Eportfolio Purpose/Description/Analysis
"Studying one's own learning process...can be a powerful method of enhancing learning." (Papert, 1993)
Description:
The most beneficial aspect of doing eportfolios is the connection to learning. Portfolio reflection provides another way to make learning visible. This in turn becomes the basis for dialogue and deeper learning. The reflection piece requires students to be metacognitive, that is, think about their learning process. Although reflection invites introspection portfolios have an audience and so do the reflections included in them. This dialogue about the learning process can profit students in ways to help them learn more. Hence, students learn how to learn. (Murphy, S. 1998) The importance of thinking about one's own learning is of utmost importance. Bransford (2000) gives the example of a person who reads through a passage once, takes a test, and fails it. The pattern repeats itself unless he/she stops to think about his/her own learning, and that it may take more than a mere one time reading to master the material. Students in my seventh grade social studies/language arts class are always very eager to get their graded papers back, and when they do so, immediately look at the grade and toss the paper into the recycle bin. The use of rubrics along with self-reflection sheets require students to evaluate their own work, rather than just viewing the final grade and continuing the cycle of errors. These reflections are kept and returned to the students in May when they began to assemble their eportfolios of their learning in seventh grade. This end of the year reflective practice also helps retention of their studies.
The ePortfolio assignment:
| Required selections: | ||
| 1. Include 3 pieces of writing from different genres and different units of study. |  |
|
| 2. Include 3 pages from the student side of the social studies interactive notebook from different units. |  |
|
| 3. Include 1 piece of art work related to a social studies topic. |  |
|
| 4. Include 2 multimedia projects. (View this project.) |
 |
|
| 5. Include other work of your choice. | ||
| Required in the response for each piece of work: | ||
|
Describe the assignment. What did you have to do? |
Analyze the assignment. What did you learn? | Reflect on your learning. What will you do differently next time to improve? |
|
Public Presentation: Students used HyperStudio software to present their portfolios electronically, which they did for their parents at open house. Their parents were asked to write a response to the eportfolio. Each student took home a CD of their eportfolio. |
||
A Look at One Student's ePortfolio:
| Student M's eportfolio: | Teacher Insights: |
|
Student M's Table of Contents
|
When students gathered their year's work, many expressed surprise at how much they had done and learned. I heard comments such as, "Wow, I didn't know I did all of this." |
|
Student M's Description of the "Storytelling through Animation" Project
|
This student's group animation project can be viewed on the Internet. Her description of the assignment was detailed and showed an understanding of the project. |
|
Student M's Analysis of the "Storytelling through Animation" Project
|
Her statements about what she learned were validated when she did the second story using a computer tool. "I learned that in order to understand and do an animation to the best of your ability you need to research many aspects of whatever you are doing: culture, religion, society, daily life, government, etc." She started the second assignment by looking for more information. "I also learned that I am a very visual and doing learner and what I mean by this is that for me to understand and learn completely I needed to see and do things." "I also learned many important lessons on working with a partner. Such as if one of you is sick and you have the project in your folder and your partner doesn't it is very hard to get any work done." The second time both partners kept a copy of the project in their server accounts. |
|
Student M's Reflection of the "Storytelling through Animation" Project
|
And for her reflection on what she would do to improve next time she comments that she would do more research, which she did. She also states that she would spend more time on the mind mapping and planning and talk to her partner more. |
|
Student M's Reflection on the ePortfolio project and her learning in 7th grade
|
M's lack of learning was revealed in her answer to what she learned from a comparison between China and Japan assignment: "I can almost always tell a Japanese person from a Chinese person by their accent, clothes, face, and hair." Certainly by doing the assignment she could not have learned how to tell a Japanese person from a Chinese person by their accent. This would have been a good topic of discussion had I seen this right after we did the unit rather than at the end of the year. In her final reflection of the eportfolio she said that she learned that she was a visual learner and gave an example of her experience in reading a novel. She said that she did not do so well on a test after merely reading the chapters, so she began to summarize chapters and draw pictures representing each chapter, and did much better on the next test. As far as the eportfolio goes, she says: "The electronic portfolio is very useful because it is much easier to press a button and see a paper and responses show up than going through piles of paper so you can fine one part of a portfolio." "Doing all we did in Mrs. Britt's class I learned all about my own learning and how to study the best way-of me."
|
|Back|
