Involving Students in Assessment

Using Share to create and assess student electronic portfolios.

Student project

When I was a classroom teacher, I would send my children home at the end of each year with a huge folder full of their best work. I first became interested in electronic portfolios at the NECC 2007 Conference in Atlanta, when I watched a presentation on e-portfolios using Share. What a wonderful way to showcase student work! I realized that electronic portfolios are a convenient, portable way to show off student work and create lasting memories that students and parents will treasure.

I went home and worked with a student to create a sample portfolio. Dana brought artifacts from her work in third grade: art projects, stories, math papers, some short videos, and a science project, and we got right to work. I loved how easy it was for her to drag digital stories, pictures, artwork, and her science project right into her portfolio. We also included a video of Dana receiving an award for winning the spelling bee and another of her playing the piano in a talent show. She spent additional time writing and recording explanations for each item and adding clip art and animations to personalize her portfolio. We ended by publishing a CD she could take home.

After sharing this sample at my school, one courageous teacher, Kathy Lauderbach, asked for help implementing portfolios in her third-grade classroom. We started the first month of school with students personalizing the home page of their portfolios with identifying text, personal photos, and decorations. When students completed their next project, a digital storytelling project, we had our first items for the students’ portfolios. Over the course of the year, we added other student work to the portfolios, including graphs made in Excel, arrays showing multiplication fact families, photos, and descriptions of a relief map of California, poems, reviews of the play How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and digital science reports on shark species.

At the end of the year, students worked with fifth-grade buddies to finish the portfolios and burn them to CD to take home. Kathy was so delighted with the quality of the student portfolios that she learned to use a labeling program to make custom labels for the CDs.

Learn more about how you can change the face of assessment.

Since students knew their work would be published digitally, they were more careful and conscientious with the quality of their work. The students took great pride in the finished portfolios, and parents were delighted as well.

Katy Hammack

by Katy Hammack

An avid and accomplished equestrian, Katy Hammack teaches students at PRIDE Academy in Santee, California and adult educators through her online courses with Grand Canyon University. Katy has been presenting at CUEs in California since 2006 and her 2009 workshop at ISTE was designated as "Best of NECC." You can explore some of Katy's current projects on her classroom web site.

Wixie
Advertisement
Assess student project work.

Assessing student project work

Student centered cartoon

Less us, more them. Create student-centered contexts for learning

Advertisement
Questions

Help students ask good questions.

Wixie on a stack of Chromebooks
Getting Chromebooks?
Stay creative with Wixie!
Digital Portfolios

Building digital portfolios

More sites to help you find success in your classroom

Wixie

Share your ideas, imagination, and understanding through writing, art, voice, and video.

Rubric Maker

Create custom rubrics for your classroom.

Pics4Learning

A curated, copyright-friendly image library that is safe and free for education.

Wriddle

Write, record, and illustrate a sentence.

Creative Educator

Professional Learning

About Us

Get the Creative Educator Newsletter

Topics

Creativity

Digital Storytelling

21st Century Classrooms

Project-based Learning

Teaching and Learning

Curriculum

Literacy

Literature

Informational Text

English Language Aquisition

STEM

Lessons

Language Arts

Math

Science

Social Studies

Visual Arts

Add me to the Creative Educator email list!