From the Stone Age to the Digital Age - I've Witnessed the Evolution of Portfolios

Back in the Day
Back in the stone age, when I first began teaching, we kept paper portfolios - manilla expanding folders with an elastic closure, to be exact.  Starting in kindergarten teachers would collect writing samples for each student.   The portfolio would get passed on from year to year from teacher to teacher.  I taught fifth grade, and after 6 years, the students had a wonderful collection to showcase how their writing evolved over the years.  At the end of fifth grade, we had a celebration of learning during which the students would receive this portfolio wrapped up with a bow that students took home.

Does anyone else remember using 
this as a portfolio?
https://images.app.goo.gl/GfpVq64kKKUDy8P87

I remember receiving this big basket of portfolios each fall.   I enjoyed looking through the files and seeing the work that students had done over the years.  After looking through those writing samples, I felt like I had a little idea of who that child was as a writer.  The writing pieces did not come with any student reflection, but students did get to help determine which pieces went into the file.  After a few years, the practice of keeping that portfolio disappeared.  Some teachers never looked at the portfolio that was passed on to them.  Others complained they took up too much space.  So, the portfolio idea went to the wayside.

But, I liked the idea of a portfolio, so in fifth grade, we began to keep a binder portfolio.  The binder had dividers for each subject area, and students stored all "graded" work in that portfolio for the grading period.  Each week, students would look through any assignments that had been returned to them and choose at least one to write a reflection about.  Students stapled a little reflection slip to the work to explain why they chose that assignment.   In this binder, students also had a goal setting sheet per grading period.  Students would identify an academic and social goal and the steps that they were going to take to accomplish that goal.   Periodically, we'd ask students to think about what they were doing to work toward that goal, but there was no formal reflection recorded.  The binders would go home every week for students to share with parents.  At the conferences, the binder would be shared with parents as evidence of students' grades, it was taken home, emptied out, and returned to fill up for the next grading period.  We continued that practice until I left teaching that grade level for the position I have now. 


Joining the Modern Era

In the last few years, since I work with students from kindergarten through fifth grade, I've tried to find different ways to capture and share student work that integrates with what teacher are already doing.  Also mentioned in 10 Good Options for Building Digital Portfolios, my favorite student digital portfolio so far has been Seesaw for Schools.  We piloted that tool for about half of a school year and everyone - students and teachers

and parents - loved it!  We had so much positive feedback about it being easy to use,

intuitive, and allowing parents to clearly see their child(ren)'s progress.  By conferences, there was so much evidence of each child's learning that parents had access to on a daily basis, conferences were very easy.  Unfortunately, our district did not decide to purchase Seesaw for Schools moving forward.  While the free version is still a great tool, it does lose some of its capabilities for collaboration among teachers and over the years.  Teachers are still using it, and parents are still loving the window it provides into each child's learning journey.

In 7 Important Questions Before Implementing Digital Portfolios, George Couros wrote about learning versus showcase portfolios and challenged us to think about what happens from year to year.  With the capability to create folders, a portfolio on Seesaw can be,  both, a learning portfolio and a showcase portfolio depending on how a teacher sets it up.  Seesaw for Schools allows those learning journals to be cumulative from year to year as well.  Now that reminds me of what I used to do back in the day with the writing portfolio that I mentioned earlier, but the digital portfolio has even greater potential because it can be shared with an authentic audience, it provides the opportunity to receive feedback, and it can be revised.   As mentioned in the interview with Matt Renwick about his book A Whole School Approach to Connected Learnings and Continuous Assessment, a digital portfolio tool can motivate and empower students.  I saw this first hand when students began using Seesaw to document their learning.  It provided clear evidence of learning that supported report card grades and conference conversations.  It warehoused formative assessments and created a powerful communication tool from school to home and beyond.  In some cases, it reached across the country to grandparents or distant family members or even to other connected classrooms with Seesaw's blog feature  - all of which provided an authentic audience to even our littlest learners.   

As young as first grade, our students are learning to provide each other feedback using the TAG acronym. 
Tell something you like about someone's work
Ask a question about their work
Give a polite suggestion to make their work even better. 

Students are reading the feedback they receive from others, thinking about how they can improve their work, and making revisions.  Isn't that what continuous learning is all about? I agree with the teacher in the video Self-Assessment: Reflections for Students and Teachers when she tells her students that if their work does not meet the criteria then they are not done.  Digital portfolios can be a powerful and empowering tool for motivating students to invest in their own growth as a learner.