Electronic portfolios are flexible, motivating, and extremely useful teacher tools that can address a range of needs from student assessment and development to creating connections between teachers, students and parents. They are growing to become a vital interdisciplinary part of the classroom. (Garthwait and Verrill, 2003)

What is an e-portfolio?  Simply put, an e-portfolio is an electronic collection of student work (either on CD-Rom or on the Web) that can be used to chart progress, build self-esteem, encourage reflection and more.

E-portfolios can be incorporated into the cutting-edge classroom for grades 3 and higher.  (The reason for starting at 3rd grade is because the kids will be doing the technology work involved.)

If your school already has a website, I highly suggest you create a classroom site (if you haven't already) and include your student's e-portfolios there.  If not, then put them on disk.  In order to protect the student’s copyrights (if the e-portfolios are published on the Web), a letter should be sent home for the parents to sign giving you permission to put the student’s work on the Internet.  (You'll want to do this anytime you put student's work on the Web.)

The technology involved: A Web design software such as FrontPage, a flat bed scanner, an art program for kids such as KidPix.  You may even want to help your kids create video shorts and take digital photos... The sky's the limit on how wild you get with the techno side of this!

Here are my ideas of what an e-portfolio could include:

• Each student’s e-portfolio can open with a cartoon self-portrait along with his/her first name and last initial.  It's not a good idea to put a child's full name on the Web.)
• A personal “bio” can be a little time capsule of fun information such as height and a list of their current favorites (food, game, movie, TV program, song, musical group, color and activity).  You may want to encourage kids to add graphics for these items.  I’m sure that this will be a good source of amusement for them to look back at years from now.
• Since one of the goals of the e-portfolio is to show a student’s progress throughout the school year, a hand writing sample and a video clip of a musical performance from the beginning of the year and from the end can be included.
• To display their artistic skills, each e-portfolio can have an art gallery composed of the student’s ten best works from the year.
• The students can also include a monthly sample of creative writing and math work.
• As these monthly items are added, it will be a good time for students to go through their entire e-portfolio to make changes and to review their learning progress.  This leads us to a very important part of the e-portfolio: reflection.  Reflection is the key to learning.  It allows students to analyze their experiences, make changes based on their mistakes, keep doing what is successful, and build upon or modify past knowledge based on new knowledge. (Mustang Public Schools, 2002)  Each month, the students can review their e-portfolios and write a reflection.  Two other important areas for reflection writing are the art gallery and their monthly creative writing samples.  The students can write a reflection paragraph for each entry.
• Finally, the student’s e-portfolio can contain a science experiment and/or one or more major project or reports.

Written reports can be scanned (if they are hand-written) and 3-dimensional projects (such as the standard sugar cube mission) can be digitally photographed for inclusion.

E-portfolios are a powerful example that technology has a tremendous impact on student learning and the communication of student achievement.  The goal is to keep students focused on learning rather than on individual projects or products.  E-portfolios are part of the learning process, not a result of it.  (Garthwait and Verrill, 2003) Throughout the year, students can see their progress and all that they have accomplished.  Reviewing past victories will give them the courage to conquer future learning.  Garthwait and Verrill found that students who used e-portfolios were highly motivated and took more educational risks. (2003)

In addition to being a great benefit to the student, e-portfolios are great for parents, teachers and administrators.  At any time during the year, a parent can go online and review their child’s work.  (And easily show it off to friends and family.  What grandparents wouldn't love to be able to go online and see their grandchild's latest accomplishment?)  They can even see what his/her classmates are doing.  A suggestion is to encourage parents to have a special monthly meeting with their child to view the e-portfolio.  You may even want to suggest that parents write their own reflections to keep in a family album.  Learning should be a family venture!

At the end of the year, you can provide a CD of the e-portfolio to the parents as a keepsake.  As for the teachers, e-portfolios (especially the reflections) are a great way for them to learn FROM the students.  A good teacher is always learning, improving and evolving. For the school and the administration, e-portfolios are a way for them to really show off what they are accomplishing in the classroom.  Serving as a great marketing and public relations tool, e-portfolios are cutting-edge and exciting – they show that everyone is learning!

** I also highly recommend that you teachers keep an ongoing e-portfolio on yourselves.  They come in handy at evaluation time and they really impress administrators! 

**And, for you who are working towards becoming teachers, e-portfolios are very impressive to prospective employers.  Always keep in mind that a school will want to hire someone who can teach their faculty something new.  They need the young bucks (and buckettes) to really know their technology!!  You should have an e-portfolio that highlights your strengths and shows samples of the work you've done in school.