Week 3 Reflections

I have always regarded the use of e-portfolios as a tool in education as a great idea that really doesn't fit with where eduction is today.  I have really viewed them as being a little late on the scene in terms fitting in with how teacher's assess students.  I think teachers, especially elementary teachers, used portfolios much more in the past because at the lower grade levels, Kindergarten in particular, traditional grades were not given out; portfolios were used to display student progress.  I am not sure how much assessment was going on.  Even today, I think portfolios are still used in the very early years of formal education for this purpose.  Today, standardized testing is such a focus even in the upper elementary grades, that portfolios as assessment tools don't make much since in terms of meeting goals or time allotment.  HOWEVER,...that was my thinking prior to this week. 

I think the philosophy of using portfolios as assessment for learning is right on target.  Employing this philosophy works around many of the standing issues facing the use of portfolios in the educational environment.  I've always been concerned about the use of portfolios for summative assessment due to issues with subjectivity associated with how teachers evaluate portfolios and how these tools would be standardized to fairly evaulate students across different SEC and cultural groups.

Portfolios as assessment for learning should also leverage the positive uses of portfolios: student engagement, developing student self-learning, producing authentic works, and teacher-student collaboration in the learning process.  I think that the most important of the 10 research principles for AFL identified by Black & William is that AFL develops learners’ capacity for self-assessment so that they can become reflective and self-managing.  As an educator, this speaks to the most important aspect of education in my opinion: develop learners who have a passion for learning.  I think that a key characteristic of true learners is the ability to evaulate their own learning and to be able to modify their learning approach to be successful at any given time and in any situation.  This is a powerful effect of portfolios within the AFL philosophy.

Becoming involved with creating my own portfolio will help me to work through the issues that students will experience when developing their own portfolios.  I think the most difficult part of working with the e-portfolios is managing the organization and format to produce a unified collection that can be viewed from a meaningful perspective rather than as a random, disconnected grouping of information.  Hopefully by working through this process, I will be able to better support and collaborate with students as they develop their own portfolios.