the process of making connections themselves. When one Owns the work, then they Own the connections made when going through the process of a portfolio. Andrew Rikard, a student at Davidson University, writes that Often, when teachers are given directives and required to embrace some new initiative, it becomes about "hoops" and less about growth. Teachers want to know what the new initiative looks like and how it will benefit their teaching and future work. Students work the same way. If you want them to embrace portfolios, they need to know and buy in to why it's important and different, rather than just another "hoop". Students need to know how they will be assessed and what is possible through having access to exemplars.

At the beginning of this ePortfolio process, I felt a little lost and overwhelmed. I didn't know what was expected of me and if I was even in the right book, much less, the right page. It wasn't until the professor released some exemplar ePortfolios from previous students and other professional in education. This opened my eyes on what is possible and this whole new world on what visual learning could look like. This week I was involved in professional development (all online of course) about the importance of portfolios in the classroom. One of the most helpful tools that the instructors gave was exemplars from past students across several grades as well as student portfolio templates to help students in the right direction. The template included several pages with in Google Sites (my district is all Google all the time) including: About Me, Links for all core subjects, elective links, and more. This way each student will build on their portfolio each year for each class. This template allowed the portfolio become a one stop shop for all learning and visualizing growth. Check out the link for the template and tell me what you think! https://sites.google.com/tomballschools.net/secondary-portfolio-template/home

References:

Rikard, A. (2018). Do I Own My Domain If You Grade It? EdSurge. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-08-10-do-i-own-my-domain-if-you-grade-it

Who Owns the ePortfolio. (2015, September 23). Retrieved from http://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6050