In the past month I have rolled out portfolios for two of my classes – AP Music Theory and Arts Business & Technology. I started a few months ago by creating notebooks for each of my students. I then began collecting artifacts for each student – at that time mostly tests and written work that I scanned in, graded on my iPad with the help of a stylus. Dropbox,  and a notebook app that allows me to mark up PDF files. The paperless route for grading was really successful as I’m able to scan in tests, return them ungraded to students immediately, and then review the tests for corrections and revisions – all before they even receive their grades. In this way the students can become a part of their assessment process without the risk of them changing answers or fudging their own grades. Once my tests are graded they went right into the student notebooks on Evernote and that was that. I also tried out several different ways of organizing the student notebooks – first by class, with separate notebooks for students that might be in two different classes, but that became too cumbersome so I now have one portfolio for every child and all artifacts are tagged by class. Now if a student has three different music classes all of their work is kept in one notebook. I also experimented with several different ways to organize the notebooks (portfolios) into Stacks on Evernote. (Stacks are collections of related notebooks) I ended up creating several stacks for portfolio notebooks and they are labelled alphabetically. Once I was happy with my own workflow and they way I organized the portfolios I began sharing them with students.

The student reception was really good. Students not only loved the idea of having their work collected for them, but they also loved Evernote and several students began using it in their other classes as well. All of this serendipitously coincided with our school’s launch of B.Y.O.D., or Bring Your Own Device, so students are now able to access Evernote in any of their classes on either their smartphone, laptop or tablet and they will also soon have access to our school’s new wifi network. In addition to the student portfolios I also shared resource notebooks with students that contained copies of worksheets, study guides and other class handouts.

Next marking period I’ll continue to roll out my student Evernote portfolios to my performance classes. I’ve been collecting their work over the past few months as well, but now I’m also beginning to collect audio data, recorded performance tests and rubrics in order to create a true performance portfolio. Over the next few months I’ll also be looking into:

• Email – Teaching students how to email me their work through SmartMusic for inclusion in their portfolio which will be great for extra credit and practice work as I won’t have to create assignments in my SmartMusic gradebook. Once I teach students how to format the subject line of their email I’ll be able to forward the email to Evernote and have the note automatically filed in the correct portfolio – easy.
• Student Contributions – Allowing students to add to their portfolios and create notes. They should be able to do this from their free account as all of the notebooks are hosted at my paid account. I was worried about students deleting artifacts or changing grades, but that won’t be an issue as all of their work will be backed up on my own DropBox and students cannot really change their grades as their papers are graded by me by hand on my iPad – the worst they could do is delete an artifact, they will not be able to edit a PDF.
• Critiques – I’m going to have students listen to their own rehearsal recordings and critique their work right in dropbox. Before the end of this grading period students will report to our music lab and type up their critiques right in the lab. They’ll also be able to include a link to the recording of the ensemble right in the notebook.
• Rubrics & Resources – In addition to their portfolio, students will also have access to a notebook that will store the class rubrics, exercises, etc.
• Practice Journal – In the past I’ve experimented with practice journals using Edublogs, but they did not work. Students simply didn’t take the time to sit down at their computer each week to type up a reflection on their weekly practice. With Evernote, however, they use their phone or tablet to add audio and written reflections on the spot, right into their portfolio. I’ll probably use this exclusively with my private students and with my serious high school students who study privately and are college bound for music.

With the advent of the new required Student Growth Objectives in New Jersey, and new requirements to keep evidence of student growth I can think of no better way to track students in a music class. The portfolios will allow for recorded audio files which are essential to a music performance class. Evernote will also host video, so in the future I’ll also be able to include video of student work, concert recordings, screen casts of student presentations, etc.

If you’re creating student portfolios with Evernote, or if you’ve already done so, please let me know and share your comments below.

 Photo Credit: technovore via Compfight