miércoles, 22 de mayo de 2013

A very valuable learning tool: e-portfolios!



I’d like to share with you some basic concepts about e-portfolios. First of all, an e-portfolio is “a purposeful collection of student’s work that exhibits the student’s effort, progress and achievements in one or more areas.” I find this definition very insightful because I thought a portfolio was just a collection of student’s work to see his/her progress along time. So, what called my attention was the word “purposeful” because that means that we teachers need to set a clear objective of why we’ll have our students work on a portfolio so that everything we do lead students to reach that aim. Depending on the objective one has in mind is the kind of portfolio that will be developed and the tools that will be used to do it. E-portfolios are those which are entirely computer readable and it is very recommendable to use them because they offer a lot of benefits, such as portability, easy to create back-up files, completely learner centered, etc.  

There are certain steps to follow in order to create an e-portfolio:
1.      Defining the portfolio context and goals.
2.      The working portfolio
3.      The reflective portfolio (what?, so what?, and now what?)
4.      The connected portfolio
5.      The presentation portfolio

There are different kinds of portfolios: learning, assessment and employment portfolios. Basically, learning portfolios focus on the learning process; assessment portfolios focus on the learning product and employment portfolios are aimed to get a job. The kind of portfolio depends on the purpose, process and product one has in mind.

Porfolios are ongoing learning tools. As it’s been said before, they are a collection of student’s work which can be called artifacts. But what makes portfolios a very valuable tools is the fact that students reflect on their work. When they do that, these artifacts become evidence of students’ achievement. 

Barret, Helen, (2001). Education Portfolios: A chapter in education technology; An encyclopedia to be published by ABC-CLIO. 

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