Gail Potratz
An ePortfolio is a digital way to show student growth and change in a way that numbers and letters on a report card cannot.
Generally, it is a collection of artifacts from students, but it goes beyond that as teachers and students learn how to use digital tools that allow collection of multiple forms of evidence that showcase student work and their reflection on it over a school year. An ePortfolio may even include the impetus for motivating students’ creation of their own learning goals. This technique works well in helping to develop independent learners of the future.
The foundation of the Teaching That Works model can be seen readily in the creation and use of ePortfolios. Some examples:
- Teachers collaborate with students in selection of artifacts.
- The reflective piece of the ePortfolio is the heart and soul of the process. Students begin to evaluate their own learning and decide what they need to improve and what they do well. Again, collaboration occurs; this may be from teacher, parent, grandparent, peers, etc., depending on how open the portfolio will be.
- It is a practical way to visually show, at a moment’s notice, the selected learning of a student over time.
- Incidental learning in technology, writing, and English will be embedded within this part of the job.
Following the Teaching That Works model, the course is job-embedded, collaborative, reflective, and practical.
Instructor: Gail Potratz, DMLC ’74
