digital portfolio essay

Digital portfolio for students – tips and examples

In the context of blended learning and digital classrooms, there’s a growing number of schools that encourage students to build a digital portfolio . There are many ways to do that and various tools that can be used to build a great digital portfolio for students.

Student portfolio definition

A student portfolio is a collection of academic assignments, projects, revisions, and work samples that stretch over a designated period of time, belonging to one student. It may also contain student self-assessments and reflections on their own work.

Why make a student portfolio

There are 4 different reasons why you might be required to make a student portfolio: (1) the teacher needs it to evaluate your learning progress by comparing early work to later work; (2) the teacher may use it to review your work in order to determine whether you have met the established learning standards set for your grade level or for graduation; (3) to help you reflect on your academic goals and progress; (4) to create an archive that compiles your most important school projects and academic work.

A teacher might require students to make portfolios for any or for all of the reasons above. In addition to meeting teachers’ requirements, older students might want to build a portfolio for themselves to help them later in their careers. There are many arguments for making a portfolio because it can help a student greatly.

Importance of portfolio for students

Now let’s talk about the importance of portfolios for students. Even though making a portfolio might seem tedious, the process is very rewarding. You’ll thank yourself later for making it. It will help you pick up some important skills and you will feel proud when you will look back on all your hard work.

• Opportunity to track and chart growth
• Increased motivation
• Deeper learning and quality work
• Habits of lifelong learning – a portfolio requires planning and keeping records which are great habits
• Promotes reflection on what to learn and how to learn
• Showcase around a set of learning outcomes – an achievement documentation system
• Opportunity to demonstrate particular competencies
• Ownership, responsibility, involvement in own learning
• Improves communication between parents and teachers
• Learn to auto-evaluate and critique

How should a portfolio be organized

There are many ways you can make a digital portfolio and each format is structured differently. Some of the most used formats for student portfolios are blogs, online journals, digital archives, websites, and notebooks. We advise you to think about all the benefits and limitations for each portfolio type and choose the one that works best for you and for your needs. For instance, a digital portfolio is more suitable if you want to showcase your online certifications like the OSHA international certification .

Regardless of the support that you’ve chosen for your portfolio, there are some guidelines on how it should be organized. Usually, the teacher will tell you what should be included in the portfolio, how it should be organized, and how it will be evaluated. Pay attention to these requirements and specifications because you need to meet these standards to get a good grade.

Here are some of the criteria that will surely be taken into consideration during the evaluation:

• Organization – Your portfolio should be comprised of an intro/ summary, a table of contents, work samples (organized into chapters) and a conclusion. You must have a logical explanation for the order in which your portfolio work is presented. Typically you may want to stick with a chronological order, but sometimes other criteria is more important.
• Completeness – Make a checklist with all the items that have to be included in your portfolio. Check and double check your list to avoid omitting important required elements
• Neatness – Pay attention to typos, spelling and formatting, because a neat, organized-looking portfolio will impress your teacher. Being organized and neat will help you in future projects beyond high school, or college.
• Visual appeal – Include images, charts and other interesting materials. For added visual appeal, make your portfolio with Flipsnack.
• Evidence of growth – Your teacher may compare some of your early work to later work, so make sure you devote more time in the very last projects and show off the information that you picked up
• Variety of artifacts and supporting materials – An ambitious student will always go above and beyond the minimum requirements for a portfolio. Show interest in the assignment by adding all sorts of relevant support materials to your portfolio.

Student portfolio websites

There are many website portfolio builders online, so you’ll have plenty of options if you want to present your portfolio in a website format. Some of the most known website builders are Wix , Squarespace , Weebly , IMcreator or Pixpa which offers lots of student portfolio website templates that can easily be customized to anyone’s needs. Portfoliogen is another online tool developed specifically for student portfolio websites. Another popular option is Bulbapp , which can be used to curate and create, share and showcase materials for school projects. Google Drive – If you need an online platform that can be used to keep your work private, organized into folders, you might consider using Google Drive and all the other Google apps made for collaboration. Another similar option (but less popular) would be Dropbox or Evernote . Google Sites – Many teachers use Google Sites to create a class-oriented site where students can collaborate and share files. To start a blog -style portfolio, try Blogger , WordPress , or some other blogging platform. If you want your student portfolio to look truly striking, try Flipsnack !

Student portfolio examples and samples

If you want to make a portfolio but don’t know where to start, perhaps you should take a look at these student portfolio examples in various formats: PDFs, websites, Google Sites, and magazines.

College portfolio examples

Take a look at this single-topic college portfolio in PDF format, made by 2 students. The portfolio compiles 3 studies on stereotype threats.

This student portfolio is made up of different projects made by Madelaine, a university undergraduate who specializes in landscape architecture .

High school portfolio

The following portfolio is presented as a Google Site . You can switch between projects by checking the menu on the left.

This student is building a high school portfolio that features all the most notable projects for each class, year by year.

How about a student’s art portfolio? We like this one created by Elizabeth Yuan .

Even young students can make portfolios. Here’s an example of a 4th grade writing portfolio.

Elementary student portfolio examples

Student portfolio samples.

And here are 2 more student portfolio samples. The first one is made in Bulbapp , while the second one was created with Flipsnack .

Also, here’s a video that you can check out to see how a girl designed her art school portfolio and maybe get some inspiration.

Flipsnack for student portfolios

Earlier we mentioned Flipsnack, but we didn’t fully explain why it would be such a great fit for your student portfolio. Let’s start by saying that the format is just perfect for portfolios because it looks like a digital magazine/ notebook, so it’s very easy to browse through. The navigation is very intuitive, making it easy for anyone to find a particular chapter or project from within the portfolio. Flipsnack supports internal linking, so you can link to certain pages from the table of contents.

The tool is so easy to use that anyone can easily create, edit and update his portfolio. You can make your portfolio by uploading PDFs or you can make your project page by page in our editor. You can make unlimited updates!

By using Flipsnack you will make your projects look polished and professional.

[…] (2017, October, 24). Digital portfolio for students – tips and examples. FLIPSNACKBLOG. Retrieved from https://blog.flipsnack.com/digital-portfolio-students/ […]

it is very good and useful thank you

Thank you nick!

Love this im a student and we are learning how to make a portfolio this helps a lot

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11 digital portfolio examples that’ll inspire your own

• Ana Cvetkovic
• 11 min read

Get started by: Creating a portfolio →  | Getting a domain →

They say that comparison is the thief of joy, but in the case of digital portfolio examples, comparison can be quite useful. Exploring how fellow professionals showcase their achievements can inspire fresh ideas that might take your portfolio to the next level.

By studying other online portfolios, you can learn how to make a website  that highlights your best work and paves the way for your next break. Along with these 11 digital portfolio examples that come from Wix users of a variety of disciplines, we’ll share our feedback on why they’re effective and provide a step-by-step guide for how to make your own.

Ready to make a digital portfolio website ? Get started with Wix today.

11 examples of digital portfolios

Kayla Arianne: model digital portfolio example

Rossi Home: interior designer digital portfolio example

George Byrne: photographer online portfolio example

Lauryn Higgins: writer digital portfolio example

Gregory Perreault: academic digital portfolio example 

Cami Ferreol: graphic designer digital portfolio example

Matt Lewis: videographer digital portfolio example 

BLYNK Social: marketer online portfolio example 

Marco Mori: animation digital portfolio example

Sasa Elebea: illustrator digital portfolio example

Tim Bengel: artist online portfolio example

01. Kayla Arianne: model digital portfolio example

Gone are the days of lugging around a book overflowing with tear sheets and test shots to go-sees. Instead, your modeling portfolio  will become your all-in-one showcase. 

Take a cue from Kayla Arianne’s website. The “portfolio” page displays her best shots in a masonry grid, giving casting agents a book that’s easy to scan. When a photo catches an agent’s eye, they can click to enlarge it. In the “digitals” section, Kayla has digitized her comp card, complete with a makeup-free headshot, silhouette shots and measurements.

When creating a modeling portfolio , let your work speak for itself. We like how Kayla’s portfolio includes minimal text so casting agents can focus on her images.

Explore Wix’s fashion website templates  today.

02. Rossi Home: interior designer digital portfolio example

Interior designers know the power of a well-crafted portfolio—it's not just a collection of beautiful spaces, but a key tool in attracting new clients. Your interior design portfolio  should be more than a gallery of images; it should serve as a reflection of your creativity and expertise.

Rossi Home’s portfolio does so much more than just show off beautiful images. Its in-depth design questionnaire showcases the team’s expertise while engaging potential clients in their own project planning. Including a mandatory question about budget cleverly filters out visitors who are not serious about their design needs.

While photos of your projects are essential, remember they can be space-hungry in your portfolio. To keep your portfolio sleek yet informative, take a page from Rossi Home's playbook. Use image carousels to display your work without overwhelming the viewer. This technique lets you share the breadth of your designs without sacrificing the elegance of your presentation.

Find a Wix architecture and interior design website template  that puts your best work forward.

03. George Byrne: photographer online portfolio example

As a photographer, your portfolio is your visual symphony, and its design should play a supporting role, allowing your photos to shine. A minimalist approach ensures that your work, not the website's design, captures the viewer's attention.

By giving his portfolio an off-white background and an understated navigation system, George Byrne lets his pastel-hued snapshots do all of the talking. The photographer smartly uses PDFs of publications that have featured his work, drawing attention to glowing press coverage of his work. 

If you’re thinking of monetizing your art, follow George’s lead and add an eCommerce component to your photographer portfolio . With Wix, you can easily set up an online store  equipped with print-on-demand  functionality. This approach would not only display your talent but also serve as a direct channel to engage with and sell to your audience.

Browse Wix’s selection of photography website templates  today.

04. Lauryn Higgins: writer digital portfolio example

Gone are the days when writers could make a living writing a weekly column for just one publication (we’re looking at you, Carrie Bradshaw). Today’s freelance writers use their digital portfolios to curate and share their best articles, blog posts, stories, poems and more from various publications.

Journalist Lauryn Higgins’ writing portfolio is a master class on how to sell yourself. Her homepage bio highlights her impressive professional accomplishments, which include two Pulitzer Prizes and a professorship. Lauryn markets herself further by dedicating an entire page to her award-winning works.

As you embark on creating your digital writing portfolio (see writing portfolio examples ), remember to streamline the process for potential clients. Following Lauryn's example, offer a downloadable PDF version of your resume. This makes it effortless for prospective employers to save, review and circulate your credentials among key decision-makers.

Put your best work forward by starting with a literary arts website template  from Wix.

05. Gregory Perreault: academic digital portfolio example 

An academic portfolio is essential for showcasing your scholarly achievements, reflecting on your learning journey and enhancing your professional opportunities. The key to building a great one is to consider your audience and find a sweet spot that blends professionalism with a dash of your unique personality.

Journalism professor Gregory Perreault’s portfolio exemplifies this balance. Gregory highlights his career with a detailed biography covering his present and past roles, a comprehensive list of his publications and dedicated pages for his professional work. His personality is woven into the portfolio's fabric, evident in the bold teal blue background and personal photos from professional events.

Teachers catering to different educational environments and audiences can play even more with design elements. If you’re a kindergarten teacher, for example, you could decorate your portfolio with a more vibrant color palette and even include some of your students’ doodles.

Wix’s education website templates  are designed for professionals at all levels of academia.

06. Cami Ferreol: graphic designer digital portfolio example

Your digital portfolio as a graphic designer is a direct reflection of your creative skills. Therefore, you’ve got the layered challenge of making a unique site that doesn’t overshadow your work samples.

By using typography to engage visitors, Cami Ferreol shows off what she can do and lets her digital portfolio take center stage. Instead of featuring an image, Cami’s hero fold uses one of Wix’s animation effects to captivate viewers and introduce herself as a multifaceted professional in one sentence.

Remember, graphic design is fundamentally about solving problems creatively. When building your own graphic design portfolio , consider giving a glimpse into your creative process. Cami does this brilliantly by incorporating videos that show her sketching logo designs with a Sharpie. This showcases her raw creative process as well as her proficiency in logo design. Moreover, a simple yet impactful logo made from her initials acts as a testament to her skill in creating memorable brand identities.

Customize one of Wix’s graphic design website templates  today.

07. Matt Lewis: videographer digital portfolio example 

Bite-sized content is all the rage these days, so traditional reels don’t pack the same punch that they once did. With that in mind, consider breaking up your reel into short clips that interested parties can browse through on your digital portfolio. 

See this in action on one of the best portfolio websites  we’ve seen: Matt Lewis’s . The video editor displays his work in a gallery of clips that play automatically when you hover your mouse over them. The added benefit of this approach is that it functions as a visual resume—you can see at a glance that Matt has worked on notable films, such as The Lighthouse and Uncut Gems . 

If you want to imitate Matt’s creative video display, make sure to select a captivating still for each of your video clips. Additionally, ensure that your clips stop playing as soon as your visitor moves their mouse away to prevent the annoying experience of multiple clips playing at once.

Use Wix’s film and TV website templates  to let clients press play on your best work.

08. BLYNK Social: marketer online portfolio example 

It’s a widely recognized phenomenon that fantastic marketers often struggle to promote themselves. If this hits you right where it hurts, look to BLYNK Social for an example of how to get it right.

BLYNK Social’s portfolio bursts with personality and a results-driven approach, mirroring the case studies featured on their site. Their branding stands out with bold, dopamine-inducing colors like hot pink, candy apple green and baby blue. Their friendly tone of voice emanates from every piece of text on the site.

If you're aiming to craft a marketing portfolio  that draws more business, take a page out of BLYNK's book and let your satisfied clients do the talking. Incorporate testimonials into your homepage, much like BLYNK's stylized speech bubbles, to give prospective clients a glimpse of the positive experiences others have had with your services.

Boost your business with an advertising and marketing template  from Wix.

09. Marco Mori: animation digital portfolio example

Marco Mori's animation portfolio is an exemplar of modern design principles, deftly incorporating a dark mode aesthetic. The dark background not only brings a sleek and professional look but also ensures that the colors and details of each piece pop, allowing for a more immersive viewing experience. The choice of a dark theme aligns with current design trends and speaks to an audience accustomed to media-rich, visual content, making it as easy on the eyes as it is engaging.

Each project is given the spotlight it deserves with an enlarged presentation, allowing viewers to appreciate the intricacies and nuances of the animator’s work without the distraction of a cluttered interface. This focused presentation mimics the experience of a gallery viewing, inviting potential clients to pause and absorb the visual storytelling in each piece. It's a digital equivalent of placing work on an easel, where the art commands the viewer's full attention.

Crucially, this animation portfolio  is not just a static gallery; it's interactive. Clicking on an image takes the viewer to a dedicated page that houses all the assets of the showcased project along with the creator’s commentary. This adds depth to the visuals, offering insights into the animator’s creative process and the story behind each project.

Make your digital art portfolio stand out by customizing a Wix graphic design website template.

10. Sasa Elebea: illustrator digital portfolio example

Sasa Elebea’s portfolio paints a vivid picture of a graphic designer who is not only proficient in her craft but also well-versed in the art of self-promotion. Her press page is a standout feature, acting as a testament to her industry recognition and professional acclaim. It's a smart move that adds weight to her portfolio, showcasing her work through the lens of various reputable publications. 

Sasa’s logo is another element that speaks volumes. It encapsulates her brand identity in a simple, yet powerful visual that is likely memorable and easily recognizable. This kind of branding is crucial for standing out in a competitive field and for creating a lasting impression.

The inclusion of a chat box introduces an interactive dimension to Sasa’s online presence, inviting engagement and providing immediate avenues for communication. This feature conveys her availability and willingness to connect with visitors, whether for potential projects, collaborations or just casual inquiries. It's an excellent tool for building relationships and ensuring her illustrator portfolio  is both seen and interactively experienced.

Want to create a portfolio for your work? Check out Wix’s art and illustration website templates .

11. Tim Bengel: artist digital portfolio example

The internet has transformed art accessibility, diminishing the exclusive role of museums and galleries as art world gatekeepers. This digital era has opened doors for artists like multimedia artist Tim Bengel , whose portfolio doubles as his virtual gallery. By arranging his art into thematic collections on separate pages, Tim creates a virtual experience akin to moving through different rooms in a gallery, complete with easy navigation and smooth transitions highlighting his fondness for gold in his work.

In this new landscape where traditional gatekeepers are fewer, artists have more opportunities to showcase their talent. However, they also face the challenge of distinguishing themselves in a crowded field. To make a mark, it's vital to build a personal brand alongside displaying your artwork. Tim Bengel sets a fine example of this by enriching his digital portfolio with videos and press coverage, showcasing his art, his journey and his distinct presence in the art world.

Get started with one of Wix’s visual arts website templates  today.

How to create a digital portfolio checklist

To help you channel the inspiration you've gotten from these digital portfolio examples, we've compiled a digital portfolio checklist to guide you as you build your own. 

01. Choose a platform

Your digital portfolio is the virtual stage for your professional story. As such, the platform you choose to build this type of website  on is just as crucial as the work itself. When selecting a platform, scrutinize the customization options it offers. Can you add animations that bring your work to life? Does it provide branding tools like a logo maker to help you carve out your unique digital signature?

Beyond aesthetics, assess the platform's functional capabilities. Look for features like AI text generators for crafting compelling copy, forms for easy contact, or even e-commerce systems if you plan to sell your work. For educators and coaches, the ability to integrate courses could be a game-changer.

Ease of use is paramount—you want a platform that you can navigate and update effortlessly, allowing you to spend more time creating and less time troubleshooting. While cost is always a consideration, weigh it against the platform's ability to elevate your work. A higher investment might yield richer dividends in how professionally and effectively your portfolio represents you.

Sign up for Wix  today and follow this guide as you build your portfolio.

02. Select and build your content

Next, curate the work samples that you want to display on your digital portfolio. Gather high-quality samples that demonstrate the type of work you want to do more of, rather than just the type of projects that you currently take on. For example, if you’re a model who does a lot of commercial work but wants to be booked for more editorial photoshoots, focus on gathering samples of your work in print or online publications.

In addition to showcasing your best work, enrich your digital portfolio with elements that narrate your professional story. 

A captivating bio that can help you connect with viewers

A CV that illustrates your experience and skills 

Contact information for potential clients or collaborators

Testimonials that serve as powerful endorsements and enhance your credibility

If applicable, a clear list of services and rates that set transparent expectations

03. Decide on an appealing structure

Now comes the creative part: deciding how to showcase your work in a way that maximizes its impact. This step goes beyond mere aesthetics; it's about choosing a format that truly complements and enhances your specific medium. 

For instance, if you're an illustrator, a grid layout might be ideal to display your projects, allowing each piece to stand out while forming a cohesive visual story. On the other hand, if you're an academic, a resume-style list could be more effective.

04. Give your portfolio a unique twist

Your digital portfolio is a reflection of you, so make it stand out with distinct branding. To make it truly stand out, infuse it with distinct branding elements that resonate with your unique style. This could mean different things depending on your chosen platform and industry. 

If you're a creative professional, consider adding a headshot that captures your personality. Custom fonts can also add a touch of individuality, speaking volumes about your style and approach. 

Don't overlook the power of color, either—using your brand colors consistently throughout the portfolio can create a cohesive and memorable visual experience. And if you have a logo, prominently displaying it not only reinforces your brand identity but also adds a professional touch.

Use the Wix Logo Maker  to make your digital portfolio stand out.

05. Spread the word

Once your digital portfolio is ready, it's time to share it far and wide. Share it with your professional network by linking to it on your LinkedIn profile. Add a touch of professionalism to your email signature by including the link there as well. Don't forget to showcase it on your social media profiles, where it can reach a wider audience. 

Want to demonstrate to potential clients that you prioritize customer service? Consider adding a QR code to your business card so that your portfolio is just a scan away. 

Create your custom QR code easily with Wix's user-friendly QR code generator .

Key elements of a digital portfolio

A strong digital portfolio should act as a showcase of your skills and experience. To achieve that you'll need to consider including the following elements:

About Me:   A brief introduction highlighting your career goals, unique selling points and contact information. This should be informative but concise.

Work samples:   This is the core of your portfolio. Choose high-quality pieces that best represent your abilities.  For fields like design, photography, or illustration, focus on impactful visuals. Writers can showcase excerpts of their written work and programmers might include code snippets or links to functional projects.

Project descriptions:  Briefly explain the context and goals of each project you showcase. Briefly highlight the challenges you faced and the solutions you implemented.

Skills section:   List your key skills and relevant technologies you've mastered. Consider using progress bars or icons to visually represent your proficiency level.

Testimonials:   Positive quotes or short testimonials from past clients or employers can add credibility to your work.

Clean design:   Keep your portfolio visually appealing and easy to navigate. Use a consistent color scheme and well-organized layout. Check it's mobile-friendly for on-the-go browsing.

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The Complete Guide To Student Digital Portfolios

Digital portfolios can revolutionize the teaching and learning process.

This complete guide to student ePortfolios answers many questions you may have, from the academic benefits of portfolios, the platform to use, to ongoing management, and how to get started.

Let’s get started!

What’s In This Guide?

Chapter One Why ePortfolios?

Chapter Two Terms and Vocabulary

Chapter Three Types of Portfolios

Chapter Four Choosing a Platform

Chapter Five Building a Template

Chapter Six Student Privacy

Chapter Seven Quality Artifacts

Chapter Eight Assessment and Feedback

Chapter Nine Conclusion

Why ePortfolios?

Chapter One

We take a look at the benefits of digital portfolios for students, educators, and families. We then explain why a school-wide approach to ePortfolios is generally best.

Like any program or initiative, it’s best to always start with your goals. To that end, let’s begin by covering some of the benefits that implementing an ePortfolio program can offer all members of a school community.

A short summary of the benefits looks like this:

For students , digital portfolios foster independence while fueling reflection, creativity, and authentic lifelong learning. For educators , portfolio programs work wonders for tracking and assessing student growth and are an invaluable way to provide constructive feedback.

Let’s break this down in a bit more detail…

Student Benefits of ePortfolios

We know all students have individual strengths and weaknesses but in a system often driven by pre-set curriculum and assessments, it can be difficult to cater to each student and celebrate their uniqueness.

An ePortfolio can be used to capture each student in a way that standardized tests or end-of-course summative exams simply cannot. Some students may have difficulties showing their true strengths in traditional assessments but may be marvelous at expressing themselves through video, music, art, spoken word, design, coding, or creative writing — mediums that are easy to embed into a digital portfolio. You might also find that some students who are more reluctant to speak up in a busy classroom really find their voice and shine in a digital space.

Educator Matt Renwick stresses the value of a digital portfolio as a wholistic method of assessment,

Students are more than a score. They are unique individuals, each possessing different motivations and talents. To distill an understanding of their current status and future potential down only to a symbol, such as grades or levels, is at best a misrepresentation of their abilities and at worst educational negligence. We can do better.

An ePortfolio can also help students develop independence as they’re given the responsibility of shaping and maintaining their own space on the web. Students can be granted the autonomy to capture, curate, document, and share their learning. There’s a lot to be said for the power of choice and ownership to motivate students to improve.

The overarching purpose of portfolios is to create a sense of personal ownership over one’s accomplishments, because ownership engenders feelings of pride, responsibility, and dedication. Paris and Ayres (1994)

With traditional assignments and assessments, students make note of their grades in the moment. By keeping track of their successes, failures, and everything in between over time, students are able to understand where they need to improve and celebrate how far they’ve come. Combined with ownership of their digital space and autonomy of expression, student results can soar.

A lot has been said about the essential skills our students need to prepare them to thrive in a rapidly changing world and job market. Perhaps a digital portfolio program could play a part in your school community in helping students develop these essential skills.

You might be familiar with The Future of Jobs report from the World Economic Forum (2018) that ranked as the top 5 skills for the 2020 workforce. The report demonstrates that skills growing in prominence include analytical thinking, active learning, and technology design, along with “human skills” like creativity, critical thinking, and complex problem-solving.

Similarly, a national survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (2015), revealed that 93% of employers believe that “a candidate’s demonstrated capacity to  think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems  is more important than his or her undergraduate major”.

Critical thinking, communication, and problem solving are precisely the sorts of skills that students can develop as they work on their digital portfolios throughout their education. What an added bonus!

Digital portfolios help to shape students’ digital footprints. While we naturally may want to shield and guide students, we know that having no digital footprint at all is no longer an ideal option. It’s no secret that potential employers and higher education institutions increasingly consider individuals’ online profiles and search results when making selections.

Students who use a digital portfolio may be at an advantage as they embark on life outside of school or university. Maintaining a polished record of their work can help students accomplish a variety of goals as they near the completion of their studies such as scholarships, internships, or even jobs. As an added bonus, helping your students succeed can reflect well on your school or institution.

Overall, an ePortfolio can put options and opportunities into the hands of each student.

“How can you make sure that every student who walks on graduation day is WELL GOOGLED by his or her full name?” Will Richardson (2012)

Educator Benefits of ePortfolios

We all seem to be busier than ever. The planning, assessing, and reporting cycle is never ending, amongst all the other responsibilities. A well established ePortfolio program can help with this and make life easier for faculty and administrators.

It can be challenging to organize and track students’ work while assessing their progress over time. As we mentioned earlier, students themselves may not even be able to gauge their own development without a system for monitoring their academic growth. A digital portfolio enables both the student and their instructors to measure progress over time — both academically and in other ways.

Just as important, digital portfolios give instructors insight into students’ educational journeys so they can deliver targeted feedback seamlessly.

Educators work hard; sometimes much harder than outsiders realize. Digital portfolios can help make the efforts of both educators and students more visible to everyone. In a culture of transparency, everyone can thrive.

Benefits Of ePortfolios For Families And Parents

For portfolio programs in K-12 environments, one of the many benefits of having an ePortfolio program is the strengthening of home-school relationships. An ePortfolio program is a convenient and effective way to encourage ongoing family involvement in schooling.

Individual ePortfolios can be like virtual windows into the classroom and families can keep up to date with student learning and progress. No more waiting for end of semester report cards or parent-teacher conferences.

You might have heard many parents admit that their child is often reluctant to tell them what they’re working on at school. The dynamic nature of ePortfolios means this is no longer a problem — parents can view their child’s portfolio and survey their progress when it suits.

ePortfolios can also provide conversation starters. Parents can ask their child more about what they’re learning and what they’ve documented in their portfolio while driving to soccer practice or sitting around the dinner table. These conversations can bridge the gap between home and school, and further extend students’ learning while strengthening relationships.

Parents can even add artifacts or leave comments on student portfolios, making the portfolio a two-way means of communication.

A School-Wide Approach

When thinking about implementing an ePortfolio program, some schools or institutions feel most comfortable starting small — perhaps having ePortfolios in pilot courses or classes. While starting small and then rolling out to everyone can be a great place to begin, we see the greatest benefits when portfolios are implemented school-wide, department-wide, or in more than one course at a time.

The important thing here is that the same portfolio or website is used across classes and even from year-to-year. Why? There are a number of reasons:

1) The Focus Can Move From the Technology to the Content and Learning

When students spend more than one year working with digital portfolios, they learn and know the tool. This means students aren’t bogged down with learning the technical stuff. They will become fluent with the technology and be able to concentrate on creation, curation, reflection, connections, and all the things that will really drive their learning.

2) Progress Can be Documented From Year to Year and Class to Class

How often do students make great strides in a particular class only to then have to start from scratch in their next class with a brand new teacher? A lot of time can be wasted as teachers scramble to find out where their new students are at and where they need to go next. An ongoing ePortfolio program solves this dilemma.

Through browsing a student’s digital portfolio, educators can get a snapshot of a student’s strengths, weaknesses, and learning journey. The transition to a new class or new school year can become seamless with limited interruption to learning.

3) More Meaningful and More Impactful

How many times have you seen a school with each teacher alone in their classroom using different technology tools and teaching approaches? While some autonomy and creativity is fantastic, educators can end up working harder than they need to on their own “islands” while students can end up confused as they constantly switch tools.

A school-wide approach to digital portfolios means teachers and students can work together to navigate and perfect their program. Some educators and students may become natural leaders of the program and enjoy sharing their skills and assisting others.

Association of American Colleges and Universities, Hart Research Associates. (2015). Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success . Retrieved June 12, 2020 from https://www.aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/LEAP/2015employerstudentsurvey.pdf

Barrett, H. (2019, March 26). Interview from Conference in 2018. Retrieved June 15, 2020, from https://eportfoliosblog.blogspot.com/2019/03/interview-from-conference-in-2018.html

Bateman, W. (2019, July 31). Fostering reciprocal home and school relationships using e-portfolios. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0380671

Leopold, T. A., et al. World Economic Forum. (2018). The Future of Jobs Report 2018 , www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2018.pdf

Paris, S. G., & Ayres, L. R. (1994). Psychology in the classroom: Becoming reflective students and teachers with portfolios and authentic assessment. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10158-000

Renwick, M. (2018, February 17). Going Schoolwide with Digital Portfolios. Retrieved June 14, 2020, from https://mattrenwick.com/2018/02/17/going-schoolwide-with-digital-portfolios/

Richardson, W (2012). Why School?: How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere, TED Conferences.

Terms and Vocabulary

Chapter Two

Digital portfolios? ePortfolios? Blogfolios? Let’s break down the key terminology and find out what it all means. 

Given the regional and unique differences of school systems, many words can be used to describe the same concept. Different subject areas and disciplines have their own vernacular too.

To help us through the rest of this post, we’ll define terms here so we all start with the same frame of reference going forward.

A digital portfolio is simply a collection of artifacts of learning. These artifacts can demonstrate the acquisition of skills, knowledge, or capabilities over time. Reflection is typically an integral part of an ePortfolio as is feedback . Digital portfolios can document achievements or processes for accountability, personal development, employment, or opportunities beyond the school gates. Portfolios can be shared with a small audience (teacher, peers, family) or a broad audience (employers, admissions officers, professional learning networks, the public).

Irish National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (via EUfolio, 2015)adopts the following description in their implementation guide (PDF) ,

ePortfolios are student-owned dynamic digital workspaces wherein students can capture their learning and their ideas, access their collections of work, reflect on their learning, share it, set goals , seek feedback and showcase their learning and achievements.

You’ll notice that we use the terms digital portfolios and ePortfolios (electronic portfolios) interchangeably. In fact, we could really just be using the term “portfolio” because here in the 20s, is the modifier “digital” truly necessary?

While academics and thought leaders may debate the correct terminology, ultimately, the terminology you choose to adopt in your school or university is up to you, however, consistency across your campus is definitely a good idea!

A useful alternative term to ePortfolio or digital portfolio might be “ blogfolio “. That is, a digital portfolio/ePortfolio that’s built on a blogging platform. And while we’re talking semantics, a blog is simply a type of website that often has some static pages and is regularly updated with posts . Blogs also allow for feedback and interaction through comments .

  Silvia Tolisano describes a blogfolio using the analogy of glue,

Blogfolios are the glue that can hold all curricular content, goals and objectives as well as support school initiatives, observations, assessment and accountability requirements or personal passions, interest and projects together.

There are clear benefits to using a blog for a portfolio and we’ll explore more of these in chapter 4.

Most crucially, blogging can provide an environment in which to explore the relationship between theoretical knowledge acquired in lectures and other life and learning experiences. It is through the power of such dialogues that learners gain a clearer vision, not only of the immediate demands of the curriculum, but even potentially of their future career paths. Effective Practice with e-Portfolios. Supporting 21st century learning  (PDF). JISC. 2008.

Vocab At A Glance:

ePortfolio – electronic portfolio, also known as digital portfolio or simply portfolio.

Blogfolio – a digital portfolio built on a blogging platform such as WordPress.

Artifacts – work samples that provide evidence of learning, experiences, or goals. Artifacts include text, video, audio, images, and more.

Blog – short for web-log; A website that’s regularly updated with posts.

Post – content on a blog, which in the case of a blogfolio, is the artifcats.

Template – a complete example portfolio or starting point, with content and settings applied.

EUfolio (2015). ePortfolio Implementation Guide for Policymakers and Practitioners, Retrieved June 15, 2020, from https://eufolioresources.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/eportfolio-implementation-guide_en.pdf

JISC. (2008). Effective Practice with e-Portfolios. Supporting 21st century learning  (PDF).

Tolisano, S. (2016, November 29). Blogfolios: The Glue that Can Hold it All Together in Learning. Retrieved from http://langwitches.org/blog/2016/10/03/blogfolios-the-glue-that-can-hold-it-all-together-in-learning/

Types of Portfolios

Chapter Three

What type of ePortfolios will your students create? Let’s break down the 4 most popular types and how they’re used.

Getting us back to discussing the goals of your portfolio implementation, it can be helpful to think through the different types of portfolios your students could create.

There are four main types or functions of ePortfolios in schools and higher education:

• Showcase or presentation
• Process or learning

Let’s take a look at these four types of portfolios so you can decide what might work best in your school or university.

1) Showcase or Presentation Portfolio: A Collection of Best Work

These types of portfolios focus on the portfolio as a product and are also typically called professional portfolios, formal portfolios, or career portfolio.

The content that’s added to showcase portfolios is written after the learning takes place, often with reflection from the student. Some schools like LaGuardia Community College adopt the mantra of, “collect, select, reflect, connect” ( PDF Hughes, 2008 ). The connect element is an interesting and perhaps overlooked part of ePortfolio programs. It involves sharing student work with others (probably beyond the teacher) and actively seeking an audience and feedback.

The showcase portfolio is often used to share a student’s best achievements or evidence of learning. Students are generally given the choice to decide what is published.

These sorts of portfolios can assist with self-marketing, online branding, or building a positive digital footprint. In higher education, we see commonly see showcase portfolios that highlight a student’s CV or resume to suit a particular purpose such as attracting potential employers or college admissions officers.

2) Process or Learning Portfolio: A Work in Progress

The second type of portfolio that we commonly see is more of a running record of learning. The purpose is to capture the learning process. It’s also called a development portfolio, a reflection portfolio, or a formative portfolio.

Entries and artifacts are added during the learning process. A process portfolio is not always a collection of a student’s best work; it can include a variety of learning attempts or unpolished documentation along with reflections on struggles and challenges.

These types of portfolios demonstrate a work in progress and allow for self-assessment and reflection.

One trap you might want to try to actively avoid if you’re using process portfolios is the “digital dump”. That is, over time, students can end up adding a lot of artifacts to their portfolio without much organization, reflection, or purpose. A process portfolio is a fabulous way to demonstrate learning as it happens but you may want to consider how to keep the portfolio well-organized and meaningful.

3) Assessment Portfolio: Used For Accountability

The assessment portfolio is used to document what a student has learned, or demonstrate that they have mastered elements of the curriculum.

These types of portfolios may not be the most popular choice for schools as they are not student-centered; artifacts are chosen based on the curriculum. Likewise, reflective comments will focus on how artifacts align with curriculum objectives.

These types of portfolios may be more formal than a showcase or process portfolio. While they may be very useful within the school environment to provide evidence of learning to teachers and administrators, an assessment portfolio may be less useful for overall student development.

Assessment portfolios are commonly part of certification programs or even part of requirements for earning a degree.

4) A Hybrid Approach

The 4th type of portfolio you’ll commonly come across is a combination of the showcase, process, and/or assessment portfolio.

Canadian EdTech leader George Couros explains how two types of portfolios can come together with some examples,

Learning [process] portfolio: If a student were to take a video of them reading in four consecutive months, you would see all readings over time to see development and growth. Showcase portfolio: If a student were to take a video of them reading in four consecutive months, they would pick the best one from the four samples. What is beautiful in using a blog as a portfolio is that you do not have to choose; you can do both.

George advises looking in to the different types of portfolios before implementing a program, and suggests the hybrid approach may be best.

Does this show the student’s progression over time (learning), or just the best stuff (showcase)? There are considerable benefits to both over time and a combination, from my experience, is the best path to pursue.

Some educators find it’s easiest to start out with a showcase portfolio, or a collection of best work. From there, they can evolve into the process or hybrid approach. You might also find your portfolios are fluid in nature, for example, students may move pieces from a process portfolio into either an assessment or showcase portfolio.

This movement might be through having multiple blogs, or through using blog posts for process entries and blog pages for documenting assessment or showcasing artifacts. Alternatively, tags and categories can be used to identify assessment pieces or “final work” within a student’s portfolio.

Making choices about which process artifacts to move to a more “final” product involves a great deal of deep consideration and reflection: a rich experience in itself for students.

Knowing which type(s) of portfolio you will be focusing on will help inform decisions around choosing a platform and building a template portfolio.

Couros, G. (2017, June 30). What does your digital portfolio show? Retrieved June 15, 2020, from https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/7450

Couros, G. (2020, May 5). 7 Important Questions Before Implementing Digital Portfolios. Retrieved June 12, 2020, from https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/11660

Edublogs, Categories vs Tags. Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https://help.edublogs.org/categories-vs-tags/

Hughes, J. (2008). Letting in the Trojan mouse: Using an eportfolio system to re-think pedagogy . In Hello! Where are you in the landscape of educational technology? Proceedings ASCILITE Melbourne 2008.

Choosing a Platform

Chapter Four

One of your main decisions when implementing a portfolio program will be the platform or software you’ll use. We have some tips for making the right choice.

There are many tools and platforms available that allow students to publish online. Naturally, these options come with pros and cons.

No matter what you choose, the most important items to consider include:

• Data exportability – can students easily download and take their content with them after graduation or leaving?
• Authentic experience – will the skills learned to use the tool transfer and be able to be used outside of the portfolio program?
• Room for self-expression – do all portfolios look the same? Can students personalize and make the space their own?
• Integration – does the platform make it easy to login and does it play nice with your Learning Management System?
• Cost – will implementing the platform leave room in your budget for other needs?
• Resources and training – can you easily find docs, videos, and other useful information to help with rolling the platform out?
• Management tools – what’s available? This includes on-boarding new users, creating new sites, monitoring portfolios, and providing feedback.

We’ll cut to the chase – given the above requirements, we believe that WordPress should be at the top of your list when considering a portfolio platform.

Note From The Editor Here at CampusPress, we provide WordPress services for schools and universities, including portfolio programs, so we can’t help but being a bit biased. Feel free to skip to the next chapter if you will be using another tool or service.

Why WordPress? It comes down to 4 key areas:

• Exportability

Flexibility

Authenticity.

Let’s break down these 4 reasons for choosing WordPress in more detail.

Just because something is popular, doesn’t mean it’s a good choice for your school or university, that’s for sure. However, it’s hard to ignore the fact that WordPress powers 37% of all websites in the world. Not just school websites, but ALL websites. Full stop.

Think about that for a moment: out of all the websites you and I browse every day, more than a third run on WordPress. This includes big brands like Walt Disney, Sony, and TechCrunch. In the world of education, WordPress dominates too with institutions small and large building websites with it .

So what came first, the chicken or the egg? Is WordPress a good choice because it’s popular or is WordPress popular because it’s a good choice?

We think it’s the latter. Since WordPress was established back in 2003, it’s grown from a simple blogging platform to a dynamic and highly customizable piece of software that allows you to claim your space on the web in a way that’s just right for you. It’s a robust and flexible tool. That’s why it’s popular.

The one size fits all approach just doesn’t cut it in the classroom anymore and with WordPress, you can customize your digital portfolios to meet your unique needs.

Data Exportability

When you’re considering a web service for your school or university, choosing an export friendly platform should be a high priority.

We strongly believe that digital portfolios should always be set up on a platform that allows the student to archive their work or take it with them. You want students to know from day one that what they write is theirs to keep and use as they wish. A platform like WordPress gives you the means to easily archive or transfer a student’s library of work.

Sadly, students often don’t have the chance to export their portfolios for two reasons — either the school doesn’t realize this function isn’t available on their service’s plan until the end of the school year rolls around or the online service closes unexpectedly. These scenarios can ignite a panic if teachers and students have built up a lot of content that they won’t be able to export or transfer.

For the record, WordPress is not going anywhere. It is open-source software that’s freely available and is developed by communities all around the world. When you put your trust into web services that are not open source, you run the risk of losing access and ownership of your content if the company collapses or chooses to close down their service. Someday, WordPress will evolve into something else, but whoever that is, it’s a safe bet that it will make it easy to import content from WordPress too.

It only takes minutes to export your WordPress blog as a XML (WXR) file. You can then import this content to another site, or locally to your computer. If you were to use a closed proprietary platform, you would probably be very restricted in your choice of where to host your content if you decided to move on.

One student who took his high school WordPress portfolio with him and turned it into a thriving website still heavily used today is Myles Zhang.

Back in 2013, Myles’ high school English teacher asked him to set up a digital portfolio. Myles told us more about his experience on a post on The Edublogger ,

Over the following years, the website organically outgrew its initial use for high school and became  an art portfolio , a place to publish my  academic research  in college, and a platform to spread awareness of issues like gentrification and traffic affecting my community. I don’t know what to describe the site as now. I suppose it’s a “digital portfolio”. However, it’s more than  just  that … For me, it’s a creative opportunity to ask myself: “ What work am I proudest of? And how can I best showcase this work online? ” Building and curating a website helps me answer these questions, and gain self-knowledge too.

There’s something powerful about establishing an online space that is yours. Perhaps even with your own domain name. The domain name part can come later on in a student’s education, or even upon graduation.

Education writer Audrey Watters  has written about the benefits of students having their own domain,

The importance of giving students responsibility for their own domain cannot be overstated. This can be a way to track growth and demonstrate new learning over the course of a student’s school career — something that they themselves can reflect upon, not simply grades and assignments that are locked away in a proprietary system controlled by the school.

It would no doubt give teachers great joy to see how their students can flourish when a seed is planted in school. An ePortfolio program can really help to launch students into amazing opportunities.

WordPress used to be solely for blogs, however, that has changed. It’s now a highly customizable content management system that allows you to precisely meet the needs of your students, school, and community. After all, your learning goals and intentions come first. The technology comes second.

Some educators may gravitate towards a platform that’s built for education with almost no learning curve. These can be useful starting places, however, let’s not forget that easy doesn’t necessarily mean better.

Once you get started, you might be sacrificing features, customization, flexibility, authenticity, and growth, for simplicity.

As  Seymour Papert  (1998) famously said, perhaps we should consider if “easy” is what we’re really striving for.

Every maker of video games knows something that the makers of curriculum don’t seem to understand. You’ll never see a video game being advertised as being easy. Kids who do not like school will tell you it’s not because it’s too hard. It’s because it’s – boring. Seymour Papert

Let’s not underestimate what educators and students can do with a highly flexible and highly customizable tool like WordPress.

There are a lot of tools out there that are built for education but from the day students step outside into the “real world” these tools become irrelevant.

Canadian EdTech leader  George Couros  makes no secret of the fact that he is a fan of WordPress for student portfolios.

Many of the technologies that I have seen used for portfolios do not transfer easily to any other site and are meant for just doing “school stuff” and are usually discarded after a student’s time in school. If we are spending a bunch of time in schools using technologies that are never used outside of school for anything other school purposes, we shouldn’t be surprised that students (and often staff) are asking the question, “What’s the point?”

New York administrator Ross Cooper echoes these thoughts in his article  “Digital Portfolios and Blogs: Use Authentic Technology, Not Technology Made for School” . He promotes WordPress as the best tool to use for student portfolios as it enables authentic learning about digital citizenship and online safety, it allows students to learn about entrepreneurship and marketing their work, and it permits students to build their online presence and show up in a Google search.

In education, authentic learning is everything. It’s no longer enough to prepare students for the real world, they should be thriving in the real world as they learn and develop. Authentic learning allows students to feel engaged while having the chance to be change agents and opportunity seekers. In a modern digitalized classroom, authentic learning begins with choosing an authentic tool. For digital portfolios, the best choice is WordPress.

About CampusPress

And here is our only real advert in this guide. Promise.

CampusPress has built tools on top of WordPress to make it even easier to use for portfolios. These include:

• Single sign on integration to manage usernames and passwords
• Canvas and LTI integration (with Google Classroom to come shortly)
• Class management tools to moderate and follow students
• Network tag and category search and feeds
• Private comments between teachers/faculty and students
• Support for dozens of plugins and tools most commonly used in education

With all security, hosting, and support fully managed by our team of experts – most of which have previously worked in schools or higher education (or both!).

We are happy to setup demos or pilots, and be a resource to help with getting a new portfolio program up and running.

If you are interested in WordPress or CampusPress, please get in touch .

Burt, R. (2019, October 3). WordPress University & College Websites. Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://campuspress.com/college-university-websites/

Cooper, R. (2016, December 26). Digital Portfolios and Blogs: Use Authentic Technology, Not Technology Made for School. Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://rosscoops31.com/2016/08/18/digital-portfolios-blogs-use-authentic-technology-not-technology-made-school/

Couros, G. (2018, June 11). One Question We Should Always Ask When Implementing Technology into Classrooms. Retrieved June 12, 2020, from https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/8303

Morris, K. (2019, April 25). When A Student Blogger Enters The World. Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://www.theedublogger.com/myles-zhang/

Papert, S. (1998). Does Easy Do It? Children, Games, and Learning. Retrieved June 10, 2020, from http://www.papert.org/articles/Doeseasydoit.html

Usage statistics and market share of WordPress. Retrieved June 11, 2020, from https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress

Watters, A. (2019, June 25). The Web We Need To Give Students. Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://brightthemag.com/the-web-we-need-to-give-students-311d97713713

Building a Template

Chapter Five

It can be a good idea to create a model portfolio to help guide and inspire your students. Find out how to go about creating a template site.

One of the best ways to really get into a new portfolio program is for instructors to create their own model portfolios. Use the chosen tool to create at least one example of a completed site, with any specific artifacts and other requirements included.

By creating a sample template site, you will discover possible decision points not otherwise considered and navigate potential technological hurdles.

Let’s go through some questions and tips that you’ll want to consider when building a template site.

The Look and Feel

Your options may be limited depending on the tool you’re using, but you will want to think through the look and feel for the portfolio.

Some questions to answer:

• Will all portfolios basically look the same?
• If using WordPress, will they all use the same theme, or will you allow for choice?
• Will you require or need branding of your school like logos or colors?

Common Requirements

You’ll need to think through if there are any common pages or set information that you want all portfolios to have. For example, we see portfolios that require an “About” page where students include biographical information. You might also have requirements for pages about different learning objectives and outcomes.

It’s much easier to go ahead and create pages for students as part of the template that they can then edit and make their own. We also recommend providing choice whenever possible, as this can increase engagement and ownership by the student.

• Are there common pages that all portfolios should start with?
• What items should be in the main menu navigation?
• Will you let students change the navigation menus or add additional items?

Artifact Organization

To know what should be in the template header and menu navigation, it helps to know how artifacts should be managed or archived. For example, in WordPress, we recommend using categories or tags , which you can link to in the navigation menus. You can have a category for each subject/course and then a tag for each learning outcome or objective.

When students create artifacts (or publish posts in a blogfolio), they can add the appropriate category and tag so that it can easily be found later.

• Are there set learning objectives that students should demonstrate?
• Should you pre-set specific tags or categories, or allow the students to add their own?
• Are there other items that need to be considered to organize artifacts?

Settings and Other Features

Many tools, including WordPress, will allow you to create a template site (or multiple templates) that then get applied to all portfolios as they get created for students. This helps set the students up for success and pre-populates everything they need to get started. This means you will also want to consider more than just the content and look of the template.

Some areas to explore:

• Are there default privacy settings that can be configured in the template?
• Are there advanced features (or plugins in WordPress) that should be enabled or disabled in the template?
• How will sites be created from the template?
• Can you pre-populate any content based on the student information, such as name, year, program, etc.?

Student Privacy

Chapter Six

Digital portfolios can be public on the web, private, or a mix of both. We weigh up the pros and cons to help you make the best choice for your school.

We’ve already mentioned that WordPress offers you a great deal of flexibility and the issue of privacy is another area where you have choices. You can have your whole network of portfolios protected by passwords, or alternatively individual portfolios or even particular posts can be password protected.

When you’re setting up your portfolio program, you will no doubt find yourself weighing up the importance of visibility against the necessity of security.

There are pros and cons to having public or private spaces. Let’s take a look:

Pros Of Public Digital Portfolios

• Students may be interested in using their work to attract potential employers or college admission officers . This is more difficult if a student’s portfolio is private, however, as a compromise, students can provide login credentials to particular individuals. The downside to this is not having the student’s name show up in an organic Google search.

Will Richardson and Bruce Dixon sum up the benefits neatly in their whitepaper 10 Principles For Schools Of Modern Learning ,

Increasingly, there is an expectation from employers and others that students have built an online portfolio of work that shows creativity, curiosity, collaboration, and persistence.

• Students can learn how to build a positive digital footprint every time they hit publish. Traditionally, educators may have spent a lot of time advising students on what they should not include in their digital footprint, but not what they should include.
• Students of all ages need to learn how to be happy, safe, and productive digital citizens . Public blogfolios offer an authentic opportunity to learn about digital citizenship in a supported and structured environment. Learning about digital citizenship on a closed platform just doesn’t have the same impact. The same could be said for learning about copyright and Creative Commons — it’s hard to learn about the importance of these topics without publishing publicly.
• If you hide student work behind passwords, you’re losing out on connections, extended dialogues, and the motivating factor of working for an authentic purpose .

Edtech leader Wesley Fryer stresses the importance of making it as easy as possible for families and other visitors to read and comment on blogfolios,

I’ve found that the more barriers (like logins requiring userIDs and passwords) we put up for online student content, the FEWER parents will visit and comment. It’s VERY hard to get parents to not only look at student digital work online amidst our busy lives today, it’s even harder to get them to comment. If you make your classroom blog private, you’ll likely rob your students of the opportunity to receive feedback from outside your classroom walls. Feedback is what makes interactive writing powerful and even feel magical at times.

Have you ever thought about the transformative effect simply writing down your thoughts has on clarifying your thinking?

In his book,  Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better , Clive Thompson tells us,

Professional writers have long described the way that the act of writing forces them to distill their vague notions into clear ideas. By putting half-formed thoughts on the page, we externalize them and are able to evaluate them much more objectively. This is why writers often find that it’s only when they start writing that they figure out what they want to say.

This transformative experience can happen with a public or private portfolio, however, Alan Levine takes this idea one step further  when he says,

Writing in public … makes you accountable for your ideas. Stating your ideas in public is fearful if you think of it being a means for people to criticize, but it also makes your writing and thinking stronger if you take a public stand.

Cons Of Public Digital Portfolios

• Schools have a duty of care to protect their students from harm and a public digital presence does open up questions about revealing identifying information, interacting with strangers, and even copyright concerns.
• Do students want their artifacts public forever ? There’s no denying that if you and I look back at some of our work from high school or college, we might cringe. What might have seemed okay at the time may now embarrass us and the last thing we’d want is for that work to be out on the web for anyone to see.
• When students are publishing for a public audience, educators may need to spend more time monitoring or moderating to make sure their students are publishing appropriate content and being safe and responsible.
• Some students may feel more comfortable expressing their thinking and revealing their true thoughts if they know they don’t have a public audience.

Allowing Students To Make Choices About Privacy

It’s important for students to realize that there are times when our work should be private. Maybe we don’t want to share every inner most thought,”failed” attempt, or evidence of messy learning. While there are benefits to documenting the  process  of learning, weighing this up with the goal of constructing a positive digital footprint is crucial.

George Couros put it well in his post on (nearly) invisible portfolios when he said,

The  learner  should have the option of what they want the world to see, not the teacher.  The conversations that can come from this are so crucial.  Asking the learner why they chose the piece of work that they did to share with the world, is a critical conversation that we are not having enough with our students, because frankly, we aren’t giving them this opportunity enough.

If you’re hosting your site with CampusPress, you can easily apply passwords to student portfolios in a variety of ways. A few quick setting adjustments will enable you to require registration, restrict visibility to administration, or password protect sites within your network.

Here are some practical ways you can offer choice and flexibility with privacy:

• Let students choose: At  The Geelong College,  students are encouraged to decide for themselves (along with parents) whether their portfolios will be public or password protected.
• Block search engines: Blocking search engines is easy and reduces the chance of random visitors landing on your blog. In WordPress, you’ll find this option in Settings > Reading. You can also go to Settings > Discussion and choose “Users must be registered and logged in to comment”. This way, not just anyone can leave a comment.
• Make moderation easier: If you’re teaching children or adolescents and they have portfolios that are open on the web, some moderation of posts and/or comments is generally a good idea.
• Protect your students’ identities : Having a public blogfolio doesn’t mean you have to post personal information such as surnames, photos, location and so on. Some students even publish publicly with a fictional pen name and no identifying photos or information. We’ve shared some best practices for posting images of students online in this post on The Edublogger.
• Remember, not every post has to be public:  You can always create a public blogfolio but  password protect certain posts or pages.  Or, some educators and students use a blogfolio publicly and use other avenues for private work such as a learning management system, or more traditional tools (e.g. word processors, or pen and paper!).

An ePortfolio program that uses WordPress offers you a great deal of choice about privacy. It’s worth considering the best way to set up your blogfolios so your students can reap some advantages of having an audience while feeling comfortable and safe.

Couros, G. (2016, March 17). The (Nearly) Invisible Portfolio. Retrieved from https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/6131

Fryer, W. (2015, August 6). Classroom Blogging Options (August 2015). Retrieved from http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2015/08/05/classroom-blogging-options-august-2015/

Levine, A. (2017, December 18). #ResNetSem Green Pill or Red Pill [Bitter Pill]? Retrieved from https://cogdogblog.com/2017/12/green-pill-or-red-pill/

Morris, K., Burt, R., & Waters, S. (2020, June 11). The Educator’s Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons. Retrieved June 15, 2020, from https://www.theedublogger.com/copyright-fair-use-and-creative-commons/

Morris, K. (2018, October 4). Should You Use Student Photos Online? Retrieved from https://www.theedublogger.com/student-photos/

Thompson, C. (2013). Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better. The Penguin Group.

Richardson, W., & Dixon, B. (2017). 10 Principles For Schools Of Modern Learning. Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/modernlearners/Modern Learners 10 Principles for Schools of Modern Learning whitepaper.pdf

Quality Artifacts

Chapter Seven

Students can add a lot more than just text to their ePortfolios. Here are some examples of the sorts of artifacts students can use to demonstrate their learning. We’ll also dive in to the topic of reflection.

One of the great advantages of using a blog for a digital portfolio is the ability to embed a wide range of artifacts. In the past, students may have only been able to share their learning through written content or hand-drawn illustrations. Now there’s a multitude of ways that students can share what they’ve created, what they’re working on, and what they’re inspired by.

Let’s take a look at some of the things that can be included in a student’s digital portfolio.

• Text including hyperlinked writing
• Images, photography, and artwork
• Social media
• Other embeddable content

When students are publishing in their digital portfolio, there’s probably going to be a lot of text including students’ own written content as well as quotes from others.

One of the key benefits of writing on the web is the ability to hyperlink writing. That is, link to other sources to cite studies, backup opinions, provide background information, explain a train of thought, or provide examples.

Instead of merely substituting analog writing for digital (e.g. publishing in a blog post what would have once been handwritten or typed in a word processor), the use of hyperlinks can help students to engage in higher-order thinking and reflection.

Silvia Tolisano has been advocating for hyperlinked writing to feature in the classroom for many years. She explains that hyperlinked writing is an important genre that can be overlooked.

As learners create digital writing artifacts, it is important to require them to embed relevent links to individual words or phrases to extend readers’ experience. Doing so adds a depth to the digital writing that aids readers in making stronger connections with the writer’s message, and not just satisfying the teacher or completing a task. A Guide to Documenting Learning (Tolisano and Hale, 2018)

You can read more about the topic of hyperlinked writing on Silvia Tolisano’s blog or in her book, A Guide to Documenting Learning (2018).

Images, Graphics, and Artwork

Images really are an essential part of sharing and consuming information. With a digital portfolio, there are many possibilities for creating images.

Apart from creating drawings by hand or taking photographs, students can:

• Make a photo collage using an app like Pic Collage or an online tool like Adobe Spark or Canva .
• Use images from a Creative Commons site (a fantastic way to learn about copyright ).
• Take screenshots of work completed in other programs, perhaps with annotation.
• Create mindmaps using a tool like Bubbl.us (or even hand-drawn and photographed).
• Create digital artwork using a wide range of web tools. Some examples are Google Drawings , emoji.ink,   Toy Theatre Art Tools , Bomomo abstract art, Tate Kids street art, Draw Island , and Auto Draw.
• Make infographics, posters , or illustrations using a tool like Adobe Spark or Canva . Both of these tools offer free education accounts.
• Demonstrate data with graphs , charts , and spreadsheets using tools like Google Sheets, BEAM , or Canva .

Evelyn is a student in the  Performance Learning   Program  at Seycove Secondary in Canada. She has created a signature style for the feature images for her posts on her blogfolio: customized bitmojis. Here’s an example for her entry about maximum surface area .

Video is transforming education and students can be both video consumers and creators.

Videos can bring learning to life and engage students while helping them understand key curriculum concepts. Students can watch videos from sites like YouTube or Ted ED and then embed these directly into their digital portfolio with an accompanying reflection.

It’s now easier than ever to create videos as well. Students can make screencasts, stop motion, explanatory videos, animations, dramatizations, interviews, photo montages, and many other types of videos. You could even consider the recording of a video conference to be a worthwhile artifact.

According to Hani Morgan ( 2013 ), assigning students the task of creating videos can lead to many positive outcomes such as improved writing, research, and communication skills, along with higher-order skills like problem-solving and critical thinking. At the same time, students can benefit from being creative and collaborating with others.

Student created videos can be excellent artifacts for digital portfolios as they allow pupils to demonstrate their learning and understandings in truly unique ways.

Check out The Educator’s Guide To Using Video In Teaching And Learning to learn more about popular tools that students can use to create their own videos.

You’ve probably heard of the theory of learning styles? That is, the idea that an individual learns better if they can receive information and produce work according to their preferred learning style, for example, auditory, visual, or kinaesthetic. While the evidence for learning styles may be mixed, many teachers still indicate a strong belief in the learning style theory (Newton and Miah, 2017 ).

Writing isn’t for everyone but some students really shine when they can use audio instead of, or alongside, text. There’s a lot students can do with audio when building their digital portfolio.

• Podcasts: These are simply audio files that are published online. Students might like to make a series of podcasts to coincide with a subject they’re studying or a project they’re working on. Anchor.fm  is a popular free service for recording, hosting, and distributing podcasts.
• Audio interviews: Students could record interviews with others to create rich artifacts for their portfolios. Interviews can expand students’ understandings, challenge beliefs, and reinforce learning.
• Audio reflection: For some students, typing written reflections can be laborious . An audio recording may be a preferable option for some students or an essential accessibility tool for others, for example, those with vision impairment or learning difficulties.
• Music : Audio doesn’t have to just be speech of course. There are so many ways music can be embedded into an ePortfolio. Students can record themselves playing an instrument, or if they don’t have instruments, they might try a program like GarageBand or a simpler web tool such as Chrome Music Lab .

Recording audio is now quite simple on any device. If students are using a tablet like an iPad there is a simple Voice Memo app. Richard Byrne from Free Technology for Teachers has shared three tools for making short audio recordings on the web without an account. The files can be downloaded as MP3s and then uploaded to the portfolio. Some other tools like Anchor.fm  allow you to embed audio files into a blog post.

Check out The Edublogger’s Guide to Podcasting to learn more about tools that can be used for creating audio.

Social Media

You might not have considered using social media as artifacts in digital portfolios, but if you teach older teens or adults, there is a lot of scope for using this type of content. Of course, if your students are younger, particularly under 13, then social media artifacts aren’t an option.

Most social media platforms now provide an embed code to display a post within a website. You might want to embed tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram posts, Pinterest pins or boards , or even a TikTok post.

Why would you want to embed social media? Well, social media is now the way a lot of us learn and connect. It can influence our thoughts and expand our thinking. Embedded social media content can serve as interesting artifacts to demonstrate what students are thinking, learning, or creating.

Social media is expanding learning beyond the school day with content and meaningful interactions on specific topics. When combined with meaningful engagement, social media technology can be a powerful tool to reinforce learning, establish effective communication abilities, and provide the career and necessary life skills for students in the 21st century. Mark Stevens (2014)

Here’s an example of what an embedded tweet looks like. As you can see, you can consume the content without leaving this site or click through to Twitter to engage on that platform.

We’ve been continuously updating our Complete Guide To WordPress #Accessibility . Look for more videos and info to be added to the guide soon, which is more like a mini-course than a typical blog post. Take a look and please share! https://t.co/FnySGuXcQt #a11y #WordPress pic.twitter.com/qhi7QY9Khx — CampusPress (@CampusPressWP) May 26, 2020

Other Embeddable Content

Digital portfolios really open up a world of possibilities for creating diverse artifacts that can easily be embedded. Some of these don’t fit neatly into a category.

Here are some more examples of other content that students could create and screenshot or embed into their blogfolios:

• Google Suite Creations : Google Sheets, Google Drawings, Google Docs, Google Forms, and Google Slides all allow you to embed your creations into a blog or website.
• Comics: Students can demonstrate their learning or thoughts creatively using a comic creation tool like Make Beliefs Comix .
• Maps : Students of subjects like geography or history could add fantastic content to the portfolios by embedding custom maps or directions using Google Maps.
• Puzzles and Games: Embedding games or puzzles can make digital portfolios become interactive. In many cases, students can even code their own games, for example, games created with Scratch can be embedded. Other free options for creating custom content include puzzles from Jigsaw Planet , interactive games from Class Tools , or learning activities from Educandy .
• Quizzes and Forms: Students can interact with their readers or collect data by publishing quizzes, forms, or surveys on their blog. Google Forms is a good way to create a quiz or survey, or you could use a tool like  Crowd Signal .
• Memes : As Sharon Serena explained in a post on the ISTE blog , “Memes are a great educational device for teachers and students alike to promote clarity, pedagogy and humor.”
• GIFS : Like memes, GIFs might provide another fun option to add humor and creativity to a student’s portfolio. Warning: popular GIF sites generally contain content that is not appropriate for children. Gifs4Kids  is an online resource with student-friendly animated GIFs. Check out this post by Julie Smith for more advice on tools for creating GIFs.

Learn More About Quality Artifacts

As educators and students progress through their ePortfolio learning journeys, you might come up with some tips or standards of what makes a quality post in a blogfolio. Your own standards will be personalized based on your style of portfolio, platform, and age of your students amongst other things.

Below is an example list of guidelines from a post on The Edublogger about quality student blog posts.

You might even put these sorts of ideas into an assessment rubric which we’ll discuss in the next chapter.

The Reflection Process

If we don’t create a process of reflecting and framing them, then we are leaving learning up to chance. Jackie Gerstein , ISTE Panel discussion, 2016

A portfolio will normally comprise more than just the artifacts themselves and will include some form of reflection.

Students can reflect on what they’ve learned, their successes and “failures”, their problem-solving processes, and their future plans or goals. Reflective entries can give educators an insight into how students are learning, rather than just what they have learned.

Sometimes students are given prompts or frameworks to drive their reflection. You might naturally think of the reflective part of a portfolio as being text entries but for some students, they find more success and enjoyment creating audio or video reflections.

Dr. John Spencer is an educator with a lot of experience using portfolios. Dr. Spencer suggests a dual layered approach to reflection.

Have students reflect on both the learning process and the final product. There’s a common mantra in the education community that “it’s about the journey and not the destination.” I’m not sure I agree. Sometimes  the product drives the process. So, have students reflect on both.

While most educators embed a culture of reflection into their portfolio program, there are other educators who feel that the push to reflect can be premature and students should be given some freedom on their online space initially.

Educator  Jabiz Raisdana , has documented some compelling thoughts on student blogging. He advocates for freedom, stating that:

If you want your students to blog effectively, give them the freedom to experiment and write about what interests them. Stay away from portfolios and forced reflections on their learning, at least until they get the hang of it. Wait until they find a voice, find an audience… before you push your agenda of meta-cognition and reflective learning.

Perhaps on the other end of the spectrum is the argument from Matt Renwick in his article , Think You’re Doing Digital Portfolios? Think again . Matt implies that reflection is a non-negotiable in an effective digital portfolio program,

Of course, all of the posted artifacts of student learning are accompanied with reflection, self-assessment, and goal setting for the future. Otherwise, it’s only sharing content. Nice, but not necessary for students’ education.

As with most topics, you might want to try a balanced approach to reap the benefits of reflection while ensuring students still have the freedom to express themselves naturally and be creative.

Byrne, R. (2020, June 2). Three Ways to Make Short Audio Recordings – No Accounts Required. Retrieved from h ttps://www.freetech4teachers.com/2020/06/three-ways-to-record-to-make-short.html

Gerstein J. via Schwartz, K. (2016, September 14). Don’t Leave Learning Up to Chance: Framing and Reflection. Retrieved from https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46316/dont-leave-learning-up-to-chance-framing-and-reflection

Morgan, Hani. (2013). Creating videos can lead students to many academic benefits.  Childhood Education , vol. 89, no. 1, p. 51+. Accessed 11 June 2020.

Morris, K. (2020, May 13). The Educator’s Guide To Using Video In Teaching And Learning. Retrieved from https://www.theedublogger.com/video-teaching-learning/

Morris, K. (2019, January 26). The Edublogger’s Guide To Podcasting. Retrieved from https://www.theedublogger.com/podcasting/

Morris, K. (2020, February 25). 10 Elements Of A Quality Blog Post: Tips For Teaching Students. Retrieved from https://www.theedublogger.com/quality-posts-students/

Newton, P. M., & Miah, M. (2017). Evidence-Based Higher Education – Is the Learning Styles ‘Myth’ Important?.  Frontiers in psychology ,  8 , 444. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00444

Serano, S. (2018, February 20). 5 ways to use memes with students. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/explore/In-the-classroom/5-ways-to-use-memes-with-students

Smith, J. (1970, January 1). My Favorite 10 Apps & Websites for Creating Animated GIFs. Retrieved from https://www.thetechieteacher.net/2019/04/my-favorite-10-apps-websites-for.html

Spencer, J. (2019, March 28). Five Ways to Get the Most Out of Student Portfolios. Retrieved from http://www.spencerauthor.com/five-ways-to-get-most-out-of-student/

Stevens, Mark, et.al. (2014). The 10 biggest trends in ed tech. Accessed 11 June 2020. http://thejournal.com/Articles/2013/12/13/The-10-Biggest-Trends-in-Ed-Tech.aspx?Page=2

Tolisano, S.R., & Hale, J.A. (2018).  A Guide to Documenting Learning: Making Thinking Visible, Meaningful, Shareable, and Amplified . Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin .

Raisdana, J. (2012, September 25). Retrieved June 10, 2020, from http://www.jabizraisdana.com/blog/what-it-might-be-authentic-student-blogging/

Renwick , M. (2017, July 26). Think you’re doing digital portfolios? Think again. Retrieved June 11, 2020, from https://mattrenwick.com/2017/07/26/think-youre-doing-digital-portfolios-think-again/

Assessments and Feedback

Chapter Eight

Let’s take a look at the best ways to integrate assessment and feedback into your portfolio program. You’ll find example rubrics and program models too.

Assessment and feedback are integral parts of any teaching and learning process. When you’re using ePortfolios, you have some choices in the way you’ll approach assessment and the feedback process.

While assessment can take on a variety of forms, two of the main types are formative and summative assessment.

Formative assessment is designed to get feedback on student performance during instruction. The purpose is to guide the teacher in making changes to their planning and instruction to best meet student needs. Formative assessment is sometimes called assessment FOR learning as it focuses on student growth.

Summative assessment provides teachers, administrators, students, and families with an understanding of a student’s overall learning. This sort of assessment generally happens at the end of instruction. Summative assessment is sometimes called assessment OF learning as it focusses on the learning product.

If you have trouble remembering the difference between these two types of assessment, you might enjoy this image from   @bryanmathers .

The great thing about ePortfolios is they allow for both formative and summative assessment. Some educators prefer to focus on formative assessment for their portfolio program so students can redesign and improve their artifacts throughout their course.

Betsy Gilliland is an associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi Māno. She has written an interesting article where she reminds us that ePortfolios allow teachers to be more than just assessors but perhaps collaborators or coaches.

Though teachers can still assign grades to individual assignments, they may choose to make those grades placeholders, where students can revise texts and submit them for reevaluation through the portfolio.

Assessment of Transversal Skills 2020 ( ATS2020 ) is a European learning model that’s based on formative assessment. The project which was co-funded by the European Commission focused on the implementation of ePortfolios with 10,000 students aged 10-15 years.

The ATS2020 learning model contains a cycle of 6 phases as illustrated in the diagram below. The model offers a student-centered approach. Teachers take on the role of coach and assessor while students actively work towards developing skills and competencies.

This interesting framework might provide some inspriation for your own approach to learning and assessment with ePortfolios.

Ongoing meaningful feedback throughout a course can help students achieve their full potential so much more than if they wait until the end of semester to receive their grades. When using digital portfolios, educators can offer students feedback in the portfolio platform or via private communication such as in-person or email.

A useful model for feedback is presented by John Hattie and Helen Timperley (2007) as Feed Up, Feed Back, Feed Forward. In this model the learner considers three questions:

• Feed Up: Where am I going (what are my learning intentions?)​
• Feed Back​: How am I going (what does the evidence tell me?)​
• Feed Forward: Where to next (what are the next steps or goals?)​

Educators aren’t the only ones who can offer students feedback on their ePortfolios of course. Feedback from peers or even the wider community can be very valuable.

In terms of peer feedback, some educators find it helpful to come up with a system that doesn’t leave feedback to chance. For example, high school ceramics teacher Heather Alexander set up a system to ensure all students would receive constructive peer feedback on their blogfolios.

I have students work in “peer blog mentor” groups. They self-select a group of 3 -5 peers and then I match their group with a group in another class. I moderate the comments so I can check for accuracy and completion before they are published.

Anecdotally, many teachers will tell you that peer feedback is powerful and this is backed up by research. Stefani et al. (2007) observe that “Peer-commenting on student work is an excellent incentive for improving the quality and effort that students invest in their work. Furthermore, those who comment learn as much from devising their comments as those who receive feedback on their work.”

When a portfolio is made publically available on the web (or login credentials are provided), students can enjoy the benefits of feedback from family and wider networks as well. A 360 degree look at their work, may open students’ eyes to their achievements and future directions.

In a WordPress site, or a blogfolio, comments can be used for feedback. Here is a simple example of how a private comment can be left on a portfolio hosted with CampusPress.

Understanding what quality feedback and quality comments look like is a skill that most of us would agree is really lacking around the web – just read comments on facebook or any news website. This is just one more example where experiences in a portfolio program transfer beyond traditional academic knowledge and skills.

Many educators find it’s useful to use a rubric that ensures everyone is on the same page in terms of expectations. An article by the University of Waterloo reminds us that even though portfolio entries can be personal and subjective, a rubric ensures the ePortfolio is still assessable by objective standards.

• This electronic portfolio rubric was created by Joan Vandervelde for the University of Wisconsin-Stout. It includes 7 categories with 4 levels of achievement. The university website has more rubric examples and tools to explore on their professional development page.
• Auburn University in Alabama has published two useful rubrics — one is designed for formative assessment and one is summative (to assess “final” portfolios).

• If you’re looking for an example of technology skills that students can build over time while working on their blogfolio, check out this classic scope and sequence from Kim Cofino and Yokohama International School. The intention was to provide a scaffolded list of skills to help students understand “the kind of skills that a blogger would take for granted, but a non-blogger might not think about”. Silvia Tolisano has also adapted this rubric to make a clearly presented framework that grades students from beginner to expert.

One of the great things about having a ePortfolio program is the opportunitiy for students to self-reflect. The use of a rubric such as the examples above provide structure to the self-assessment process. Other educators like Heather Alexander offer students reflective prompts to help guide their thinking.

For some educators, it might seem overwhelming to assess a portfolio at the end of a semester or class. Richard Byrne has used digital portfolios with his computer science students and explained his approach to assessment which breaks down projects throughout the course.

When it comes to my students’ digital portfolios, I’m looking at them on the whole and not grading them other than pass/fail. That’s because I’ll be giving grades on the projects that are featured within the portfolios themselves throughout the year.

Beyond Traditional Assessment

It’s exciting to think that ePortfolios can act as a form of sustainable assessment which researcher David Boud (2000) describes as assessment that “encompasses the knowledge, skills and predispositions required to support lifelong learning activities”.

Sustainable assessment can meet student needs in real-time while also preparing them to meet future needs as lifelong learners. After all, learning is not a state you “achieve” and tick off, there is always something new to learn and always new challenges ahead. All educators want their students to develop the passion to learn without them.

Whatever approach to assessment and feedback you use, to get the most out of your program, schools should ensure their approach is planned, consistent, and ongoing. You want all educators and students to know what is expected so they can get the most out of the experience.

What’s motivating your students?

As a final thought, it’s interesting to think about what is truly motivating your students. A high quality and regularly updated portfolio offers a plethora of benefits but can take a lot of work. Some may question why students would put in so much effort. Is the quest for grades the only or best motivation?

In her TED X talk , “the grandmother of electronic portfolios”, Dr. Helen Barrett , announced that she is on a campaign to make ePortfolios a more intrinsically motived process, rather than a process motivated by extrinsic grades.

Dr. Barrett suggests that students can become intrinsically motivated when the portfolio program includes choice, voice, sharing, feedback, and immediacy. She also describes these as the motivating characteristics found in social networks.

Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives. Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2009)

Auburn University Rubrics. Retrieved June 13, 2020, from https://wp.auburn.edu/writing/eportfolio-project/faculty-support/rubrics/

Alexander, H. (2020). SCHS Open Studio. Retrieved from Alexander, H. (2020). SCHS Open Studio. Retrieved from https://missaclay.edublogs.org/

ATS2020. (2017). Classroom Pilot. Retrieved June 15, 2020, from http://ats2020.eu/classroom-pilot

Boud, David. (2000). Sustainable Assessment: Rethinking Assessment for the Learning Society . Studies in Continuing Education. 22. 151-167. 10.1080/713695728.

Byrne, R. (2019, December 11). Digital Portfolio Tools and Assessment. Retrieved from https://practicaledtech.com/2019/12/11/digital-portfolio-tools-and-assessment/

Cofino, K. (2014, June 12). Always Learning. Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://kimcofino.com/blog/2010/11/07/creating-a-blogging-scope-and-sequence/

Gilliland, B. (2019, November 7). Portfolios for L2 Writing Assessment. Retrieved from http://blog.tesol.org/collect-select-reflect-portfolios-for-l2-writing-assessment/

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487

Pink, D. H. (2009).  Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us . New York, NY: Riverhead Books.

Stefani, L., Mason, R., & Pegler, C. (2007).The educational potential of ePortfolios. Supporting Personal Development and Reflective Learning, London: Routledge

Tolisano, S. (2017, August 8). What Do You Want to Know about Blogging? Retrieved from http://langwitches.org/blog/2017/08/08/what-do-you-want-to-know-about-blogging/

University of Waterloo. (2019, March 4). ePortfolios Explained: Theory and Practice. Retrieved from https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/educational-technologies/all/eportfolios

Vandervelde, J. (2018). EPortfolio (Digital Portfolio) Rubric. Retrieved from University of Wisconsin-Stout  https://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/eportfoliorubric.html

Chapter Nine

You’ve made it to the end! Let’s take a look at the next steps you could take in your journey to implement ePortfolios.

As we have seen, there are many different ways you can use and create ePortfolios. Regardless of the tools or types of portfolios you implement, an ePortfolio program has the power to transform your learning environment whether you’re in the K-12 setting or in higher education.

The most exciting aspect of an ePortfolio program lies not in the technology itself but in the creation of a school culture where all learning is valued, visible, reflected on, improved, and celebrated.

To revise some of the key questions we’ve covered in this guide, please save or print a copy of this ePortfolio Planning Guide.

📌 Download a PDF copy of the ePortfolio Planning Guide.

What is your next step on your ePortfolio journey?

Want to talk more about WordPress, CampusPress, or school-wide ePortfolio programs? Please reach out. Our team can help you go through your options in more detail.

Want to learn a bit more about the pedagogy and technology behind ePortfolios? We recommend George Couros’ Digital Portfolio Master Course.

Want to try out digital portfolios yourself or with students before implementing a school-wide program? Our sister service, Edublogs , is perfect for that. You can get started today for free.

Have a question or something to add? Let us know,  contact us directly. We’re always happy to chat!

Writing for Engineering: Distance Learning

Self Assessment Essay & Digital Portfolio

The Digital Portfolio and Final Self-Assessment Essay are in many ways the most important documents that you’ll create for this class. Assembling the Digital Portfolio will help you to see your progress as a writer over the course of the semester, and the Final Self-Assessment Essay will give you the chance to evaluate that work based on your own criteria as well as the course learning objectives. Plus, you’ll gain hands-on experience with digital technologies and developing a professional website. 

Digital Portfolio

Your Digital Portfolio will be composed on a WordPress site and housed securely on  CUNY Academic Commons , a password-protected CUNY server. It will be read by your instructors, some members of the class, and other CCNY faculty and administrators. If you would like to opt out of creating a WordPress site, please make a Portfolio in Blackboard.

Your Portfolio should include, at a minimum, the Self-Assessment Essay, final drafts (revised based on instructor feedback) of your Resumes and Cover Letters, Technical Description and Instruction Set, and the Proposal and Pitch. You can also choose to include additional documents (or screenshots/portions of documents) you composed this semester that help you demonstrate the extent to which you’ve met the course learning objectives and developed your understanding of writing and our course topic.

So what sorts of “additional documents” might you include? Consider including earlier drafts of assignments, peer reviews, free writes we did in class etc. Or, you may want to include copies of your annotations of course texts or copies of the notes you took while reading to demonstrate that you have developed strategies for critical reading. Use this same approach for all of the Course Learning Goals. (Be mindful that the documents you choose to include in your Portfolio should be referenced in your Final Self-Assessment Essay, which is further explained below. You will describe the documents, and their significance, in your essay. Thus, you’ll need to be very choosy in selecting which documents best represent your learning and development as a writer and be ready to refer to and analyze them in the Self-Assessment Essay.)

While the arrangement of the Portfolio is up to you, it should be easy to navigate. As with any Web site, you want viewers to be able to find what they’re looking for without any interference. This might mean scanning handwritten notes, taking screenshots of annotated Web sites, and turning your essays into .PDFs or Web texts.

Self Assessment Essay

The Self-Assessment Essay, which will serve as an introduction to your Portfolio, is a kind of research paper. Your development as a writer is the subject and your work this semester is your evidence. Thus, your task is to show, with claims and evidence, how you’ve developed as a writer and thinker this semester. Your claims will be statements about what you’ve learned. Your evidence may come in the form of a quote or screenshot of your work or through your retelling of a central learning moment. Your cover letters, homework assignments, and in-class reflections should serve as valuable pieces of evidence and provide you with quote-worthy passages. And you should include in your Portfolio any relevant items that you reference in your Self-Assessment Essay.

This essay answers the question, “To what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives this semester?” Importantly, then, your essay should quote and respond to  each  of our course learning objectives below. That said, your essay should not be organized in the bulleted format in which the objectives are presented.

The Course Learning Objectives you will address in your essay:

Students will

• acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility
• enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment
• negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation
• develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes
• engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond
• formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing
• practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects
• strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources)

Requirements

Your Self-Assessment Essay should be  3-4 pages  (12-point font, 1-inch margins, double spaced) plus any images you choose to include. It will  not  be evaluated on whether or not you have achieved the course goals, but on  how well you demonstrate your understanding  of the goals that you have achieved and your thoughts about the goals that you have not achieved. Please use  APA citation  within the body of your essay and on a  Works Cited  page as needed. Compose a relative and  inviting title  for your essay. As always, you are encouraged to personalize the delivery of your essay as you see fit. Thus, you decide the order, tone, style, and language you’ll craft in order to best reach your audience. You’re welcome to  draw on your “native,” “home,” or “other” languages , literacies, and ways of being as you so choose.

• Your final draft of the self-assessment essay is due on Tuesday, May 2nd
• Your final version of the digital portfolio (with self-assessment essay) is due  Tuesday, May 21st at 11:59pm

Evaluation Criteria

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How to get started with Student Digital Portfolios?

Digital portfolios are an important part of the students’ learning journey. Digital portfolios are often described as a collection of artifacts. Those could be marksheets, photographic collections of project-based learning, an essay or videos. Is that all a digital portfolio is all about? 

The answer is NO ! 

A good digital portfolio also represents a process of generating learning by reflecting on one’s experience. So students can not only see their project work or artifacts but also evaluate their own learnings, captured in their own words.

Reflection helps impart a holistic learning experience as students get actively engaged in their projects or assignments and document their process throughout.

What makes a good digital portfolio for students?

Student’s digital portfolios make the learning stick by the student’s side. Students learn to document, curate and make choices based on their interests. Portfolios also allow students to think critically about their work and instil self-confidence to showcase their work.

So what makes a good digital portfolio?

A good digital portfolio for student is not just a collection of artifacts. It is about being a product that entails the final outcomes of projects and the process associated with them. Students can capture the process while building an artifact, document with reflection on what worked, what did not and think about the scope for improvement. Note both successes and failures. The process of maintaining a portfolio encourages students to be actively involved throughout.

Student Digital Portfolios as a Learning Tool: Digital Portfolios “are a way to generate learning as well as document learning” (Basken, 2008). Documenting the process of learning is important since the process that goes behind the learning often gets neglected otherwise. When students build their portfolios, it provides them with a space to evaluate their work, reflect on it and make connections between different yet overlapping topics and activities.

Digital portfolios support students’ knowledge construction, building on existing knowledge. Learning happens most effectively when students construct knowledge for themselves and actively participate in the learning process. Students can better form their knowledge network when they share their work and learnings with others (peers/teachers). These interactions with their peers and mentors can give them insights that they may not have otherwise thought of, thus enriching their own learning.

So creating a portfolio and sharing it with friends and family is like sharing a story of your learning.

How to get started with digital portfolios?

So far, we have discussed the power of digital portfolios and how students can reap the benefits of starting their portfolios early on.

The question here is, how do students get started with digital portfolios:

• Start with students’ aspirations – Students can start with having a wishlist of things they want to achieve. That can include what they want to become when they grow up, their career aspirations, their dream projects, and hobbies they want to develop. Think of this as having a bucket list while still in school. You can also name it a goal list. 
• Start with one artifact – Teachers/Parents can help students to start with one artifact. It could be a small project or an essay. Have students reflect on the challenges they had while working on that project. Alternatively, have students ponder how the things they learned in their coursework relate to real-life. What are the real-life applications? Have them write a short paragraph about the same.
• Discuss benefits of digital portfolios with students – Digital portfolios can help learners develop deeper learning, which results in broadening their knowledge. Having your own portfolio brings a sense of ownership and individuality. An E-portfolio can be shown as evidence of learning while applying for higher studies, internships and jobs.
• Show examples of digital portfolios created by students – Teachers/parents can show examples of digital portfolios created by school/college students to inspire students to make one for themselves. This portfolio example highlights course skills.

With MySphere , students can easily build their portfolios. Digital portfolios are a great way to showcase the learning journey by showing what students have learned and how they have applied the learning to their creations enriched with their narratives.

How to get the most out of student digital portfolios?

From amateur artists to curious science and tech enthusiasts, students can showcase their skills and learning experiences with their digital portfolios.

How do we get the most out of portfolios:

• First things first. Let students choose the medium of expression/platform. Some might prefer to start their blog, some may want to form a series of videos, some may want to visually illustrate their learning journey and others may find joy in building a website of their own. 
• Let students take ownership of their e-portfolio in terms of organization structure. Let them decide how they want to share their learning journey, thematically or chronologically. Some may decide early on and for some, the structure may evolve as students progress in academics.
• Remember, the portfolio is not just an end product or collection. It is a process of reflecting on those artifacts and what those learnings represent. Let students reflect on their learning process.
• Have students choose what to showcase from a variety of work. They will have their best work, favourite projects and work that demonstrates skill improvement and self-growth over a period of time. 
• Plan now. Students do not have to wait until the end of the semester or a year to start the portfolio-building process. Integrating the portfolio processes into the classroom can be beneficial for students as well as teachers. Students can select their work, organize it in the portfolio and write reflections periodically. 

In summary, by using digital portfolios as a tool and an everyday component of the learning process, students can take agency and can get to showcase their work, capture their learnings/ experiences and identify their own interests.

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Building Digital Portfolios

Create memorable learning archives.

Your students are creating fantastic projects to show what they know. You can take their learning, and your ability to assess their achievement, to an even higher level using digital portfolios. Portfolios have long been a mainstay in the visual arts, where skill and expertise cannot be accurately represented by percentage points and letter grades. Electronic portfolios have been around for years, but the advent of powerful new technologies makes building, maintaining, sharing, and archiving student learning in digital form easier than ever before.

A digital portfolio is a computer-based collection of student performance over time. Portfolios make classroom learning more accessible to parents, administrators, and other district support staff because they provide a window into student learning. A portfolio showcases both student achievement and student learning over time. To demonstrate growth, a portfolio will often include similar work done over the course of several years.

What Should a Digital Portfolio Include?

When used as a student assessment tool, digial portfolios should demonstrate that “the student is involved in meaningful performance tasks; there are clear standards and criteria for excellence; there is an emphasis on metacognition and self-evaluation; the student produces quality products and performances; there is a positive interaction between assessor and assessee.” (Burke, 1999) The performances students include in their portfolios should be related to the curriculum and evidence their engagement in meaningful learning.

Students should choose the content of their portfolios with the clear understanding that the items must include examples of their best performances, demonstrations of achieving a particular objective, and examples showing personal and academic growth. The content should be indicative of a wide range of skills and abilities and provide clear demonstration of student ability.

One of the most important ingredients in a portfolio is the student’s reflection on their work. Students should include reflections on each performance to clarify why pieces are included in the portfolio. This is perhaps the most valuable part of the portfolio, since it provides a much clearer window into the learning of each student. Student reflections help us “discover and observe what our children are really experiencing, thinking about, questioning, wondering about, trying, and attaining.” (Niguidula, 2002) In the words of John Dewey, “We don’t learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience.” The tools used for creating digital portfolios make it easy to type or record a voice reflection.

A portfolio should also include clear criteria for judging the merit of each performance contained in it. Portfolios should include a detailed rubric explaining the effectiveness and overall value of each performance. The rubric helps students understand expectations and provides a guide as they reflect on the different aspects of their performance.

What Is the Teacher’s Role?

Because portfolios include a collection of performances that demonstrate growth and include student reflections, they provide additional assessment information beyond what can be gleaned from a traditional letter grade. In the same way that a simple letter grade may not capture learning that has happened throughout the process of a technology project, a portfolio provides a more comprehensive view of each student’s learning.

A student’s digital portfolio also provides a vehicle for regular feedback and dialogue with their teacher(s). As students consistently gather and reflect on their work, instructors develop a clear picture of the learning that is taking place and are better able to identify areas that need attention.

Why Go Digital?

Computers and authoring programs provide students with tools to compile a digital portfolio. Using multimedia tools, students can create portfolios that demonstrate performances using text, sound, graphics, and video, making them highly representative of a varied body of work. Self-reflections can be recorded, as can oral presentations, dramatic performances, musical compositions, and more. In today’s connected world, a digital portfolio is easy to retrieve, to store, and to share.

How Do You Begin?

Before students begin working on portfolios, be sure to determine your assessment goals, priorities, and outcomes. You need to develop clear definitions for the selection of content. You will want to start by creating a shell, or template, for the portfolio. This will help ensure that students effectively organize the information in their portfolios and will guarantee that reflection and assessment criteria are properly represented. You can organize a successful portfolio around your state’s proficiency goals, or by your district’s curriculum content.

Just because students start with a template does not mean their portfolios should be formulaic and dull! Be sure to leave room for students to showcase creativity and personality. They can do this when they create the self-reflection and by their choices for portfolio content. You may also want to leave room for them to decorate or personalize their portfolios with photographs, illustrations, music, and original artwork.

Electronic portfolios require a large investment of time and effort, but the dividends for improved assessment are worth it. As you incorporate electronic portfolios into your classroom or school, remember that you will want to revise the format and content as you become more practiced at assessing performance and students become more proficient at metacognition and portfolio management.

Bibilography

Niguidula, David. (2002). The Digital Portfolio: A Richer Picture of Student Performance. Oakland, CA: Coalition for Essential Schools.

David Niguidula. Digital Portfolio: A Richer Picture of Student Performance

Barrett, Helen C., Ph.D. (2001) “Electronic Portfolios = Multimedia Development + Portfolio Development: The Electronic Portfolio Development Process.” Electronic Portfolios. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.

Burke, K. (1999). How to Assess Authentic Learning. Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Professional Development.

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Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Response: Ways To Help Students Develop Digital Portfolios

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Steve McCrea asks:

How can we teachers use digital portfolios to help students show what they know and show us how they have used what they have learned?

Several educators have volunteered to write responses today - Rusul Alrubail, Michael Fisher, Frank Serafini, Kristin Ziemke, Kate Muhtaris, Jeb Schenck, and Joe Rommel. You can also listen to a ten-minute conversation I had with Rusul and Michael on my BAM! Radio Show.

I have also collected additional related resources at The Best Resources For Developing Student Portfolios .

Response From Rusul Alrubail

Rusul Alrubail is an Educator-in-Residence at Design Cofounders, where she helps with the development and facilitation of Education pathways in Design, Education & Entrepreneurship communities in Toronto. She also teaches composition, literature, and ELL to college students:

Digital portfolios can be a very useful tool to enhance students’ social and cultural learning in an English Language classroom. Teachers can use digital portfolios as a platform for students to show their work. More importantly, students can use them as a platform to share the learning process with their teacher.

I used digital portfolios as an extension to students’ learning outside of the classroom, as a platform for peer feedback, and to build and foster social, cultural and interpersonal interactions in our classroom.

My students created their portfolios on Blogger.com which has a very simple and easy to manage interface. However, teachers can use many other platforms: Edublogger, Google Sites, and Wordpress are just a few examples. My students personalized their sites through themes, images, layout, and content. Their digital portfolios contained some of the following categories:

• Responses to readings, discussions, news events.
• Sharing images, visuals, links/resources.
• Reflections: thoughts on ideas, themes, goals.
• Digital storytelling .

A vital aspect of using digital portfolios in an ELL classroom is to allow students to lead the creation of their own portfolios, with the teacher facilitating and guiding the creation with feedback and positive suggestions. Many ELL students will feel very shy and hesitant to publish work. It’s important for them to know that their work should be reflective of their voice and personality, with alot of encouragement and support from the teacher. The teacher can reassure students that it is totally fine to have grammar, sentences structure or vocabulary errors on their blogs. This will take off a lot of pressure, and will allow students to demonstrate their learning of concepts and ideas, while still practicing written and oral (if using digital storytelling) communication in their digital portfolios.

Also, consider giving students a choice in topics to share and write about in their digital portfolios. This will give a sense of ownership to students on the process and will increase levels of engagement and motivation. Giving students choice will also inadvertently give authentic pedagogical feedback on the students’ learning and their needs in the classroom.

Teachers can ask students to reflect on topics they covered in the classroom to demonstrate their learning. Depending on the students and their needs, it might be useful to provide question prompts to help them focus their ideas. Remember to keep questions opinion related and not content driven, in this way students will not hesitate to write out of fear of not having “the right answer”. Here are some sample reflection questions from Edutopia , they provide great discussion prompts for students to reflect on work completed in class through their digital portfolios.

Peer feedback is also an important aspect in the use of digital portfolios. They give students an opportunity to show what they have learned, but more importantly to share it with their peers and engage in learning together. Thus, digital portfolios should motivate and engage students in communicative learning on a high level. This communicative learning will help students build social interactions with their peers around specific classroom contexts. Schedule for students to give effective feedback or comment on their peers’ work. Peer feedback will help students to build social and interpersonal skills, and create a positive community in the classroom. Consequently, this type of learning will also help English Language learners with confidence level, social and cultural adaptation, and building relationships. The teacher should see the classroom as a place to learn and practice the language, and digital portfolios as artifacts of what students can do with the new language in a social context.

Response From Michael Fisher

Traditionally, grading has largely been a function of both behavioral conformation and high degrees of subjectivity. We are in the midst of a shift from traditional grading practices to more modern ones that represent proficiency and skill over check off lists that, in many cases, represent low level thinking. Digital portfolios are a great way for students to demonstrate their knowledge and what they are able to do with what they’ve learned in a way that shows evidence of proficiency and presents opportunities for strategic and extended thinking. Depending on the format of the digital portfolio, students could potentially display multiple types of products, processes for achieving those products, and written articulations / reflections of what their product represents and why they chose the web tools they used to create the final piece.

In my Digital Portfolio LiveBinder , there are loads of resources to help educators understand what digital portfolios are, articles and research around the pedagogy of portfolios in general, tools for creating digital portfolios and examples of student-made portfolios.

In my book, Digital Learning Strategies: How Do I Assign And Assess 21st Century Work? , I advocate for two different types of digital portfolios: presentation portfolios and process portfolios. A presentation portfolio is more along the lines of a traditional / physical in-print portfolio where students select their best work that represents proficiency over the course of a period of time, say a quarter or a semester, even a year. They include reflective statements about each of the portfolio’s entries that articulate why they chose this as representative of their best work and how it demonstrates learning. In a process portfolio, the product is only one element. The rest of the portfolio consists of all the steps a student took to get to the product. This might include multiple iterations of solutions to a problem, drafts, storyboarding/outlining, feedback from a global audience with evidence of the impact of the feedback, etc. Process portfolios would also include a reflective statement about the student’s work and how they chose to demonstrate their learning.

Hale, J., & Fisher, M. (2013). Upgrade your curriculum: Practical ways to transform units and engage students. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Fisher, M. (2013). Digital learning strategies: how do I assign and assess 21st century work?. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Response From Frank Serafini

Frank Serafini is an Associate Professor of Literacy Education and Children’s Literature in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Frank was an elementary school teacher and literacy specialist for twelve years in Phoenix, AZ.:

Print-based student portfolios have been used, misused, discarded, and reintroduced by many schools and districts over the past thirty years. Keeping track of students’ work, storing these collections, evaluating them, and using them to drive instruction has had its ups and downs in literacy education. Online and digital portfolios have been used with similar outcomes in elementary, high school, and college settings.

The biggest challenge for portfolio advocates is whether to apply normative or criterion-referenced standards for evaluating the contents of students’ portfolios by creating rubrics or other grading processes, or allowing individual students to use portfolios to document and demonstrate their learning and development over time. The second approach, a learner-referenced approach, has not been widespread in schools since so many assessment programs are designed to compare children to other children or schools to other schools.

Portfolios are collections of one’s work designed to provide opportunities to reflect on progress or change over a period of time. In most “real-world” instances, for example interior designers, architects, photographers, or artists, portfolios are used to demonstrate competencies and accomplishments. This type of portfolio is rarely scored using a rubric.

As the requirements for being proficiently literate (of course defining proficiently literate is problematic in itself) continue to expand and grow more complex in the digital age, the assessments we use to understand students’ abilities and performances need to expand as well. Portfolios and other performance assessments offer possibilities in this arena. For me, the challenge is not how to collect and evaluate portfolios but why to collect and evaluate portfolios. In my book, Classroom Reading Assessments (Serafini, 2010), I proposed three essential aspects of portfolio assessment:

• Help teachers teach more effectively
• Help students learn more effectively
• Provide information for stakeholders

In order to do this, classroom-based assessments should: 1) utilize a variety of sources of information, 2) involve students in evaluating their performances, 3) focus on abilities, not deficits, 4) be conducted over time, and 5) respect the teacher as knowledgeable observer in the assessment process. There are ways of using portfolios as performance assessments that align with the above-mentioned criteria. Unfortunately, most designers and implementers of portfolio systems are too busy trying to scale-up or standardize what goes into the portfolio. More complex systems of evaluation will be needed to understand the complexities of student performances beyond the collection of artifacts or bubbling in answers on a standardized test.

Response From Kate Muhtaris & Kristin Ziemke

Katie Muhtaris @LiteracySpark is a 5 th grade teacher at Burley School in Chicago. Kristin Ziemke @KristinZiemke is a 1 st grade teacher at the Big Shoulders Fund in Chicago. Katie and Kristin are the co-authors of Connecting Comprehension and Technology (Heinemann, 2013):

Who owns the learning? Is it the teachers or the students?

When we place learning in the hands of our students we empower them to take charge and teach them to reflect and grow independently. One way we do this is by having students create digital portfolios to curate their learning, reflect on growth, and set goals. These portfolios serve as a visual record of all that a student has accomplished. How do we best position our students to show what they know and how they’re applying their learning?

Establish systems for curating and sharing work. If we want students to consistently curate their work and take charge of the process we must establish systems that are easy for them to use and maintain. We’ve found that over the years our student blogs began to take on this roll, as students use them across the curriculum and are responsible for posting images, writing and video. What has made this powerful is the consistent feedback that students receive from the classroom community and beyond.

Model for students how to reflect on work and use it to set goals. If we want students to really understand why they are curating their work and how to reflect on it, then we must model the process. Just as we model problem-solving skills, we make our reflection process transparent. We have students observe as we analyze our own work and set new goals. Then we support students as they work individually, in partners, or small groups to do the same. A few key questions guide our process:

• What do I know now that I didn’t before? What more would I like to know?
• What can I do now that I couldn’t before? What more would I like to do?
• What challenges did I face? How did I overcome them and which challenges do I still need to conquer?
• How might I use this knowledge or skill in a new or different way?

Create space for celebration and sharing. If we want students to value the process of reflecting on learning and applying that learning then we must make space for it in our classroom. We need to set aside time to model and practice the process, engage in long term reflection, follow-up on goals, and ultimately, celebrate! Students should feel the joy of accomplishment and have that joy honored by their community. In this way, all students are empowered to accept that they can become the learner they want to be.

Response From Jeb Schenck

Jeb Schenck, PhD, was a high-school educator for 41 years and presently teaches graduate school classes on the brain and learning. He also conducts workshops for schools nationwide, as well as for colleges, hospitals, and the military. As an educator, Dr. Schenck’s teaching skills have been widely recognized at the national level, having been honored with the National Science Teacher of the Year, a Genetech Access Excess Fellow, Presidential Awardee for Science Education, Einstein Distinguished Educator Finalist, and Tandy Scholar Teacher. He is the author of Teaching and the Adolescent Brain: An Educator’s Guide (W. W. Norton; 2011):

Tablets and smart phones allow access to millions of apps to gather information. The brain immediately evaluates all incoming information for its personal significance, and is less likely to forget information that is highly significant, especially if it carries personal consequences. The key value of digital portfolios is that they take students beyond the technology of cutting and pasting information to create a presentation that helps them to explore, analyze their personal growth, increase their depth of understanding, and create personal connections that further learning.

Digital portfolios can be complex, so I recommend checking all students’ work periodically to avoid rabbit trails that create more hurdles. Also, have students practice assembling and presenting the portfolio so the technology does not impede learning. The rubric should be clear, with a series of simple, immediate goals focused on the overall problem. It is very important to distinguish whether the real goal is learning the technology or some lasting principle. Today’s technology will soon be yesterday’s extinct dinosaur. Remember the first clunky cell phones, or even the rotary phones? Focus the learning on topics that will outlast the current technology. Sharing models of digital portfolios with different levels of quality for students to discuss is helpful. In fact, opening a project by showing a couple of digital portfolios is not only an attention grabber, but frames their expectations and helps them get started. If you don’t have samples, it will be a beneficial learning exercise for you to build demonstration samples so you can develop appropriate expectations.

Learning that sticks is more likely to happen with personally meaningful tasks slightly above the student’s current ability level. It is important that they explain the topic with a demonstration that explores what happened, why, and what they think is likely to happen in the future. This reveals more of their understanding while creating a deeper memory. To facilitate this, have students capture and edit digital imagery that describes their personal connections with the task. Additionally, have them find other images or videos to illustrate significant points. Consider having them reflect by comparing their original understanding to their current understanding. To check for depth of understanding, they should document one or two further applications by using their new understanding. Finally, images and video are, by nature, meant to be seen, so have them present their final product in class, civic group, or post it on social media after you’ve reviewed it.

Response From Joe Rommel

Joe Rommel is an integration technology consultant with Berrien RESA - an organization created to support teachers throughout Michigan’s southwestern-most county (Berrien). He previously taught elementary and middle school for St. Joseph Public Schools in St. Joseph, Michigan:

I have been a classroom teacher for 15 years. In the beginning of my career I would stuff manila folders and three-hole punch various examples of student work to proudly share with parents and students. The process was both rewarding and messy. At times I felt like I housed a warehouse in my back room.

With the integration of technology into my classroom I was excited to archive student work in a digital format. I collected examples of finished essays and curated samples of math projects. I was happy to share, but still not satisfied. My portfolios evolved but something was missing.

Through conversation with other teachers I came to realize my approach to student portfolios was a little bit like how a school approaches a visit by a local dignitary. Dignitaries rarely see the messy parts of the school, and my portfolios were not showing the ‘messy’ part of my classroom. The student portfolio had become a place to showcase their best work and not as a testament to learning. Worse, I had retained control over what entered their personal library. This needed to change.

My goal with portfolios now is to expose the process. I like to think of it as more of risk-taking journal; a place to highlight the mistakes from which learning blossoms. As Salman Khan recently pointed out in an August 19 op-ed in the Huffington Post, '...the brain grows most by getting questions wrong.’ The portfolio cannot simply show the best completed, or the ‘most right,’ but has to showcase these errors. The last step remains the same: share. The portfolio does not illuminate anything if not shared. When done so, the portfolio provides a student with greater understanding of the learning process. Ideally the portfolio would follow them over their school career providing numerous opportunities to show not only what they learned, but how they used this over time. Portfolios approached in this way can serve as a powerful reminder of when mistakes became opportunities to grow. And if teachers know anything, it is that students are always growing.

Thanks to Rusul, Michael, Frank, Kate, Kristin, Jeb and Joe for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment sharing your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

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Digital copies of old photos can keep your memories alive. Here’s how to scan them.

Long before we snapped an estimated 5.3 billion photos a day on our smartphones, people did their best to preserve lifetimes of images inside ancient albums, stuffed into shoeboxes, and crammed in closets. 

Sadly, that’s where many of our most cherished moments remain – locked in dusty treasure chests just waiting to be rediscovered. 

Finding them can be life-changing. But the real magic lies in restoring, digitizing, and displaying them again. I recently found that out myself. 

Earlier this year, I shared a story about digitizing a lifetime of family photos in the wake of a family tragedy. It struck a nerve with so many readers that the "Today Show " just had me do a segment about it. Hundreds of you took the time to reach out and share your own stories and ask me some important follow-up questions, too.  

Here are some additional answers to cracking the code on saving and sharing old photos and videos – for good. 

How do I make digital versions of old photos? 

Digitizing a lifetime of memories is a daunting task, and when those memories are spread across boxes of unorganized paper photos, VHS tapes, page-size prints, and sun-bleached photo albums, where do you start? 

When I converted my massive photo and video collection into digital files, I went with ScanMyPhotos.com . I shipped off six cardboard boxes packed with nostalgia, and in less than 48 hours, I had over 6,000 digital photo and video files delivered to my door – along with all of my originals. 

Prices vary depending on what you use but for an estimate:

• Photos: 13 cents per scan or $240 per box. (A box can hold about 1,800 pictures.)
• VHS: starts at $27 per tape.

We paid just $1,000 for six packed-to-the-gills boxes. Remember, this is an investment, too. Yes, it can be pricey, but you only have these physical copies, so if anything were to happen to them, they'd be lost permanently. It also takes a lot of time and energy to do on your own, so splurging could be worth it.

How to digitize old photos with your phone

If I could do it all over again, I’d do the exact same thing. But not everyone is in the same boat. Aside from the cost, you might not have nearly as many photos to digitize and some of your photos might be bent, bleached, or damaged beyond physical repair. 

The good news is that there’s an app if you want to do it yourself. Actually, countless apps promise to help you digitize your photos and more – from one-click restorations to more involved DIY photo-fixing tools.

Photomyne caught my attention because it’s straightforward, fast, and free to try. Download the app to your iPhone or Android smartphone, snap a picture of your paper photo from within the app, and it’s saved forever. 

The app also makes it easy to enhance the images. It can add color to faded photos, enhance faces to capture expression and crop the digital image so it’s framed just how you want it. There’s also the option to add color to black-and-white photos, though the results can be hit or miss. 

It also does something that many photo digitization apps don’t even try to do: capture images from old slides and negatives. If you know anything about slide capture, you know that it usually must be done on a machine many times larger than your smartphone. Still, with an adequate backlight behind the slide – you can use a bright computer or tablet screen – and Photomyne’s backlight webpage grabs the images and turns them into digital photos. 

Remember that this and every other photo-scanning app works best when scanning one photo at a time. You’ll get the highest level of detail and the best end-product. The downside is that if you have a thousand pictures to go through, you’ll need to call out sick from work for a month to get through them all. More serious photo scanning means choosing a more powerful tool. 

D-I-Y Photo Scanning Station

Several options fit the bill, and the Memory Station by Vivid-Pix is a good pick. It combines a high-powered scanner and simple tools – like a thick piece of plexiglass to flatten photos perfectly – and then sends the images to the Vivid-Pix Restore software, which is free to try and costs $49.99 for the full version.

The software rewinds time on faded photos, brings the color and details out more, and enhances clarity to make them look better than ever. 

The one drawback here is that there’s a learning curve for the software – which is available for both Windows and Mac computers. It’s not too bad, but plan at least 30 minutes to get the hang of it, with easy sliders and comparison tools to show you what changes you’re making and to preview the results. The Memory Station bundle, which includes the scanner and software, is another investment at $799.95 .

How do I repair photos with an app? 

For quick repairs without investing in a scanner, look to MyHeritage, which is better known for its genealogy services than its photo editing. But its app is surprisingly powerful for the latter. You can use the photo repair tool online or via the MyHeritage app , and you can also try it for free. 

A simple upload of the photo lets you use a one-touch repair option that identifies scratches, tears, and other physical damage that made its way to your digital image. It removes these imperfections instantly, but it can be hit or miss if you have a severely damaged photo. 

If you’re already a subscriber to MyHeritage’s complete plan for $299 per year, you can access full, unwatermarked photo repairs. If not, you can either subscribe, or pay $49 per year for the MyHeritage Reminage app , which includes just the photo editing features. 

If you’re super dedicated to learning this photo restoration business, Adobe Photoshop gives you all the power you need and then some. You can make the usual tweaks to brightness, contrast, color, and so on, and you can also harness the power of AI. You’ll need to supply your own scanner for this or use one of the aforementioned smartphone apps. Still, once your photos are on your computer, the possibilities within Photoshop are endless. 

With the Neural Filters feature built into Photoshop, you can utilize AI-powered photo restoration. Within this broader category are three specific tools that enhance faces, reduce noise, and repair physical damage like scratches that appear on photos you’ve scanned. These are handy tools, but learning to use them can take time, and Photoshop’s $22.99-per-month fee can be a turn-off. 

Digitizing your memories: Memories tied up in boxes and boxes of pictures? Here's how to scan photos easily

Gifting, sharing, and displaying old photos

Your photos are all digitized, repaired, and ready to be enjoyed in all their glory – so now what?

My first move is always to dump my pics into Google Photos . With 15GB of free storage included with your regular old Google account, there’s lots of room. If you need more, say 100GB more, it’ll only set you back $2 per month, which is a small price to pay for precious photos that live forever. 

Google Photos includes new AI tools to organize your images based on any number of things, including the content of the image itself. You can group similar photos and organize them into easy-to-find albums. It also uses AI to organize photos by categories, like people, places, trips, food, pets, so that you can more easily search and find what you’re looking for later. That's a must-have for extensive photo collections. 

What’s the best way to print out photos?

If a physical photo is more your thing, FreePrints is one of the first places you should head. The app and the images you order from it are – you guessed it – free, but you pay shipping, which starts at around $2. Still, it gives you up to 85 free 4”x6” prints per month delivered as quickly as a couple of days. Once you run out of free prints, head to EasyPrints , MPix , or another high-quality, low-price option and fill those photo albums. 

My go-to's for photo gifts 

The Mixbook app is another excellent option for showcasing your photos. You can create incredible photo books from an app on your smartphone in about 10 minutes. Books start at $16 for soft cover or $20 for hard cover.

Mixbook's app incorporates a robust AI sorter that helps with photo selection and story curation. It helps identify your best photos – even ones buried in your camera roll – and then gives you layout recommendations and suggests photo captions. You can have total creative control or let automation do some of the heavy lifting for you. 

Everyone has a handful of favorite photos on their devices, and Keepsake Frames is the easiest and most budget-friendly way to get those memories on the wall where they belong. (I have ordered at least a dozen frames from here, and I love every single one.) Just upload a photo from any device, pick out the exact frame color and look you want, and take care of everything in one easy go. You’ll get your photo – or, my new favorite, the collage frames with up to 200 photos – perfectly framed and headed to your door for as little as $29. 

But Aura Frame is my No. 1 go-to gift for everyone – including myself:  I have four of these in my own house. You can send photos from your phone to an Aura frame, and invite loved ones to contribute from anywhere they happen to be in the world through the app. It’s Wi-Fi-connected, comes with unlimited cloud storage, and plays videos (up to 30 seconds) and live photos. It can also use AI to find the best ones, and it includes a built-in quality filter so that only the best photos appear on the frame. You can use the Aura Frame app now to instantly scan and colorize old photos and add dates. You can also use it to display your kids’ artwork. These digital frames start at $149.

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech columnist and on-air correspondent. The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY. Contact her at [email protected] .

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https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2024/05/chips-america-announces-285-million-funding-opportunity-digital-twin-and-0

CHIPS for America Announces $285 Million Funding Opportunity for a Digital Twin and Semiconductor CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute

Today, the Biden-Harris administration issued a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) seeking proposals from eligible applicants for activities to establish and operate a CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute focused on digital twins for the semiconductor industry. Digital twins are virtual models that mimic the structure, context and behavior of a physical counterpart. The CHIPS for America Program anticipates up to approximately $285 million for a first-of-its-kind institute focused on the development, validation and use of digital twins for semiconductor manufacturing, advanced packaging, assembly and test processes. The CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute is the first Manufacturing USA institute launched by the Department of Commerce under the Biden administration.

Unlike traditional, physical research models, digital twins can exist in the cloud, which enables collaborative design and process development by engineers and researchers across the country, creating new opportunities for participation, speeding innovation and reducing costs of research and development. Digital twin-based research can also leverage emerging technology like artificial intelligence to help accelerate the design of new U.S. chip development and manufacturing concepts and significantly reduce costs by improving capacity planning, production optimization, facility upgrades and real-time process adjustments.

“Digital twin technology can help to spark innovation in research, development and manufacturing of semiconductors across the country — but only if we invest in America’s understanding and ability of this new technology,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “This new Manufacturing USA institute will not only help to make America a leader in developing this new technology for the semiconductor industry, it will also help train the next generation of American workers and researchers to use digital twins for future advances in R&D and production of chips.”

“Digital twin technology will help transform the semiconductor industry. This historic investment in the CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute will help unite the semiconductor industry to unlock the enormous potential of digital twin technology for breakthrough discoveries. This is a prime example of how CHIPS for America is bringing research institutions and industry partners together in public-private partnership to enable rapid adoption of innovations that will enhance domestic competitiveness for decades to come.” —Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Laurie E. Locascio

Read the entire news release on the Department of Commerce website. 

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Western Digital Now Offers a Fast, Powerful 8TB Desktop SSD to Help Creators Unlock the Potential of Their Digital Content

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) has expanded its SanDisk portfolio with the new 8TB * SanDisk ® Desk Drive , its highest capacity yet on an external desktop solid state drive (SSD). Featuring the speed and reliability of an SSD, this new class of drives gives content creators and business professionals an easy way to back up and access their high-resolution photos, videos and files quickly in a single, convenient location. From photo and video pros to tech enthusiasts, there are a growing number of digital creators generating massive amounts of content who need flexible high-capacity storage solutions to do more, faster.

“As digital content creation continues to soar, there is an increasing need for high-performing and high-capacity storage solutions to help manage and preserve it. Expanding our SSD portfolio is the first step in offering creators backup solutions that deliver the speed and flexibility they need to unlock their creativity,” says Susan Park, Vice President, Consumer Solutions, Western Digital. “By next year, we expect to double the capacity of the SanDisk Desk Drive from 8TB to 16TB on a single desktop SSD.”

The SanDisk Desk Drive key features include:

• Capacity – 4TB and 8TB capacities * for photo and video collections, CAD files or 3D renders, large AI-generated files, music libraries, important documents, and more.
• Performance – Faster content access, for even the heaviest files like 8K videos, with read speeds up to 1,000 MB/s 1 – up to 4x faster than a desktop HDD 3 .
• Backup – Quickly back up photos, videos, and files with SSD speeds using Apple Time Machine or make backups automatic with the included downloadable Acronis® True Image™ for Western Digital backup software 2 .
• Design – The compact, modern style, recognized as a 2024 Red Dot Design Award recipient 4 , maximizes desk space and feels natural in any professional or home setting.
• Compatibility – Works with Windows® or macOS out of the box with exFAT formatting, using the included USB Type-CTM cable.

Featuring a three-year limited warranty 5 , the 4TB * SanDisk Desk Drive (U.S. MSRP $379.99) and 8TB * SanDisk Desk Drive (U.S. MSRP $699.99) are available now for purchase at the Western Digital Store and authorized SanDisk retailers, e-tailers, and distributors.

To learn more about SanDisk, please visit SanDisk.com or follow us on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , YouTube and X . For company news, please visit the Western Digital Newsroom .

About Western Digital Western Digital is on a mission to unlock the potential of data by harnessing the possibility to use it. With both Flash and HDD franchises, underpinned by advancements in memory technologies, we create breakthrough innovations and powerful data storage solutions that enable the world to actualize its aspirations. Core to our values, we recognize the urgency to combat climate change and have committed to ambitious carbon reduction goals approved by the Science Based Targets initiative. Learn more about Western Digital and the Western Digital ® , SanDisk ® and WD ® brands at www.westerndigital.com .

* 1TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. Actual user capacity less. 1 Up to 1000 MB/s read speeds. Based on internal testing; performance may be lower depending upon host device, interface, usage conditions, and other factors. 1MB=1,000,000 bytes. 2 Download and installation required. Terms and conditions apply. User account registration may be required. 3 Based on internal testing against the 8TB WD My Book desktop HDD. 4 The “Red Dot” is an award recognizing high design quality. The international “Red Dot” jury awards the seal of quality to products that feature outstanding design. 5 See www.sandisk.com/wug .

Western Digital, the Western Digital design, the Western Digital logo, SanDisk, the SanDisk logo, are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Product specifications are subject to change without notice. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products will be available in all regions of the world.

© 2024 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Western Digital Technologies, Inc. is the seller of record and licensee in the Americas of SanDisk ® products.

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Ray's Writing Portfolio

Digital Essay

Written for my Writing 5 final project.

If You Could Live Forever, Would You?

Mind uploading and what it tells us about the human condition..

I first heard about San Junipero from a friend who always seemed to be a step ahead of me in the cultural moment. You absolutely have to watch it, she insisted. So, on a relaxing Friday night last year, I loaded Black Mirror’s episode “San Junipero” on my computer and clicked play.

Over the course of an hour, I fell in love with the magical world of San Junipero. Filled with beaches, bars, beautiful homes, and incredible views, San Junipero looks like the best place to live; the only hitch: it’s all virtual. In this alternate reality, individuals can choose to have their consciousnesses uploaded to a virtual world upon dying, where they can live forever in bodies that never age or deteriorate.

We meet the extremely charismatic Yorkie and Kelly, two women who didn’t have the best lives but have a second chance in San Junipero to find eternal love. Being uploaded into the cloud, San Junipero promises, is the route to eternal happiness.

The technology presented in San Junipero, of minds being uploaded to digital forms, is not new to science fiction; on the contrary, it dates back to the 1950s during the so-called “Golden Age” of science fiction. My interest in the subject began only more recently. I don’t know when the nihilistic seed was first planted in me, but I do remember sitting and staring out the window of the bus in elementary school, and obsessing over thoughts like, “What’s the point of all this?” and “What happens when you die and everyone forgets you?” Admittedly, I was a weird kid, but that is beside the point.

When I found San Junipero, the concept was very exciting. It seemed like the golden cornucopia for all a little existentialist’s fears, particularly for its practical presentation. This was something that could one day happen. After finishing the episode, I quickly picked up more stories featuring so-called mind-uploading.

Before I go further, it might be helpful if I clarify what qualifies as mind-uploading. In 1991, the world’s foremost expert on AI at the time, Marvin Minsky, declared to a crowded research conference “humanity [will] eventually… create machine minds and bodies efficient enough that individuals could transfer into them when their natural bodies grew decrepit through age or disease”. In this scenario, Minsky said, we would have to make a choice: “Should we roboticize ourselves and stop dying?” Minsky was referring to the concept of mind-uploading that had already been thoroughly explored in science fiction, if not considered real science.

When Minsky proclaimed the future of mind uploading, technology was far behind where we are now, but new developments give the questions he posed a sense of urgency. With the advent of machine learning, our ability to digitize intelligence is advancing far quicker than we would have ever hoped. As this possibility becomes more imminent, we are forced to confront serious questions as a species. How would the power to pursue eternal life affect us as a species?

Seeking the ability to live forever is not new to our species; traditionally, we have sought forms of immortality in the form of belief systems containing afterlives or reincarnation. Stephanie Burt, a professor of English at Harvard University, explains that one of the great benefits of religion that it “for the great majority of our own race means immortality” through religious conceptions of the afterlife.

However, the rise of secularism means that many people no longer conceive of their own immortality through religion. Religion has been declining as a form of absolute truth, and many people do not adhere to any religion at all. Without religion, millions of people are being forced to confront their mortality in different ways. Burt identifies science fiction’s portrayal of life-extending technologies as an alternative to religion. Science fiction provides one potential way to feed “our pervasive wish to imagine—or to suspend our disbelief in—life after death” without having to rely on religious afterlives that may lack concrete evidence of their existence.

Science fiction allows us to mentally rehearse worlds in which technologies like mind-uploading exist, in which we can live forever. If we want to explore how these technologies will affect reality, we can examine their portrayal in science fiction for better insight.

Digital Heavens

To fully understand mind-uploading, I needed to conduct a deep-dive into the world of science fiction. My search began in earnest with “The Silicon Man” . Published in 1991 by Charles Platt, the novel follows a group of programmers who attempt to secretly create a virtual universe that they could transfer individual minds into. At the end of the novel, the main character, James Bayley, is forcibly uploaded into the virtual world by a terrorist hacker and thus separated from his family. In the final pages of the book, his wife and son manage to join Bayley. Bayley expresses remorse that his wife, Sharon, has sacrificed the real world for him, but she counters, “It’s not a sacrifice, Jim! This is bigger than life outside.” And this was the promise of digital immortality as I saw it in San Junipero: a life so big, it’ll never end.

As my search progressed, however, I found myself frequently surprised. Far from the digital Elysium's I imagined, most mind uploading fictions are dark and dystopian. Why might something that could save so many lives be seen so poorly?

Many negative portrayal of mind-uploading paint individuals who have uploaded their minds into computers as the “other”. In the 2014 film Transcendence , Dr. Will Carter has been uploaded to a supercomputer to save his life after a terrorist attempts to kill him during a speech. Dr. Carter had been working on building a digital superintelligence, which had the potential “to cure disease… to end poverty and hunger. To heal the planet. And build a better future for all of us” Carter ends up being uploaded into his computer, and starts enacting his vision for a greater future.

In the process, Dr. Carter takes on a level of power and influence that frighten others. One character proclaims that Carter plans to bring about the “end of primitive organic life, and the beginning of a more advanced age”. In the eyes of the world, Carter had become separate from them “primitive organic life” and instead a part of something other. In the process of immortality, he had lost his humanity.

Initially, we might consider mind-uploading as natural to our species, because it represents an advanced form of our nearly-universal drive to avoid death. In Ken Liu’s short story, “The Waves”, we see this belief argued in the context of a choice. A group of colonists on the spaceship Seafoam are offered a technology that can stop the aging process. Each colonist may choose for themselves whether to become immortal. This choice leads to a series of increasingly drastic bodily improvement, with the immortals uploading their minds to digital forms first, then finally becoming abstract waves of energy that live in space. We meet Maggie and Joao, a married couple, mid-argument. Maggie wants to live forever, Joao does not. Joao asserts that they need to die to allow for future generations to take their place. Maggie counters, “It’s a myth that we must die to retain our humanity”. Then, more profoundly, she says, “We stop being human at the moment we give in to death”.

However, the characters of Liu’s story become progressively less recognizable as human as they achieve immortality, suggesting that death is an integral part of how we conceive of our humanity. After Maggie’s son transitions to machine form, he touches her and Maggie recoils from him as if he is disgusting. She laments that “he can’t cry anymore”. The loss of touch and apparent loss of grief render her son unrecognizable to her, suggesting he has lost his humanity. Later, this shift is cemented, when Maggie meets a group of beings that have progressed from machine form to existing as a network of photons. Maggie asks, “You’re human?” and the photon-beings respond, “We haven’t thought of ourselves in that way in a long time”. When Maggie and Joao were first arguing about immortality, Joao had noted that without “the value of sacrifice, the meaning of heroism, of beginning afresh” that death brings, “[they’ll] barely be human”. Striving to cheat death is an essential part of being human, but so is dying.

In “ Knowing Death ” by Christopher Fisher, the Executive Director of the Portsmouth Institute for Faith and Culture, the author argues what anyone who has experienced grief may already know: loss makes us truly appreciate what we had. When we know are breaths are numbered, we value them far more than if they feel as if they will come forever. Fisher notes how his grandfather’s death forced the entire family to ask questions like: “How could we have been better children and grandchildren? Am I am appreciating the goodness of life? Do I love my neighbors?” (Fisher). Death becomes a lens through which we can make sense of our value systems.

T hough death anxiety may not eliminate the threat of death, the individual’s response to death anxiety allows for the fulfillment and framing of the human experience. This response does not simply affect us at death; knowing that we eventually will run out of time infuses every day with a sense of urgency.

The psychoanalyst Ernest Becker argued in his groundbreaking book “The Denial of Death” that the overwhelming threat of death drove humans to action. In order to escape the fear of death, Becker claimed, we create “immortality projects,” some way for each individual to have a sense that their existence continues on after the actual event of death. For some people, this means religious beliefs in a heaven. For others, their immortality project could be striving to succeed at work in order to leave a mark on their organization that would last beyond their demise. The development of one’s immortality project acts as a sense of purpose and goal for an individual to strive for.

Between introspection driven by grief and the sense of purpose immortality projects provide, dying acts to frame the entire preceding events of our lives. The story that a dying human tells about themselves gives shape and structure to their experience. Without the framework of death, existence may devolve into a series of disjointed moments that no longer look human. Indeed, Fisher, like Joao of “The Waves,” argues that  “the dream of modern man to conquer natural death is the epitome of dehumanization.”

If Not Human, Then What?

If science fiction has deemed uploaded minds as inhuman, then it has also suggested that these minds may fall into the category of deity instead. One of the earliest and most famous examples of mind-uploading in fiction is Isaac Asimov’s “The Last Question.” Over billions of years, a series of increasingly advanced supercomputers have been asked how the threat of human extinction posed by the heat death of the universe can be averted. Each time, the computer responds: “ INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER” but continues to compile data in the hopes of a solution (Asimov). Eventually, the trillions of individual humans spread across the universe choose to unify with the supercomputer, until the computer is the single superintelligent being left in the universe, to watch the stars die one-by-one. Eventually the computer has an answer, but by then, even time and space have ceased to exist, so nobody is there to receive the answer. Finally, the computer pronounces to the void, “Let There Be Light!” and then “there was light” (Asimov).

Humanity’s ultimate purpose in the story centers on denying death, not only death but the death of the universe, which is arguably a far more profound and anxiety-inducing reality. Heat death, or entropy, makes it impossible for the individual to cling onto any immortality project or worldview that will last beyond their time, because even those things will die. The response is to become a form of immortal being, by joining with the computer, but even this is insufficient. In the final words of the story, the computer finally defeats death by restarting the universe in a replication of God in the Old Testament. The implication is that the computer has become God, or a figure of equal power and influence. To truly live forever, the story argues, is to achieve a vaulted status only God has inhabited.

This is what is so terrifying about mind-uploading. It conveys a process of both dehumanization and reincarnation that transforms us into something unrecognizable. In today's world, we're already seeing primitive forms of immortality through technologies, but before these advance further, we need to realize the awesome power we are bestowing upon the developers of such technologies, and the potential transformation of not only ourselves, but our species.

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Some topics you might be interested in, peace-of-mind digital trust training with pecb.

As organizations and consumers increasingly embrace cutting-edge technologies, cyber threats continue to evolve and become more frequent. They not only affect the targeted enterprise, but also its business partners, suppliers and customers.

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The SGS-PECB courses are available online or in-person, for groups and individuals, from beginners to more senior learners. Worldwide access and scheduled deliveries are available for all courses ranging from one day to four days in length.

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PECB is a certification body that provides education, certification and certificate programs for individuals on a wide range of disciplines. We help professionals develop and demonstrate their competence in various areas of expertise by providing world-class certification programs that follow internationally recognized standards.

We are SGS – the world’s leading testing, inspection and certification company. We are recognized as the global benchmark for sustainability, quality and integrity. Our 99,600 employees operate a network of 2,600 offices and laboratories around the world.

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