Digital-Portfolios/ e-portfolios

Why digital Portfolios?

Digital Portfolios for pupils allows for several important factors to take place; as reflective journals pupils can reflect on their learning against a criteria (Four purposes in Wales), and they also allow pupils to reach a wider audience with their work. 

It would be hoped that this could influence some pupils to produce work of a  higher standard knowing more than ‘just’ their class teacher will see.

Digital Portfolios will be pupil owned and, in Wales through Hwb, will follow them throughout their school life. 

It is more than likely in the future pupils will need a Digital CV, this is the beginning of understanding that process. At Golftyn CP in Connah’s Quay, we start this process in the Foundation Phase using Seesaw, and progress to this model using Google Sites in year 3. 

Creating Digital Portfolios with Google Sites_Welsh
Creating Digital Portfolios with Google Sites

How and why we use digital portfolios from our pupils understanding

My Example Portfolio

Only availible to see by HwbCymru users

Creating e-portfolios using Google Sites 

Step 1

Create your Template

In a Shared Google Drive, create a template Portfolio for your school.

Speak to all staff to decide on the format that is needed.

Choose and add pages learners will require, and plan for the future.

Decide on the main purpose of the portfolio. Is it to simply add work or to enable learners to reflect and identify the learning which has taken place?

When sharing the portfolio template with their learners, staff will need to make a copy of this template into their My Drive

Step 2

Sharing with your learners

The class teacher will now need to have a folder in their My Drive to share with their learners.

Ensure the folder is set to view only for the learners you add (this prevents them from editing the 'master portfolio'.

Make sure your copy of the school template is in this folder.

You can now share this folder with your learners.

In your learner's Shared Drive is the folder you have shared, from here they can open the folder and make their own copy of the portfolio. (This will save to their My Drive).

Learners can now edit and add their work to their portfolios. 

Step 3

Learners sharing their portfolio with you

Learners now need to share their portfolio with you.

Once they have started to add and edit their portfolios they can then publish their portfolio.

Learners then copy the link (make sure it is their Home page). And share it back with the teacher. This can be via a Doc/Sheet or within Google Classroom as an assignment.

N.B. I share a Google Doc with learners for them to add all their links. Once I have all of them, I remove their access to this Doc.

Learners must now change the sharing settings on their portfolios!! This is initially restricted and should be changed to the school's domain.

All Documents and work which is added must also have the sharing setting changed to the school domain.

Learners can change the settings on folders to accommodate this. I ask learners to change the setting on their Classroom folder, then all work in Google Classroom is automatically shared within the domain.

Step 4

Managing your learners' portfolios

Create A Google Site for the staff at your school to access. 

For each class have a place to add the link for each pupil.

I use pictures of the pupils to identify their portfolios, but it can just be a Google Sheet with all the links.

Ensure this website is locked down to your school domain.

This link will take you to the template we use in my school.

This link will take you to what our school site looks like.

Creating a Template for Pupils

How to Create a Template Digtial Portfolio for pupils to make a copy and own.

How to Share that template with pupils

Sharing a Google Site is tricky so you'll need to share the folder follwoing these steps

Pupils Sharing their Portfolio with you

Due the pupils owning their portfolios they will need to share their link with you, like this...

Creating a School Site to hold your links

Once you have your pupils' links they will need to hosted somewhere for quick reference, this is how I did it

Supporting Pupils with their Portfolio

Pupils will need support initially with adding their achievements both in and out of school, as well as adding meaningful reflections on work.

How it might look at the end

Here is an example of what it may look like at the end, hopefully an improvement on this!!