Innovation Proposal

Leadership Binders to ePortfolios: Making the Switch

Dear HNES Teachers and Administration, 

     As you all are aware, currently at HNES, students use binders to document and showcase their work, achievements, accolades, and other projects. These Leadership Notebooks are also where students set and track goals and lead measures over their elementary career as it travels with them from grade to grade until they graduate 5th grade. But how are these binders stored and organized in between school years during the summer? They are collected by the teachers and stored in a classroom waiting to be picked up by the next grade level teachers to be distributed at the beginning of the new year. As we know, this takes up space and time. Aside from the technical aspect of the binders, students have few opportunities to take true ownership of their learning or reflections through the use of the binders and their limitations. 

     What if there was a different way to do this that not only saved time and space for the teacher, but also allowed the students to take more ownership of their learning and provided opportunities for more reflection of their work? Digital portfolios or ePortfolios is the answer. In this digital era, ePortfolios have entered the technological world as indispensable means of displaying school work, achievements, projects, and goals while fostering opportunities for further student led learning. By having students create their own ePortfolio, we would be cultivating more student engagement and creativity. Students would be able to reflect more on their learning and connect their learning to that of their peers, community, and real world experiences. The students would take ownership of their learning through the process of ePortfolios. With the change in curriculum involving Tech Time, this would be an innovative way to still allow for some student technology use and learning.  According to Boekaerts and Corno (2005), self-regulatory learning theorists:

"Students who self-regulate their learning are engaged actively and constructively in a process of meaning generation and that they adapt their thoughts, feelings, and actions as needed to affect their learning and motivation” (p. 201). 

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      ePortfolios would provide students with more opportunities to self-regulate their learning by reflecting on their work and making meaningful connections to the goals they have set for themselves. Benefits of making the switch include but are not limited to the above mentioned opportunities for reflecting and learning, but also would facilitate lifelong learning and would strengthen the connection between academic learning and real world applications.

     I am proposing to pilot the use of ePortfolios in my classroom in which students use their chromebooks and google accounts to create a website through Google Sites, Seesaw, or other appropriate platform to replace the use of physical binders that currently serve as their Leadership Notebooks. I plan to share the results and explore ways to use this in other classrooms over a 18 to 24 month period.

I look forward to collaborating with HNES to enhance student engagement and create leaders in learning through the use of ePortfolios.

Sincerely, 

Patricia Hamilton