Digital+Portfolios+Nursery+through+8

The real question about which digital portfolio platform to use that has to be answered first--and as precisely as possible--is "What are these portfolios really going to be used for?"

One scenario to consider: Maybe the purpose for nursery-kindergarten is for the parents to view student work. For grades 1-4, maybe it's a mix of parents, teachers, and students to view (developmental?) progress, even for self-reflection. For grades 5-8, maybe it moves from self-reflection and progress considerations to developing something that can be a part of a student's application to high school. Again, though, these purposes dictate which app you might use. Is it for parents, teachers, or students?

One of the major worries about this is whether or not the platform will be around in the future. Google probably will be but will Seesaw be there?

Why are we even making Digital Portfolios? Are students ever going to look on it? Is it important if they can take it with them as they get older? Or is it more for right now in the moment. If you don't care about taking it with you, then it doesn't matter if you can take it with you.

Who decides what gets to go on the portfolio? Should be teacher-curated. Parents should be told about the assignment they are looking at so they know the context. So, purely digital media may not 100% replace the weekly newsletter.

In the MakerSpace - Give students three prompts and have them record their struggles and challenges during the projects.

It’s important to have consistency among teachers when sharing with parents so that one class doesn’t get a lot of stuff sent home but the other class doesn’t get much in terms of pictures and stuff.

[|Seesaw]

One of the worries of Seesaw is communicating directly with parents. Communications department was worried about who was vetting it. Worries about the social aspect of likes and comments.

One school has K-4 on Seesaw. No parents access, though, because teachers send out a weekly newsletter, so it’s unnecessary. Parents don’t need to know about every assignment in detail.

You can export all the media in Seesaw. It would be great to pass this along to the next teacher.

[|Google Sites]

Easy to use. When the purpose is for the student, to show growth and learning over time. One of the pros is that it is limiting, so students aren’t distracted by colors and formatting and things like that.

[|Evernote]

Mostly being used by individuals, even in an educational institution, not so much for portfolios. The collaboration aspect really isn’t great. Google is much much better.

[|Protopage]

You have your own homepage with news curated for you. It also does notes and bookmarks. For personal use but you can make a page available for your students.

[|Wixie]

Website and app. Pre-K through 3. Kids get an account. Teachers have access to their students. Students are the ones creating content. They can record and take pictures. Better for young kids because they don’t have to type as much. You can draw and annotate pictures. You can enable link sharing of students’ projects. It could be used as a digital portfolio, however, we have no examples. Wixie lets you see previous years’ works. You can make templates in Wixie. Interface is not very pretty.