Look at this thoughtful and careful response that I received on Facebook from a student:
Hi Steve, thanks for sharing the Digital Portfolio page. The first time I heard about portfolios was at the career center at UC San Diego, where Portfolium (https://portfolium.com/) was advertising. Though I opened an account with them, I've never touched it because I don't feel that I have anything too stellar to put on there - we're usually not allowed to share our work for academic homework/projects due to academic integrity policies, and many homework/projects are irrelevant to my field of interest. I do like the idea of digital portfolios, though; it would be a step in tackling the overwhelming influence of grades and helping to cultivate student creativity. My main concern would be motivation on part of the students and the teachers - it clearly would take more time for teachers to grade based on quality, and students might see it as another paper pusher activity; i.e. just doing irrelevant things to get a grade (which is inevitable in introducing it to students, but the idea is to have them eventually break free from this mindset through reflection; possibly specifically constant reflection about the portfolio and having honest student-teacher discussions to realign and understand goals). One way to get around that would be to have the portfolio based on 1-2 large projects per school year, and students get to choose what other works they want to include (i.e. projects from a hobby or other things that aren't necessarily schoolwork).
I wold not have heard about Portfolium so quickly... or so soon without social media. Here are some highlights from the company's website
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| OOPS -- someone needs to check the use of apostrophes... |
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