Professional Development Webinar

Learning Outcomes

• The participant will participate in course readings and tutorials about advantages of implementing e-portfolios into math classrooms.

• The participant will be able to identify significant components of implementing e-portfolios in the math classroom by participating in course discussions.

• The participants will become familiar with instructional technologies that would be beneficial when creating e-portfolios as well as on-site school resources to take advantage of when implementing this strategy into instruction.

Introduction Module's Reading

What are e-portfolios?

E-portfolios are examples of technology supporting how students and teachers assess learning. E-portfolios are opportunities for teachers to assess student performance through a technology-based approach to evaluation, that involves both personal self-reflection and feedback from other students. E-portfolio can also be referred to as performance assessments because they use materials created by students such as class and homework samples, reflective essays, audio and video materials, as a basis for assessing skills and accomplishments.

Advantages of e-portfolios

E-portfolios offer the advantages of being easily edited, reproduced, and transported while containing large amounts of information. With e-portfolio assessments, students have the opportunity to learn and grow through self-reflection, meaningful assignments, internships, service learning, and meaningful feedback from others. E-portfolios allow students to collect and display many kinds of artifacts: video clips, audio clips, photos, papers, projects etc.

Using e-portfolios allows students to become collaborators in thinking reflectively about what they had done academically and presenting it in ways that others could view and understand. This form of assessing students help students to evaluate what they have learned as well as the process they have used to achieve those results.

Self-reflection about learning is a necessary skill at every grade level. Being able to clarify explain or demonstrate what has been learned indicates a deep and enduring understanding of topics and ideas.

Significant components to e-portfolios

A significant component to implementing e-portfolios into your math classrooms is assuring students understand the importance of formative/ cumulative assessments and their role in improving their own learning experiences. In order for students to understand the importance of formative / cumulative assessments, your e-portfolio must offer metacognitive strategies and self-regulated strategies built in.

Desirable but effective learning must speak to the structure of knowledge, problem-solving and reasoning, prior knowledge and experiences, metacognitive processes, self-regulatory capabilities, and connecting the culture and community of the learner. Students are willing to work harder to learn content and skills they are emotional about, and they are emotionally interested when the content and skills they are learning seem useful and connected to their motivations and future goals.

How to incorporate e-portfolios into your classroom

Partnering with your school’s librarian, technology director or teacher is a great way to make time to incorporate e-portfolios into an already hectic schedule. Your school’s librarian, technology director or teacher can use their expertise to help you and your colleagues learn the use of new instructional technology tools and e-portfolios. These colleagues can serve as an important capacity to easing the work load by helping teachers develop and use digital portfolios for effective student assessments.

Another approach to incorporating e-portfolios into your classrooms is before you start to implement e-portfolios into your curriculum, provide students with a pre-assessment, perhaps in the form of a survey. Pre-assessments are part of prior knowledge-based learning. It gives you an idea of which of your students are familiar with creating digital portfolios or technology associated with implementing it like, HyperStudio for Macs, Microsoft PowerPoint, Windows Storyboard Live, VoiceThread, Adobe Persuasion, GSuite tools, Google Classroom and Google Sites.