It’s clear that one of the changes needed in education is to personalize learning. This goes hand in hand with competency based education and blended learning. A focus on all three of these areas is key to the futuring of education. The following resources (articles and webinars) effectively discuss the importance of personalization, blended, and competency based learning in the revisioning of schools and learning environments:
- Education Transformation: From One-Size-Fits-All to Student-Centered Learning – Part One
- Education Transformation: From One-Size-Fits-All to Student-Centered Learning – Part Two
- An Introduction to Competency-Based Education
- New iNACOL Report Published on Implementing Competency Education in K-12 Systems: Insights from Local Leaders
Key to these changes are shifts in how we assess competency and achievement of standards and learning outcomes. Done correctly, there could be a place for standardized assessments and one-size fits all local assessments. But more importantly, we need to develop a system of assessing which allows for student voice and choice in how learning and understanding is expressed. This is where portfolios come in. This is clearly not a new concept but one that is underutilized in the majority of K-16 education.
Portfolios offer students opportunities for voice and choice, increased ownership of learning, and build a sense of self-efficacy. A portfolio assessment system engages students in reflection and goal setting, amplifies student work and learning, and fosters growth mindset thinking. These are a just a few of the many benefits of a portfolio-based assessment system. There are, however, some questions, systems, and structures that need to be carefully considered when embarking on the journey toward assessment through student work such as
- Who will collect and post?
- When and where?
- What platform will you use?
- what digital platform will be utilized to collect artifacts?
- How often will you collect, post, reflect?
- Who’s the audience?
- What needs to be in place prior to implementation?
- What skills do students need?
- How will this be used as part of an overall assessment system?
These are all important questions to add to your portfolio action plan but the focus for the remainder of this article are the following questions: will the portfolio contain hard copies of artifacts, digital, or a combination of the two formats and what digital platform will be utilized to collect artifacts? When I was in the classroom, portfolios were a key component of my overall assessment system. Management of the portfolio was critical to the overall success of this process. Student portfolios were a combination of hard copy and digital work. Digital work was posted on a student blogging page and reflected on by both myself and students. This was quite effective, but still cumbersome. I was constantly seeking a more streamlined, student-driven way of capturing digital work than a blog which the developers of the See Saw: Learning Journal app have achieved.
See Saw was designed to support student-driven digital portfolios. The interface is well-designed and easy to use, empowers students and engages parents. See Saw is available for both iOS and Android devices. Teachers, students and parents can also use Seesaw on the web and it’s free for teachers and students, and has a free and paid version for parents.
Students can add artifacts to their portfolios by taking pictures of their work (in the case of a worksheet or other physical item), by writing about what they’ve learned, or by shooting a short video to record something they have learned. Students can add voice comments to their pictures to clarify what their pictures document.
The video below summarizes the key features of See Saw:
If you’re considering portfolios, I recommend checking out the See Saw app. The links below direct you to the web-based site, the iOS and Google Play version of the app, and the See Saw Help Center.