Summer 2004

Talking Maths

Portfolios Go Digital

By providing easily accessible means for teachers and students to house reflections, achievements, assessments, skills, learning objects, electronic documents, professional development and more, digital portfolios are revolutionising approaches to teaching and learning. RENÉE HOAREAU unpacks some fascinating possibilities.

THE CONCEPT of student and teacher portfolios is not new. Preparing for the recent NavCon2k4 conference presentation on digital portfolios, I was drawn back in time to my last visit to Christchurch at the end of 1975, the first year of my Art/Craft teaching degree at Melbourne College of Advanced Education.

Living at home, I had a long train journey from Glen Waverley to Carlton followed by a five kilometre walk from Flinders Street station to the course of my destined vocation. Each day I had the arduous task of organising myself—carrying art materials, equipment, worksheets and art in progress in a blue portfolio sewn by my mother with a fabric design that was a cross between paisley and Aztec—very 1970s.

My portfolio was very handy to hold all those visual treasures, manifestations of my learning, ideation, reflections, mental sketches of grand plans, some end products but mainly works in progress. It made for a very heavy load. But then, as now, my portfolio constituted a collection of my achievements and a reflection of my art, life skills, knowledge and processes of thinking.

The ICT revolution: the late 80s and beyond

Online portfolios are collections of student or teacher work used across all curriculum areas to support teaching and learning through an outcomes-focused approach. Portfolios bring together curriculum, instruction and assessment— learning milestones.

The rapidly evolving technologies of our digital age give teachers and students the ability to create dynamic portfolios. Technology has become part of our personal, social, economic, cultural lives and, essentially, of our schooling. New teaching and learning approaches mirror society, the world of work and the life in which our students are active participants. The teacher is learner and facilitator of both their own learning and that of their students.

Schooling success allies closely to initiatives that incorporate access to technology and rich task programs. Governments and education authorities are quickly bridging the digital gaps across Australian schools to enable participation and equity of access for all students.

The decreasing cost of high quality hardware and software has meant that computers and digital media such as digital cameras, digital video and scanners can be more readily accessible as a classroom tool for engaging students in a diverse range of learning activities.

Broadband solutions have contributed to this new age in education, enabling learning anywhere anytime. The Internet has become an essential tool for learning—e-learning enriched with web media, multimedia, broadcast, narrow cast, video conferencing and so on. The beauty of all this is that experiential learning can now be archived. User-generated learning has more potency and impact on user knowledge and understanding. Learning artefacts can be housed online to demonstrate both learning history and achievements. Digital portfolios house this wealth of skills, understandings and celebrations.

Multimedia applications allow for interaction and diversity in approaches to learning. The tools for learning have broadened, particularly in the area of collaboration— synchronous (CHAT, SMS, blogging) and asynchronous (email, forums, discussion lists, voting polls, ask the expert, online debates) communications.

Equally, as the tools for learning have evolved, the role of the teacher and the student in the art of learning has also changed. The effective use of portfolios leads to classrooms that are student-oriented rather than teacher-centred. Students can accept more responsibility for their learning success.

Teachers acknowledge that preparing students as independent learners; teaching students to discriminate between the huge volumes of information that confront their decision making each day; and instilling a desire and ability to problem solve are key skills required in their future life success.

Benefits of student and teacher portfolios

Portfolios can promote the student as an active learner in constructing knowledge and understanding, providing them with authentic tasks for engaged learning.

One of the important aspects of portfolios in the classroom is the opportunity for student-centred activities that address individual differences, providing avenues for self-paced learning, diversity of presentations and opportunities to engage students in ways in which they can perform confidently. Portfolios house the multimedia content and electronic documents for presentation of learning. Group work allows students to support each other and be involved in authentic and rich tasks.

During one of my recent endeavours to the Northern Territory I was invited to the launch of a collaborative project between Pularumpi and Driver Primary Schools. The ‘Chicken Wings and Hot Chips’ project, a talking book, was created with open source presentation software. This project clearly demonstrated that cooperative and collaborative learning offers an opportunity for students and teachers to share and learn from each other’s work. Students from both schools had developed confidence, independent learning and problem-solving skills, including the skills of self-reflection, peer evaluation and negotiated assessment. I was impressed by how much fun they had producing this project. The learning outcomes could be shared with the wider school community and parents. New education software, such as EdWeb, a web-based portfolio tool, allows group projects to share work and collaborate within a class, across classes and between schools in a cluster or educational jurisdiction.

Teacher portfolios and web use for teacher professional growth and learning is just as significant. Professional portfolios can store teaching support materials, current classroom lesson activities and evidence of teaching expertise that has contributed to professional growth. One of the most exciting developments in web-based applications is the ability to share these teaching materials with other teachers.

My online portfolio was a good resource when I recently changed jobs. I had taught in three schools over an 18-year period collecting evidence of my professional capabilities and expertise at the end of each year. My typed document was over 30 pages long. This document has been very handy for performance reviews and as an indicator of my professional development needs. The ability to access this material online and assemble it to meet available employment opportunities has been timely in a busy schedule. My past six years of work in education is contained on 3 DVDs. With Google offering a gig of storage space, teachers can certainly develop very substantial digital portfolios.

Portfolios as an evaluation tool promoting standards

Portfolios house teacher and student reflection, and assessment and evaluation of learning, validating learning outcomes of tasks. New forms of assessment are needed to measure the outcomes of new forms of learning. Combinations of rubrics and teacher, peer and self-assessment are good ways to showcase learning through digital portfolios.

Peer and self-assessment help students to think about their approaches to learning and to devise strategies for improvement. Students can easily demonstrate to themselves, teachers and parents their thoughts, assumptions, methods, arguments and expectations.

Portfolio evaluation and reflection can be a means of comparing achievements within a class or across classes and schools. It provides a starting point for establishing standards in a positive way rather than a competitive numerically based system. Portfolios can help teachers capture the complexities of the learning process, providing documentary evidence of not only final products but process, giving them access to what their students are thinking.

Transition

One of the many benefits of web-based digital portfolios is the ability to access content from any Internet-connected computer. Individual or student group showcase material or learning milestones completed in one school can be accessed by teachers at another. These portfolios can provide good background information to teachers about student’s learning history, capability, areas for growth and can guide curriculum planning needs. Therefore, a more flexible curriculum can target student learning needs rather than students having to adjust to the set curriculum.

Students and teachers without the broadband or allocated web space can easily burn work to DVD. Learning content can be transported from school to school or be available for all members of the wider school community or potential employers.

Renée Hoareau is currently the national education consultant for CSM Technology.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au