E-portfolios

Colleges of Education in many campuses are implementing e-portfolios to showcase students’ work. E-portfolios are also an excellent tool to showcase personal academic and work experiences.

These two websites have articles that define e-portfolios:

• The Electronic Portfolio Boom: What’s it All About?
  This article, written by Trent Batson, defines e-portfolios, discusses the benefits and drawbacks of developing e-portfolios, and lists many useful e-portfolios tools and resources. Although it is a 2002 article, it is still possible to access most of the resources listed.
• The Digital Convergence: Extending the Porfolio Model
  This article, written in 2004 by Gary Greenberg, describes different kinds of electronic portfolios (showcase, structured, and learning) and provides examples of university programs that use each type.

These two other urls offer a collection of multiple resources on e-portfolios:

• The Resources page from the ePort Consortium
  The ePort Consortium is an association of over 800 higher education and IT institutions in 68 countries interested in the development of academic ePortfolio software systems and standards. A resource link takes you to this url with an extensive collection to websites, articles, and e-portfolio projects.
• Electronicportfolios.org
  This website, sponsored by Helen Barret, is rich with links to useful information on e-portfolios. The information includes publications, conference handouts, Internet sites, templates, development guides, exhibits, evaluation rubrics, examples, video and audio resources, and the like. There is also a link to Dr. Barret’s weblog devoted to her research and experiences with e-portfolios.

Suggested Activities

1. Use e-portfolios to showcase your students’ work.
2. Use e-portfolios to show parents what their children do at school. Provide samples of their work.
3. Use e-portfolios to reflect on your teaching practices and goals for a particular class or teaching in general.
4. Ask student teachers to showcase their work and reflect on their teaching experiences. After they graduate, these students will probably need to create an e-portfolio for the institution they work. Hence, they will all find this activity useful for their future careers.