Digital PortfoliosDigital portfolios are another example of how digital storytelling can be used in the classroom. As students create a record of their learning for the purpose of summative assessment, they are in fact documenting their personal learning story. Digital portfolios have been utilized in higher education for some time now, but are also relevant to K-12 instruction as they contain excellent record keeping elements and give students a voice in their own education.
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Benefits:Educators who use digital portfolios believe that there is merit to incorporating them into their classrooms.
Benefits to using digital portfolios include: -enhancing learning by helping to raise standards and developing more effective ways for teachers to provide feedback to students in order to help them understand and apply assessment criteria to their own work (Wall et. al., 2006). - helping support discussions around learning between teacher, student and parent and helps students develop self reflective skills. -looking back on and sharing digital portfolios can help students build confidence and a sense of achievement (Wall et. al., 2006) - displaying growth and development of students’ academics (Irvine & Barlow, 1998). - developing budding technical skills including video creating and editing, photography illustrations, animations, text editing, and voice recognition technologies (Donnelly, 2010) |
Educators may have personal preferences to using digital portfolios or digital stories, however these preferences are irrelevant unless there is educational value and merit to the use of these techniques. As teaching practices shift to incorporate new forms of curriculum, assessment practices will need to reflect these changes. Furthermore, educators want to improve learning by raising standards and developing more effective ways to provide feedback to help students understand and apply new assessment criteria (Wall et al. 2006). A digital portfolio is a great way to incorporate new aspects of the curriculum in both teaching and assessment practice as it tracks student growth and development in a personal way by weaving assessment and reflection into a story (Irvine & Barlow, 1998). There are also elements of oral storytelling incorporated into these digital portfolios as students share their learning experiences with others. Finally, as teachers are finding it harder to motivate students in the classroom, digital portfolios can be seen as a way to increase student motivation and participation as students are using technological tools to demonstrate and capture their learning as they weave together their personal learning story.
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Challenges:
Many of the challenges related to using digital portfolios as a way of sharing a students personal learning story is an issue regarding lack of access to appropriate devices as well as lack of training for teachers (Harley, 2007). Quite often districts will have money to purchase devices but do not have sufficient funds to train teachers and provide release time meaning many teachers are self taught in programs and may be lacking some pertinent information. While it is assumed that students are familiar with digital media, the extent to which students are is not always equal; therefore teachers should not assume that students are knowledgeable about the educational use of technology but should also be able to teach the skills required (Tapscott, 2008). Finally, teachers need to be mindful of their local and provincial guidelines that govern student privacy (for example FOIPPA in BC) when publishing any student information online or in a cloud server hosted in a foreign country. |