Nov. 28, 2016 -- A key component of an International Baccalaureate curriculum is that students gather evidence of their learning as a part of their educational journey. For the past several years, all students at Canterbury and Roxboro Elementary Schools used a hard copy IB portfolio, usually a large three-ring binder filled with work samples, that they would bring with them from one grade to the next. While these binders allowed for students to physically see and touch their work, they also posed numerous problems: For one, it was expensive for the schools to provide a binder for every single student, with each one costing several dollars multiplied by nearly 400 students. Binders also needed to be stored in already crowded classrooms and buildings. And of course, they ran the risk of breaking or falling apart.
Melissa Garcar, who serves as IB coordinator in both buildings, recalled students dropping their binders while walking down the hallway, spilling years’ worth of work that had been organized chronologically.
“We also couldn't send the portfolios home for fear of them never returning,” said Garcar. “Which meant that students could only share their most meaningful work with their parents a few times each year, such as at Conference Night.”
Enter the e-portfolio, a simple, cost-effective solution to sorting and storing an entire educational career’s worth of learning.
Third through fifth graders at both Rox El and Canterbury are experimenting with electronic portfolios, created on their Chromebooks and stored in each student’s online Google Classroom.
“There are so many benefits to this,” said Garcar. “Especially the fact that students can now easily share their work with their family members from any device a family owns.” Google Classroom can be accessed from phones, tablets or computers using only a log-in.
Monica Lewis, fifth grade teacher at Canterbury, also thinks the students enjoy the e-portfolios more because they love using technology. “This really captures their imagination. And gives them creative freedom as they get to choose the images to represent each of their sub-categories.”
Students in her classroom created online folders for each of their IB units and will select and store work to each folder once per quarter. They spent a recent November afternoon searching through their work and snapping photos of their favorite samples for the “Sharing the Planet” inquiry unit they had just finished.
Student Charlotte decided she only wanted to include those items on which she received a good grade, “something I was proud of. And some other things I’ll include just because I enjoyed the lesson.”
Mrs. Garcar cautioned students against leaving out rough drafts or less than perfect papers. “Include a variety of samples so you can look back later and see how you overcame a problem or how you grew and got better at something over time.”
Another benefit to the e-portfolio is that students can share group projects as well, just by taking a picture of their final product. This particular class had recently studied biomes as part of their Sharing the Planet unit. The lessons incorporated life sciences, social studies as they learned where biomes were located on the planet and studied current threats to their chosen biome, and language arts as they wrote postcards to a friend as if they were visiting their biome.
All of these assignments, plus a descriptive poster created by groups of three to four students who studied the same biome, could easily be added to their portfolios.
All students were encouraged to include as many as 10 work samples, though many were particular about which to choose. “I only wanted the things I did really well on,” said Tyson Lewis. “And things I really enjoyed, like social studies.”
Reflecting on one’s work is another part of the IB program that is constantly being reinforced at Canterbury and Rox. Students in Ms. Lewis’ class were instructed to write comments on at least three of their chosen work samples reflecting on the process or content of what they had learned.
Student Kyree Bolton spent some time figuring out how to best position his papers for the highest quality photographs. He eventually used an outside-the-box solution, propping his desired work between his Chromebook and a textbook.
“There’s a learning curve to all of this,” said Ms. Lewis. “They’re learning new skills just by having to apply the technology to each of these tasks.”
Electronic portfolios align with the district’s technology standards, which expect greater e-literacy from students at all grade levels.
“This is their electronic footprint,” said Ms. Lewis. “The materials they’re collecting today can be carried with them throughout their entire educational journeys, to middle school, high school and beyond.”