Digital portfolios is the latest edtech to gain growing popularity in schools.
Presenting teachers with evidence of academic progress and personal growth, they help to open up new ways of learning in the classroom. By storing a collection of successful and shareable projects, students can also showcase their favourite work to parents, peers and teachers online.
And with the ability to share these documents with educators, it can facilitate sessions of constructive feedback on their creations.
Another potential benefit of this tool is how it can lead to more teacher-student interaction.
Delighted to be working with our Dublin-based Primary Digitial Portfolio Pilot schools today, exploring how formative assessment practices can be effectively supported and enhanced using digital portfolios. #formativeassessment #PDSTPrimaryPortfolio @PDSTie pic.twitter.com/qOFAfUf0Kg
— PDST Tech in Ed (@PDST_TechinEd) November 13, 2019
Reflection time with teachers
Sitting down with teachers and scrolling through digital portfolios is a great way to keep teacher-student interaction levels up in the classroom.
Teachers can point out a document and ask their students to discuss how easy they found it to be or how accomplished they may feel about their overall portfolio.
Portfolio reflection time can also be used to push students to think about their future goals, granting them the opportunity to plan and design a learning roadmap to follow for the following school years.
A sense of personal ownership
By having the ability to document, store and present their work to people, digital portfolios trigger a strong sense of personal ownership.
With a collection of files and projects, students can become curators of their own learning story and reflect on how far they’ve come from the start of the year.
They can also carry these files through to the new school year to continue evaluating personal progress.
Communicating with confidence
Sometimes in class, it’s overwhelming for a student to put their hand up and ask a question; especially if all their peers have a strong understanding of the lesson.
But through the digital portfolio system, they can share messages with their teachers and type questions directly.
This also works both ways.
For instance, if a teacher needs to start scheduling catch-up sessions with their students, they can put forward dates in the schedule, confirm with the learners via the system that they’re available and see if the pupil has any questions prior to the meeting.
Digital portfolio day and experimentation with the app Sketches School! @rrisdart @cevmsjags pic.twitter.com/7GaNukM5hX
— Deborah Trejo (@MrsTrejoArt) October 23, 2019
Though some may not be open to its use in classrooms, some educators believe digital portfolios could eventually become a compulsory tool for every school. Universities and colleges may request to view high school portfolios so that they can see how dedicated students are to achieving their goals and key areas of improvement.
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