Journal post 11: Engaging Teachers and Students in Learning and Self-Reflection

How can teachers and students use digital portfolios as tools for learning?

Though this maybe something difficult to use in a classroom it would be much useful towards both teachers and students; my theory is based on the fact that teachers could track how affective everything the kids learned throughout the school year. Like what our Professor Cole is doing she is giving us a project that is to make a website and put it together using all the tools that she has given us throughout the semester. Remembering all of the difficulties that I had throughout high school with keeping up with all of the material I had learned in class I find that this performance based web portfolio would be very helpful towards students, especially those who are in high school that aren’t doing that great in a subject; it helps them focus on the material they aren’t doing so great in. I also believe that giving students the opportunity to have their own portfolio not only gives them the opportunity to better themselves but it also helps them learn a new way of organizing themselves, that way in the future they are able to track their own progress.

Tech Tool: Task Stream

Task Stream is a popular digital archiving tool used for web design and portfolio building.  Task Stream provides users with a variety of design options including presentation portfolios, learning or work portfolios tailored to document one’s learning process, and resource portfolios that can be accessed by both the world and a specified closed community. Other features include a standards manager, lesson plan and unit builders, and customizable measurement tools. The below link gives a further explanation on how to use e-portfolios in the classroom.

Summary:

I enjoyed reading this chapter because it has so many different choices in order to introduce ways you can use technology to track your students as well as have them track their own performance. It explains how to use the performance web based portfolio for your students and your own convenience. But it is not just about helping the students keep track of their performance but also about finding new ways for the students to improve themselves as well as the teachers come up with new ways to help the students further their education.