Using online portfolios in the class

Our digital world is transforming the way we learn, and today's teachers are tasked with the challenging job of sifting through the deluge of educational technologies and creating a meaningful learning experience for students.
Next-generation education portfolio platforms - such as Digication, Pathbrite, Taskstream and Epsilen - are one way for teachers to start early and educate students about how they can manage their own academic and professional accomplishments. From using portfolios for giving students educational feedback to the portability of transcripts and official academic documents, new opportunities exist for lifelong learning and sharing.
Here are five best practices for implementing an education portfolio platform in any K-12 or college classroom.

image credits: Carbon Made Portfolios

1. Build in Opportunities for Peer-to-Peer Learning
Focus on the goal of increasing students' digital literacy by fostering a collaborative learning environment where some of the more tech-savvy students can guide and help others learn. These practices can generate trust, offer problem-solving opportunities, and deepen peer-to-peer learning on the educational lessons taught in the course.

2. Create Lessons That Foster Data and Knowledge Curation
Sifting through the endless hoards of information on the Internet is becoming a necessary skill. Students need to learn how to find reliable sources and how to conduct research in an organized and discriminating way. Eleventh-grade English teacher Amy McGeorge of Leadership Public Schools, a high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, began using next-generation education portfolios in the classroom to teach the literary classic Catcher in the Rye. She assigned a digital literary analysis and asked students to create an online portfolio that included what they learned about the characters. The results showed better-than-ever student engagement and understanding of the story.

3. Engaging for All Levels of Learners
One of the biggest challenges for today's large classrooms and high student-to-teacher ratios is offering high-performing students engaging activities that won't hold them back while the teachers focus on students who need additional support. Online portfolio projects are a stimulating activity that allows learners of all levels to deepen their knowledge on a subject matter or assignment while maintaining a common ground with their peers.

4. Develop Organization Skills and Plan for the Future
Instead of sorting through crumpled assignments in the bottoms of backpacks, students are able to login to their online portfolios and find everything in an organized manner. Using tags for common subject areas helps students sort through all of the information they have collected so that they can see the "bigger picture" and be reminded of all the work they have done in a specific area. I saw one example from a graduate level course at the University of Illinois in the School of Library and Information Science. Here, students were given the assignment of creating an online portfolio that showed digital materials reflecting theoretical concepts on gender, race and sexuality learned in the course. Not only did student understanding of the concepts far surpass the classes that weren't using online portfolios, but students also reported high levels of satisfaction with their ability to share their class portfolios with professional and personal contacts beyond the classroom.

5. Not All Online Portfolios are Created Equal
When picking an online portfolio, look for portfolios where the creators remain the owners of the data compiled. It's important that students and users have access to the content of the portfolio beyond the course or college education.
Using online portfolios successfully gives early adopters in the classroom the latitude to teach peers how to master the technology. Learning can be accelerated through the process of independently curating new knowledge and can also be extended beyond the classroom for a long-term collection of academic and professional successes.

By Heather Giles @ Edutopia - Technological Integration (slightly abridged)

Intrinsic & Extrinsic Motivation to Learn

photo credits: Educational Psychology Interactive

The Web gives to both teachers and students an incredible source of learning and teaching tools. Time and place for learning a specific topic don't exist anymore.  But does this mean that all students are engaged in classroom activities and in taking advantage of cyberculture? Obviously it doesn't. In almost every educational context, the motivation factor, for learning and for school in general, is crucial and must be regarded by teachers as a key element to explore.

Regarding motivation as a set of biological and psychological mechanisms which allow triggering an action, its orientation and finally the intensity and persistence (Lieury & Fenouillet, 1997:9), it becomes impossible not to consider motivation as a crucial factor in the teaching and learning process, because the more motivated the student is, the more persistent and productive his activity will be. 

Lieury e Fenouillet mention two types of motivation: intrinsic (in which the activity is appealling in itself) and extrinsic (which depends on a wide range of outside rewards, such as, grades or prizes). From here we can conclude that the current use of the term motivation refers to the intrinsic type. Teachers always prefer this one because it creates better results. That is why it's so important to identify and promote factors as challenge, control, responsibility, curiosity, fantasy, cooperation and acknowledgement.  (Raya, Lamb & Vieira, 2007:62) These authors also highlight that intrinsic motivation is in inverse proportion of constraint, for example, surveillance or teacher control. It has been proved that students' discouragement is born out of a learning process.

Puzzle of Motivation (Lieury & Fenouillet)

On the other hand, the acknowledgement of competences, in other words, a higher value pedagogy, must be understood as a crucial factor in motivating students. We also need to pay attention to students who belong to ethnic minorities, lower socioeconomic groups and consequently more exposed to being considered less competent; the teacher's attitude towards these students can set the difference, as higher expectations may allow him to question social stereotypes. (Fontaine, 2005:44)

For all these reasons, it is very important to promote tasks that may increase intrinsic motivation (less exposed to constraint), such as, portfolios, group presentations, personal data files, where the teacher's role is much more of giving information, rather than controlling or evaluating, as students are intrinsically motivated and perform all tasks with pleasure. To sum up, motivation can be seen as the puzzle on the left, in which all the mentioned components find a match.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

photo credits: Educational Psychology Interactive

The Web gives to both teachers and students an incredible source of learning and teaching tools. Time and place for learning a specific topic don't exist anymore.  But does this mean that all students are engaged in classroom activities and in taking advantage of cyberculture? Obviously it doesn't. In almost every educational context, the motivation factor, for learning and for school in general, is crucial and must be regarded by teachers as a key element to explore.

Regarding motivation as a set of biological and psychological mechanisms which allow triggering an action, its orientation and finally the intensity and persistence (Lieury & Fenouillet, 1997:9), it becomes impossible not to consider motivation as a crucial factor in the teaching and learning process, because the more motivated the student is, the more persistent and productive his activity will be. 

Lieury e Fenouillet mention two types of motivation: intrinsic (in which the activity is appealling in itself) and extrinsic (which depends on a wide range of outside rewards, such as, grades or prizes). From here we can conclude that the current use of the term motivation refers to the intrinsic type. Teachers always prefer this one because it creates better results. That is why it's so important to identify and promote factors as challenge, control, responsibility, curiosity, fantasy, cooperation and acknowledgement.  (Raya, Lamb & Vieira, 2007:62) These authors also highlight that intrinsic motivation is in inverse proportion of constraint, for example, surveillance or teacher control. It has been proved that students' discouragement is born out of a learning process.

Puzzle of Motivation (Lieury & Fenouillet)

On the other hand, the acknowledgement of competences, in other words, a higher value pedagogy, must be understood as a crucial factor in motivating students. We also need to pay attention to students who belong to ethnic minorities, lower socioeconomic groups and consequently more exposed to being considered less competent; the teacher's attitude towards these students can set the difference, as higher expectations may allow him to question social stereotypes. (Fontaine, 2005:44)

For all these reasons, it is very important to promote tasks that may increase intrinsic motivation (less exposed to constraint), such as, portfolios, group presentations, personal data files, where the teacher's role is much more of giving information, rather than controlling or evaluating, as students are intrinsically motivated and perform all tasks with pleasure. To sum up, motivation can be seen as the puzzle on the left, in which all the mentioned components find a match.