Day 19: Remember 8th grade? The e-portfolio.

Name three powerful ways students can reflect on their learning, then discuss closely the one you use most often.

     Students can reflect on their learning in many ways. They can look at standards, compare their work to the standards and draw conclusions. They can join forces with a partner, compare their work and see what they did better or worse than their partner. Or they can collect their work in a portfolio and at regular intervals look at the progress they made in different area.
     I like the last proposition best and for that reason I started to create e-portfolios with my students a few years ago. It seemed a huge undertaking at the beginning, but as I move forward together with them, I find it a wonderful way for them to assess their own progress and reflect on their learning.
Google sites are a great tool for creating electronic portfolios, because it's so easy to manage and in is integrated with all Google's other tools we already use daily. Students create video and audio, upload it to their school Youtube account and embed it into their site. They can directly link in documents, presentations, cartoons and write reflections about specific pieces of work or about the growth they see in their work over time.
     A lot of teachers seem to be worried about the time this may take away from the teaching of content, but I can assure you that if you plan it well and put the onus on the students, it does not interfere with teaching at all. Instead it is a wonderful addition that deepens a student's learning and provides them with skills of meta-thinking, about how they acquire a language, and what their weaknesses and strengths are. It also provides me with evidence of their learning and progress and teaches me a lot about the difficulties of both individual students and the whole group.
     The really fun part is when students look at their 8th grade work as seniors and see what a long way they have come, from ordering food in a restaurant all the way to podcasts about world problems.  All in all, it's well worth the effort.