Digitizing Student Portfolios

I don't know about you, but when I was a youngster [just a few years back, that is...] I absolutely relished in the the annual time-to-make-your-writing-portfolio, middle school assignment.  I really shouldn't divulge what I'm about to, given that I am a professional who genuinely loves to learn, but my affinity for said portfolios might have been less than sincere.  OK, I liked them because they were a joke easy.

All I had to do was select a few of my best writing pieces, whip up a short reflection on the "process" I undertook, and stash everything in a neatly organized binder.  Sure, I attached a professional looking table of contents and snazzied up my cover with some sparkly embellishments.  Tada!  Unfortunately, this isn't the sort of scholarly approach I'd like my own kiddos to take, which brings me to Hicks (2009) recommendation of using a blog as a digital portfolio.  Hold the presses...presenting the blogfolio!

Blogs afford a certain sense of permanency, longevity, and continuity that just can't be replicated by the common binder.  As you can imagine, the previously aforementioned portfolios ended up in the far corner of my closet to be forgotten (I haven't always been clutter free!).  Blogfolios, on the other hand, take up no physical space and provide quite an impressive looking, customized, and carefully sequenced compilation of writing pieces.  These writing pieces can and should encompass more than students' routine blog posts.  How about lengthier writing samples, videos, podcasts, or photo compilations?

I found this YouTube video on how to create a portfolio using Blogger to be especially informative.  Yes, it is rather lengthy, but it provides a thorough review of blogging basics, including how to import GoogleDocs into Blogger and how to create additional pages to serve as dividers within the portfolio.  Personally, I like the ease of Blogger more so than Wordpress, which is the platform Hicks details in his book.



For additional insight on how to structure the portfolio process, this is a link to how one teacher facilitates digital portfolios with her six year-old students.  She shares an example, discusses the contents of the portfolio, and reiterates how crucial it is for students to have a say in which work samples are included.

photo credit: Childrens Book Review via photopin cc