First published in October 2017. Updated June 2020.
More and more coaches are detecting the importance of having their students construct some use of digital existence. A locate to captivate, share, be borne in mind, and showcase learning and achievements.
Blogging is an excellent way for students to create their own online space, but what do you call this?
Simply a student blog? Digital portfolio? ePortfolio? Learning showcase? Blogfolio? Portfolio
This post explores a range of approachings to student blogs and digital portfolios to help you is starting on your own journey.
If you’d like to take a deep dive into student digital portfolios or blogfolios, check out our ultimate guide on the CampusPress blog. You’ll learn about the benefits, every kind of portfolios, how to choose a scaffold and manage it, student privacy, student artifacts, assessment, and more.
Blogs or digital portfolios can revolutionize the teaching and learning process. They volunteer so many advantages to students, faculty, and families. Here’s a summary of potential benefits for students alone.
Apart from students, a well-established ePortfolio program can help educators and heads with the never-ending assessment and reporting hertz. Portfolios can be transformative for families too and help to strengthen home-school relationships.
How To Set Up Student Blogs or Digital Portfolios
The first step is to decide what platform you’ll use for your blogs or portfolios. There are many alternatives these days and naturally, they come with pros and cons.
We believe WordPress should be at the top of your list in order to determine a portfolio programme. Okay, we admit we are biased as Edublogs and CampusPress are powered by WordPress.
Why WordPress? It comes down to 4 key areas 😛 TAGEND
Popularity: 37% of the web is powered by WordPress Exportability: Students can take their data with them Flexibility: WordPress is about more than really blogging; it’s highly customizable Authenticity: Tools built for education may be less relevant when students step outside into the real world
We break down these 4 reasons for choosing WordPress in more detail in our complete guide to portfolios .
Want to try out digital portfolios yourself or with students before implementing a school-wide program? Edublogs, is perfect for that. You can get started today for free. Check out our Blogging 101 sheet to learn more or sign up on the Edublogs home page.
If you want a dedicated WordPress network for schools, universities, or regions, check out CampusPress. Please reach out if you want to talk more about this school-wide option. Our team can help you go through your options in more detail.
One really useful management feature exclusive to Edublogs and CampusPress is My Class. It makes the hassle out setting up, monitoring, and managing student blogs or digital portfolios.
Learn more about My Class in this post.
Digital Portfolio Terminology
Many professors refer to their student blogs as digital portfolios, ePortfolios, or simply portfolios( after all, here in the 2020 s is the modifier “digital” absolutely required ?).
Academics and conceived leaders often debate the meaning of the term digital portfolio. What does this symbolize? What does it look like?
We fairly like this definition from Irish National Council for Curriculum and Assessment( via EUfolio, 2015 ),
ePortfolios are student-owned dynamic digital workspaces wherein students can capture their learning and their ideas, access their collectings of study, be borne in mind their learn, share it, placed objectives, seek feedback and showcase their learning and achievements.
Perhaps a beneficial alternative call is “blogfolio” which Silvia Tolisano describes as the cement that can hold it all together in learning.
Blogfolios are the glue that can hold all curricular content, goals and objectives as well as corroborate institution initiatives, statements, assessment and accountability requirements or personal rages, interest and projects together.
Image by Silvia Tolisano used with permission
Digital portfolios? Blogs? ePortfolios? Blogfolios? Ultimately, the terminology you choose to adopt in your clas or university is up to you, however, firmnes across your campus is definitely a good project!
For the purpose of this berth, we are less concerned with semantics and more concerned with exploring the different frames that teachers endorse. Hopefully considering how other professors approach student blogs and portfolios will give you some notions on what would work for you and your students.
Belief and Frameworks: Six Vogues of Portfolio
We have mentioned variations in how student blogs and portfolios work in a variety of areas. There appears to be a spectrum in at least six key areas 😛 TAGEND
Let’s break down these six areas and consider where you might sit on each side of the spectrum.
1. Duration
Some student blogs or portfolios are only active for a year. The student might move up to a non-blogging class and their individual portfolio remains stagnant. This can be frustrating for teachers who invest time in establishing an effective system for their student blogs or portfolios. It are also welcome to baffling for students.
Other societies contemplate ahead with a whole-school approach. At The Geelong College, which operates their own CampusPress platform, there are still long term plans.
Former Director of Teaching and Learning, Adrian Camm, explains the philosophy :
…each student from Year 4 to Year 10 at our College will have a digital portfolio that follows them throughout their time at the College and has a unique identifier accessible on the web. The ability to export their contents easily when finishing Year 12 to be used in the tertiary admittance process or in future work works has also been a key point…
When thinking about implementing an ePortfolio program, some class or institutes feel most comfortable starting tiny — perhaps having ePortfolios in aviator trends or classifies. This can be a good way to begin but we accompany the greatest benefits when portfolios are implemented school-wide, department-wide, or in more than one course at a time.
There are three main benefits of having the same portfolio or website across class and from year-to-year. Why? There are a number of reasons 😛 TAGEND
The focus can move from the technology to the content and learning Progress can be documented from time to year and class to class It’s more meaningful and more impactful
Read more about these three intellects in our terminated leader to digital portfolios.
Consider: If you’re investing time in establishing student blogs or digital portfolios, how can you showcase this to the wider school community and cause administrators to establish a school-wide plan?
2. Privacy
Should blogs be public or private? This is always a contentious issue.
Our complete guide to digital portfolios , explores this issue in detail. When you use a WordPress located stage like Edublogs or CampusPress, you have a lot of selects. You can have your whole structure of portfolios protected by passwords, or alternatively, individual portfolios or even special affixes is likely to be password protected.
This graphic from our complete guide summarizes the pros and cons of public digital portfolios or blogs.
It’s important for students to realize that there are times when our act ought to be private. Students ought to be steered to make decisions about what work they want to share publicly and what they want to keep private.
Consider: What are the pros and cons of having student blogs as public? If you manufacture student locates entirely private, will you be giving up all the strong advantages of affixing publicly? Can you have a compromise where some berths on a portfolio are public and some are password protected? Instead, students can use pen names and avoid sharing photos of themselves. Blocking search engines is another programme to consider.
3. Content
What will form the content or artifacts in your student blogs or portfolios? What will they actually publish?
At one aspiration of the range is total freedom where coaches are less concerned about what the students are writing about, and more concerned about the students simply publishing and experiencing a voice.
At the other end of the range, some teaches witness the blogs as a gap that must be in line with the curriculum and support what is happening in the classroom.
Certainly not ever, but sometimes the age of the students influences this issue.
Julie Moore in Tasmania, Australia, taught score 2/3. The students began by contributing to the class blog before some students establish their own blogs. Julie says,
The children principally have a free spin on what they would like to write a post about. It gives them an shop for writing about their passions/ interests, and it then gives me an “in” for feedback and improvements to their writing.
Julie understands that the students do require some explicit teaching around blogging. She receives The Student Blogging Challenge a great room to achieve this. In addition, she races a midday guild and a weekly timetabled blogging session.
Heather Alexander in Florida teaches year 9-12 ceramics. Her students use their blogs strictly to substantiate and reflect on their own artwork, and respond to the curriculum. Teaching the same class multiple times, Heather has come up with a logistical framework to organize the student blogs,
What I have done is name all the students’ blogs with their class period prefacing the name so they appear in order on the page.
Heather fosters students to comment on classmates’ blogs and set up an effective system after discovering students were taking too long to find a pole to comment on.
I have students work in” peer blog instructor ” radicals. They self-select a group of 3 -5 peers and then I coincide their radical with a group in another class. I moderate the comments so I can check for accuracy and consummation before they are published.
This idea touches on the additional issue of feedback. Who will be supported feedback to your student bloggers? Will you put up a peer organisation like Heather? Or will you personally see blogs? What are your goals for feedback? Simple encouragement and conference? Or scaffolding to reach learning purposes? All questions to consider.
Can your blogging framework involve set tasks and exemption?
Somewhere in the middle of the freedom/ design debate, is the approach adopted by Adam Geiman , an professor from Pennsylvania. He use the first 30% of the school year to provide structure around tasks for his fourth tier students.
The students were given guidance, more likewise had some freedom of choice in how they’d present set tasks. Some would do a Google Doc, while others would present their task as a comic, infographic etc.
For the remaining 70% of the school year, students were given more freedom and countless came up with their own notions on what they wanted to publish. For example, Jackson announced the new school trout, while Brooklyn talked about her brand-new glass .
In our ended guide to digital portfolios we have a whole chapter on student artifacts. You’ll be able to do a lot of notions on the sorts of things students could publish in their portfolios or on their blogs. These include 😛 TAGEND
Text including hyperlinked writing Images, photography, and artwork Video Audio Social media Other embeddable content
Consider: What are the needs of your students? Are you trying to engage them in the blogging process and help them find a voice? Or are you wanting the blogs to be a vehicle to demonstrate curriculum outcomes? Are these two things mutually exclusive?
4. Reflection
Some form of thinking is often a key boast of digital portfolios or blogfolios.
Students can reflect on what they’ve learned, their successes and “failures”, their problem-solving operations, and their future plans or aims. Contemplative enters can give professors an insight into how students are learning, rather than just what they have learned.
Educator Jabiz Raisdana, has documented some compelling anticipates on student blogging. He advocates for freedom, stating that 😛 TAGEND
If you want your students to blog effectively, give them the freedom to experiment and write about what interests them.
Stay away from portfolios and forced thoughts on their see, at least until they get the hang of it.
Wait until they find a expression, find an audience … before you push your schedule of meta-cognition and pondering learning.
Perhaps on the other end of the spectrum is the argument from Matt Renwick in his blog announce ‘Think You’re Doing Digital Portfolios? Think again ‘.
Of course, all of the announced artifacts of student hear are accompanied with thinking, self-assessment, and goal naming for the future. Otherwise, it’s simply sharing content. Nice, but not necessary for students’ education.
Many educators use a mixed approaching; sometimes they explicitly foster thought and at other experiences they cause the students decide how to structure their posts.
What about our youngest students? How can they reflect?
Using implements like voice records is available with students with surfacing literacy skills the chance to reflect. Kindergarten teaches Aviva Dunsiger and Paula Crockett include student interviews and thinkings that volunteer a rich insight into learning.
These innovative coaches have created a special section of their blog called The Daily Shoot where student learning is captivated and shared.
Following in her students’ footsteps, Aviva even uses a blog of her own to reflect. What a mighty combining!
Consider: Most professors agree that some sort of student reflection on read is potent. How can you incorporate this into your student blogs or portfolios without offsetting the process a hassle or turn students off the happiness of blogging?
5. Style
Would you like your students to substantiate their best work, their see journeyings, their analysi aftermaths, or a mix?
In general, there are four types of student blogs or portfolios 😛 TAGEND
Showcase or rendition: a accumulation of best slog Process or learning: a work in progress Assessment: used for accountability Hybrid: a mixture of two or three of the above
This is a tough decision, but also one that can derive as you go along. It likewise relates back to the public/ private debate. Do your students crave every evidence of learning as part of their digital footprint?
Again, there is certainly middle ground. George Couros has reflected on his dilemma about what result of this spectrum he would sit on: “growth” or” best creation “.
Since there are benefits in both options, it was tough to decide on one, so we eventually exited with the decision to go with both. The “blog” portion of my digital gap allows me to share things that I am learning( like this article I am writing) while at the same time aggregating my very best stuff into lonely “pages”.
We take a deep dive into the types of portfolios you could use in our complete guide to digital portfolios.
Consider: Is there are type of blog or portfolio you think would best meet the needs of your students? Unsure? Some lecturers find it’s easiest to start out with a showcase portfolio, or a collection of best handiwork. From there, they can evolve into the process or hybrid approaching. Consider the starting point that feels right for you.
6. Control
Many of these five domains are underpinned by the question of control. Who is in control? The teach or the students?
Can there be a gradual exhaust of limitation as the students become older and more experienced?
Perhaps there are some small aspects of their blog or portfolio that even the youngest students can have some self-restraint over?
For example 😛 TAGEND
Their name Theme Choice of implement or announce format Where they leave observations
Will you always tell students what they need to publish on their portfolios or will they have alternative? Can students have some say into whether they crave their work to be public or private?
Most schoolteachers would agree that it’s important to consider how students can be in charge of their own learning. Digital portfolios and blogging proposal a lot of potential for student-centered learning.
The My Class tool also allows you to hand over responsibility as “youve selected”. You can begin by moderating all student positions and explains, and then turn off these settings as appropriate.
There’s a lot to be said for the power of choice and ownership to motivate students to improve.
The overarching purpose of portfolios is to create a sense of personal owned over one’s attainments, because ownership makes feelings of respect, responsibility, and dedication.
Paris and Ayres( 1994)
Consider: If you feel disagreeable yield students too much choice first, how can you plan to gradually hand over responsibility or offer them small but meaningful hand-pickeds? How do you think autonomy, discretion, and select will contribute to improving your students’ reason for read?
Conclusion
Are your student blogs or portfolios igniting a obsession for discover or are they just another duty to be completed?
How can you set up digital portfolios or blogfolios that allow for rich learning, imagination, agitation, deep reflection, collaboration, and faithfulnes?
These are some key questions to ask yourself but in the end, sometimes you really need to throw in the canoe and start paddling.
Figure it out as you go. There is a big education community and supportbehind you.
Don’t give panic or indecision around student blogs freeze you into inaction. Worrying too much about whether you’re” doing it right” can be achieved through not doing it at all. At different levels, student blogs and portfolios provide benefits. Embrace them.
We would love to hear your suggestions. Provide comments and share your thoughts on student blogs or portfolios.
Read more: theedublogger.com
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