Building an ePortfolio: add a ShowMe to the mix!
I’ve spoken to many educators about how they might use ShowMe as a tool in their classroom and the idea of using them in ePortfolios and ePubs has come up many times. This is a fantastic use case and one that I hope to see more educators adopting. Portfolios on a whole provide an opportunity for reflection, to demonstrate progress, and to exhibit pride in ones work. Pride, I think, is the most important of the three to a student’s long term education. Pride builds confidence, it creates a hunger for learn more, and it encourages growth. It’s something that is missing from a lot of traditional educational opportunities and we need to inject it back.
That said, why do we need ePortfolios? Simple: the internet is forever, paper is not. An ePortfolio can follow a student from grade to grade, it’s not static like a stack of papers or a binder might be, and it can be easily searched with tags or good ol’ command + F. Best yet, it’s available to whoever you like, no matter their location in the world (everyone’s grandma is on the internet now, and she wants to send your work to her best friend). At the same time it will teach students to instill value in their work and direct their own course of study. As a result, they will also learn how to be better digital citizens and navigate media.
I’ve found a few places to host an ePortfolio like eduBlogs and foliospaces, as well as standard services like google sites and WordPress. I’ve yet to see a sleek timeless and simply designed example so if you know of any, I’d love to collect more resources. Also, if your students are including ShowMes on their ePortfolios, it would be great to see some examples!
