Playtesting Assignment 2: ePortfolios

 

• Reflect on your understanding of “folio thinking.” 
• As a graduate student trying to become a better educator, I am committed to my growth as a lifelong learner. The portfolio approach to documenting my progress and growth in this Master's program is relevant and meaningful to me because it is an artifact that can live and grow with me and be used as a reference for myself, colleagues or administrators to share my philosophy, resources and insights into educational technology. 
• In comparison to quizzes, tests, or other instructor-assigned assessments, the portfolio approach has several advantages. Firstly, that is allows my professors in the program to better follow the trajectory of my learning process, rather than rely on snapshots of individual assignments. This will help make gaps in my knowledge, flaws in my logic, or deficiencies in my communication more obvious and addressable. Secondly, the artifacts I choose to collect, prioritize and reflect on in my portfolio will have a more lasting impact on my teaching ability and career because the content and philosophy expressed in my portfolio is based on my interest, passions, understanding and beliefs. It is not simply a stack of assignment responses and notes. (I have collected many of these from past undergrad courses, PD opportunities, etc.) These remnants of former courses rarely constitute easily-accessible content and certainly are not organized in a way that easily integrates them into my personal educational philosophy. A portfolio allows me to select and curate content from my courses that resonates with my philosophy and how I want to approach educational technology.
• While quizzes provide quick feedback on how well I'm keeping up with and understanding content, and tests and essays allow me to demonstrate or express my mastery of class content in a quantifiable or qualifiable way, my preference at this stage in my learning is to use the portfolio method. As expresses above, this is more relevant and useful to my future career in education. I also think that at this stage in my learning journey, I am less concerned about demonstrating content mastery to others, and more concerned with how I can incorporate new knowledge, skills and technology in a way the makes me a better educator. Evaluation of my journey in the form of portfolio will afford my professors more opportunities to provide feedback that I will find most relevant and useful.

• Identify technology affordances. 
• To compare and contrast physical vs. digital or electronic portfolios, I would like to consider some examples of physical portfolios I have created in the past and potential affordances now available with the ePortfolio technology.
• One of the first portfolios I compiled was a physical manilla folder that contained a collection of studio art projects I can completed throughout my high school courses in Studio Art I, II, III and AP Studio Art. This collection of art pieces, while personal and representative of my style, talent and interests, lacked the ability to be easily shared or distributed. This was a drawback when applying for colleges and detracted from my ability to get additional feedback from peers, instructors or professionals who might have been able to offer critique or encouragement. In comparison, an ePortfolio would have afforded me the ability to easily display my work for a much wider audience, increases the chances of finding peers, mentors or institutes who could have helped propel my journey forward.
• Another portfolio I have compiled the the CV (curriculum vitae) of my engineering projects, which is currently exists as a several-page-long bulleted list spanning from pharmaceuticals to biofuels projects. Searching this dry and detail-heavy document for relevant project work is not necessarily intuitive, and I doubt most people who get a copy of my resume with the attached CV read past the first page, other than to say "That's a lot of projects!". Converting this content to an organized (by industry or company), easily searchable (by skills, projects size, role, technology, software, etc.) and more visually appealing (with photos, diagrams, more visual descriptions than a bulleted list) would all be affordances of the ePortfolio format. This would serve as a much better resource for engineering job hunting and a more accessible way to present my qualifications as a STEM role model, which I hope to be to my students.

• Shift context/perspective. 
• I think the advantages of ePortfolios to me are all relevant for my students as well. Additional concerns I'd have applying this technology with Middle Schoolers is privacy concerns (for example, I would want to use a private, access-controlled platform rather than a public website, like my portfolio). I would also want to give lots of examples of how to select, curate and reflect on work to guide them through the process of creating an ePortfolio as Middle Schooler tend to be much more concrete learners than grad students.
• Create something. 
• My first example of student work that benefits from a portfolio approach is a PreK - 1st Grade after-school circus elective that I taught. As part of my course design, I started each session (as I gathered kids and they had their after-school snack) with a daily coloring page I created showing kids correctly doing the circus skill were would attempt to learn that day. For example, I drew pictures of kids doing handstands or walking on a slackline or climbing or hanging upside down. Each day my students, though young, knew the routine of sitting down, eating their snack and coloring in the drawing. I then collected their colored papers, put them in folders, and we did fun circus things! At the end of the course, I had the students review their folder of skills and select ones to perform at the end-of-course show for their parents. While the physical portfolio was effective, transforming it into an ePortfolio could reach the Substitution and Augmentation levels by (1) affording parents a glimpse into the student's progress throughout the course, (2) affording students the opportunity to reflect on favorite (or least favorite) skills, etc. (3) affording me the ability to post additional content, like tutorials of the skills or video of the students attempting them. I would want to choose a technology only accessible to the students and parents, such as the SeeSaw program used by the Lower School faculty to share class resources and photos with parents.
• TPACK Model
• Pedagogy - reflection opportunities (i.e. favorite skills, skills to practice, choosing circus act to perform)
• Content - collection of personally colored drawing of all the circus skills they learned during the course
• Technology - secure sharing format (i.e. SeeSaw) allows parents to participate, affords reflection and can accommodate video content
• A second example of student work that would benefit from a portfolio approach is the BioBottle unit of my 7th grade science class. In this unit, students research, design, collect materials, construct, observe, collect data, analyze and reflect on how to build a self-contained ecosystem within 2-liter bottles that considers the water, nitrogen and carbon cycles. Because the project has so many parts, it's hard to make connections and show the growth of their understanding and knowledge as the project progresses. I think an ePortfolio approach would benefit students, who will have the opportunity to chronicle and organized the knowledge they gain during their journey. It will also afford me, as the instructor, access to give formative feedback and identify gaps in understanding more easily. Finally, it will create a cool artifact they can share with their parents and family afterwards.
• TPACK Model
• Pedagogy - assimilating content as students tackle a longer learning journey (month-long project)
• Content - collection of research, design plans, materials, observations, data, analysis and reflection for the BioBottle project
• Technology - privately hosted ePortfolio affords educator access for formative feedback, sharing with parents and peers, and student-organized, student-directed development of content, analysis and reflection
• Begin building your eportfolio. 
• https://sites.google.com/view/mackenziebmiller/home