Welcome! Web-Based Portfolios

Please put a colored dot on your name tag:
Red = High School
Blue = Middle School
Green = Upper Elementary
Yellow = Lower Elementary

And help yourself to your favorite jelly belly.




1
Web-Based Portfolios: Power
of Making Good Work Visible
Patrick Dickson
Michigan State University
2
Introduction
Welcome!
 Thanks to international school teachers

– HKIS, JIS, SAS, AES, ISB, SEATCO 1994

Let’s learn something about who is here.
– Can you save a Word file on your computer?
– Can you publish a Web page to the world?
3
So Much to Talk About…
The Portfolio Concept: Food for Thought
 Lifespan Developmental Perspective

– For students you teach
– For you, for your colleagues
Many interpretations of portfolio concept..
 Many purposes for portfolios, many forms.
 My main point today…

4
Making Good Work Visible
The benefits to everyone of…
 “Authentic” work…papers, poems, art…
 created within a caring learning community
 for an audience of significant others
 shared with others on the Web
 collected and preserved over time.

5
Stories and Observations


Wisconsin Undergraduates: CFS 520
MSU Undergraduates: TE 150
– Think of the work you are most proud of
• Do you still have a copy?
• How many people have seen it?


“What do you have to show for your education
besides a grade point average?”
Is the unintended consequence of our way of
teaching writing that the students’ writing doesn’t
really matter?
6
Beyond Gutenberg
We are the first generation of teachers
 who can enable their students
 to become published authors, poet, artists.
 with a “significant” worldwide audience...
 Contrast a school anthology with a few
students represented in a few printed copies.

7
Resources Online: Take Aways
from Today’s Session
Go to: http://www.msu.edu/user/pdickson
 Click on title of this presentation for:
 Portfolio Examples
 Readings
 Tutorials
 If you would like me to send updates:

– Leave me your email address.
8
Portfolios: A Very Brief History


1970s: Bay Area Writing Project
Early 1990s: “Portfolio Movement”
– Not electronic, in folders, in classrooms
– Apple II’s with Hypercard…hints of a possible future.

Late 1990s: Standards, “Testing Mania” in U.S.
– From Portfolio Assessment to Portfolios as Assessment


Now: Portfolios Bushwacked by NCLB
Teachers under pressure to raise test scores.
9
Computers and Portfolios:
From K-12 to Higher Education

A strange shift happened in last few years:
– In 1990s, “ed tech” and “portfolios” referred to
education in K-12.
– In 2000s, portfolios and laptops surge as requirements
in higher education; CMS like Blackboard soared.
– Portfolios now required of preservice teachers,
inservice teachers’ masters programs, other masters,
doctoral programs.
– Meet “comprehensive exam” requirement
– Considered more authentic and valid.
– NBPTS and COATT portfolios
10
Many Types of Portfolios

Teacher Portfolios
– To get a job
– To communicate with students, parents,
Classroom Portfolios
 Student Portfolios
 School Portfolios

11
Multiple Purposes: Only You Can
Decide What Works for You
Reflective Portfolio
 Assessment

– Authentic Assessment
– Alternative Assessment (confrontational)

Standardized Portfolios
– Rubrics: Attempted to be as reliable as SAT.
– High stakes tests
12
Lifespan Perspective

Teacher Portfolios
– Preservice Teachers
– Inservice Teachers
– NBPTS Portfolio: “Board Certified”

Student Portfolios
– K to 12th… developmental changes
– Imagine Web when Today’s K’s reach 12th.

What year did you first… CEP 240 graph.
13
Sustainability, Scalability,
Time, and Money





We must invent models of portfolios that do not
require heroic amounts of time by teachers.
My bias: Grand schemes rarely work, such as:
“…every child will have an online portfolio across
all grade levels …”
“…our software makes it easy to compile and
assess portfolios…”
Keep it simple! Share the work!
14
Students Can Help
Call upon your students’ technical skills.
 Connect with parents.
 Encourage students to use computer at
home. Netscape 4.78…great, free program.
 Create web publishing center in your room.
 Make students webmasters with special
assignments…art, poetry, design.

15
Time is Precious! Keep It Simple!

Time is Our Only Inelastic Resource
– Time to learn to do it once (make a page)
– Time to make the second and third…
• Does time decrease with practice?
– Time the product is useful: ROI.
– Time to revise and update pages.
– Time to teach one student * number of students.
16
Return on Investment
Preserving good examples helps you teach
 Don’t let good examples walk out the door
 Many students haven’t seen what good is.
 Building community by making work
visible.

17
What’s Different in 2004?
The Web is revolutionary
 Change is accelerating
 Rate of change is accelerating
 Change in next 10 years >=last 20 years.
 We all must learn to learn …And learning
will be increasingly via the Web
 Beyond receiving to creating content.

18
Issues, Questions, Problems

Policies for web publishing.
– Permission, first names, photos?

Security
– For children and yourself.




Structured to unstructured
Rubrics and grading
Required or optional
Technical: Firewalls, software choices.
19
Thank You Very Much
Khap Khun Khap!
Please email me with your ideas,
suggestions, favorite web resources.
 I’ll be happy to talk to you about MSU’s
graduate programs.
 And keep advocating for the power of
portfolios in your schools…by your
personal example and your students’ work.

20