What is an ePortfolio?
An ePortfolio is a tool that is constantly evolving with your learning to be used in an educational and professional environment. It should be full of one's learning, ideas, and work to continually be built upon, and should be owned by the student. Through the ADL process, we will be synthesizing our learning and establishing a fluid ePortfolio that is minimalist and meaningful in content. An ePortfolio is not just a digital file cabinet, but it is a linked collection of different media types to create a digital journey of one's learning.
More information can be found at: https://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=5973
Why use an ePortfolio?
An ePortfolio is an amazing way to track your learning and utilize it year to year. As an educator, an ePortfolio is a great tool to track achievements and reflect on professional learning that will help me grow. Through this program, I look forward to filling out my own ePortfolio to reflect back on and be proud of. It is a living document that I will have spent hours working on and I will be very proud of.
Eportfolios follow the principles of COVA very well. The whole premise of an ePortfolio is to allow learners choice, ownership, voice, and authentic experiences. They also help to promote visible learning, as anyone can look at an ePortfolio and identify learning that has taken place.
EPortfolios can also be very effective in the K-12 classroom setting.
Students will gain:
Digital life skills
Organization habits and responsibilities
Effective communication
A growing visual representation of their learning
Growth and confidence
Teachers will gain:
Quick access to students' background knowledge on many topics
A view of student achievements
Building better connections with students
Through this program, I will be creating my second ePortfolio, as I created one through my undergrad program to express my mindset as an educator. Just as with my prior ePortfolios, this current one will be built upon for the continuation of this program and after the program has ended. It is a lifelong document.
More Information can be found at: https://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6063
Who owns an ePortfolio?
The question of who owns an ePortfolio should have an easy answer; the learner who builds it, but is it really that simple? If the ePortfolio is being created based on structured requirements from a professor or teacher then there is limited choice and students are not truly reflecting on their learning. In this case, the ePortfolio belongs to the teacher, and the students are just applying their answers to a specific form expected of them. To have the student truly own their ePortfolio "we have to not only give students a choice, ownership, voice, and authentic learning (COVA) over their digital domain we have to give them COVA (Thibodeaux, 2015) over their ideas." (Harapnuik, 2023).
Within an ePortfolio students have a choice over how they put their thoughts, feelings, and learning together. We must allow them to have ownership over what tools and formats they utilize. The ePortfolio is an ever-growing document and we must allow our students to use their own Voice to drive this change. We also need to allow the ePortfolio to be Authentic to the student's individual needs. To gain the most out of the ePortfolio process, students need to be in charge of their learning.
Through the ADL program, we are allowed to follow this process as students. It creates a unique learning process that is reflective in nature. Within the process of being given topics to discuss and projects to create, we are free to add them to our portfolio in the way that suits us best.
Harapnuik, D. (2023, September). Who Owns the ePortfolio. Harapnuik.org. https://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6050
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