If you've been around the education playground for any amount of time you have heard of portfolios. I’ll go out on a limb here and say you have probably even used them (that is, your students have used them).
And if you’ve been around long enough, you remember them as giant three-ring notebooks full of REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF. Those notebooks were lovingly assembled, with a great deal of care and thought, and then promptly stuffed in a closet somewhere and forgotten about. Or, even worse, brought home by your children as a sacred artifact forever documenting 4th grade.
Well, this ain’t your old portfolio grandpa! Today’s portfolios are live documents. Web 2.0 technologies enable real-time editing, real-time feedback, and real-time collaboration. This leap into the e-portfolio means that students can not only reflect on their learning, just as they did before, but can also manage their learning.
When students can go to websites which can correct their math homework, they are managing their learning. When students can post their work, perhaps as a YouTube video, then they learn from the nearly instant feedback they can get from a worldwide audience. When students can take notes, design lessons, collaborate using shared documents, then they are managing their learning in ways never before possible.
This move to the world stage, to immediate feedback, to the ability to revise, can enable our students to become students of the world. They can engage with a wider audience, interacting with people from all over the world, with the possibility of authentic learning through authentic experiences, and all without leaving their desk.
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane! Nope, that’s where I put that portfolio.
There's the value of Web 2.0, which has managed to hang around the quickly shifting tech world for quite a while. E- or D-portfolios can do just as you say, Jim, in helping kids take ownership of their learning and of their digit selves.
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