Digital Portfolios
Weebly (Link)
Weebly is a user friendly website builder that allows flexible organization and design for a variety of types of websites. The company often keeps education in mind, adding tools that are useful for teachers and students alike.
In the website editor, students can create separate tabs for each of their works that they will display in their portfolios. Each tab could be a different "check in" during the year, allowing for growth the be visible and neatly displayed to others outside the classroom community. This service makes digital portfolios easy to showcase to others (great for program PR!). One recommendation would be to have students create QR codes for display during conferences or other events that can be scanned to bring people to their portfolios. Students could either sign up independently for their own free account and then share their address with you (which means everything will be public) or the teacher can sign up for a premium account and create student accounts under his or her profile ($40 a year, which includes 40 students and then ~$1 per extra student beyond that). |
Click here to see a sample weebly site set up as a writing portfolio
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Blogger (Link)
Blogger is a tool in the Google suite that allows users to maintain a blog and easily add more posts. Then others may comment on those posts, adding an interactive feature to the blog. Students can create accounts, and by posting to the same blog, all writings will be kept chronologically for students.
This technology would be convenient if you plan on have semi-frequent checks for writing skills, and will allow for students to be able to quickly go backwards and review their own growth and progress. Additionally, as these can either be privately shared (easy if you are a Google school) or public, these blogs can be powerful tools as PR for your department. They could be easily showcased to the community and administration to show students' abilities and to help show growth of specific, individual students. |
GoogleSites (Link)
Similar to Weebly, Google Sites is a fairly user intuitive website builder that students could use to create digital portfolios. If you are a Google School, this may be the choice for you, as it will make for easy sharing and access for your students to create sites and give you access as the teacher.
Students are given flexibility on how to display their works and can create separate pages for specific works they wish to use to show their proficiency. This can also allow students to display works that demonstrate their growth over the course of the year. By having students post different writings or different audio files throughout the course of the year, they have created individual portfolios that can be used to monitor growth for SLOs. Additionally, like the other examples, these sites can be made public to the world, allowing for them to become quick showcases of student work that can then be used as tools to display work to administrators and other community members. Click here to see a blank example of an online portfolio through Google Sites.
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EverNote (Link)
EverNote is primarily a note management cloud software that allows users to write themselves notes and access them from anywhere on the internet. However, it can easily be used as a place for student to keep writing samples throughout the year to share with the teacher or other people.
By signing up for a free account and then creating a specific "notebook" for the class, each student can share that notebook with the teacher via e-mail or a link. (If you have the students submit the link to a Google Form along with their names, then you have one document with all of their links in one document for easy access!). Students then do all of their writing work in separate notes within that notebook, which automatically update to anyone that has access to the shared notebook. Once again, it is an easy way to keep all student writing digitally in one place throughout the year, allowing for growth monitoring and to have tangible examples of SLO growth. |