e-portfolio

After spending the morning setting up my e-portfolio and exploring the different tools I discovered that it is a very effective tool to share professional and personal information. However, I do think that it is a tool I would personally only use in the upper classes. It does require the user to have not only a vast variety of technology skills but also patience. Which I don't think the primary and even lower secondary would posses. Being able to share professional files with others I think is a great idea. It allows you to not only get feedback and ideas from others but to also share their ideas. The group settings allow you to pick and choose who you want to collaborate with. This is a great feature as it allows you to set up different collaborative groups. You may have certain information you only want to share with certain cohorts and this features allows you to do this. In the classroom I think e-portfolio's would tick all the boxes under the engagement theory. It allows students to become actively involved in cognitive processes 'such as creating, problem-solving, reasoning, decision-making and evaluation' (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999). E-portfolio's would be an excellent tool for students to display and share their work in any subject area. They would be able to use the e-portfolios every day to post reflections about their learning and understandings, assessment pieces, every day work and also personal information. E-portfolio's allow teachers to structure opportunities for students to work with peers to not only enhance academic achievement but also peer relationships (Marzano et al., 2006).

E-portfolio's allow all student's to explore and represent their work in a different and fun way. The only constraint for the teacher would be access to enough computers so student's could access their portfolio's on a daily basis. Teachers would also need to carefully scaffold sessions that explained how to use e-portfolios making sure all students gained a good understanding.


Referneces:

Kearsley, G & Shneiderman, B (1999). Engagment Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Retrieved July 29th, 2009, from CQUniversity e-courses, FAHE11001 Acitive learning & learning diversity. hhtp://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=580

Marzano, R., & Pickering, D., et al. (2006). Dimensions of learning teacher's manual (2nd ed.). Victoria, Australia: Hawker Brownlow Education.