Research+Project



During 2006 I was particularly interested in how electronic portfolios could be used for formative and classroom based assessment. As our school integrated the use of ICT tools and in particular Web 2.0 tools more, I wanted to see how effective an e-portfolio would be to share student learning with parents.

I began by seeking information through online resources, attending sessions at conferences, visiting classrooms and speaking to teachers who were using e-portfolios and by reading current literature. I also trialled a variety of software programmes in order to assess what might work best for our School.

From my research I found that the electronic portfolio enabled students to use the available technology to share their learning. It gave the students an opportunity to express their own voice and be creative, showing their individuality. The e-portfolio was also very much inline with our formative practice and improved student self esteem.

The students were able to collect and include artifacts of many media types (audio, video, graphics and text)

During 2007 I worked with 3 classes at our school to use e-portfolios alongside their hard copy portfolios. We used iWeb as our preferred software programme. We didn't have a .Mac account so wrote the information collected to CD roms and sent them home for the students to share their learning with their parents. At the end of a full year trial I sent home a questionnaire to ask parents and students their views on the learning that had taken place.

We received very positive feedback from our parents and the students loved sharing aspects of their learning they did not normally get the opportunity to share like their recorder playing which had been included in a Quicktime movie with an oral self reflection. Viewing their reading and public speaking had a huge impact on their self assessment which became much more accurate.

iWeb was easy for the students to use as it used all the i -applications readily. Unfortunately because we were not up loading directly to the web we had a lot of issues with parents who were unable to view content due to their particular computers at home.

We also had a lot of network problems so decided to try using an online e-portfolio through a Wikispace in 2008.

This has been most successful. Two classes have successfully been using Wikispaces.com to run their eportfolios which have included movies, podcasts, blogs, digital images of their art samples, samples of their writing and of course and opportunity for parents to respond to the student learning through a texty comment box on their home page.

This whole research project has been very rewarding but also very frustrating at times. My vision for the future is to have more classes join those who already have online portfolios in 2009 because the value of he students being able to se;f reflect and share their learning instantly withe their families is a very powerful tool.

An example of a Year 4 student's e-portfolio can be viewed at https://georgiagcarncot.wikispaces.com/ password february