Written by:
Mary Allen Gorham
May 1996
Since the fall of 1994, the Carrie E. Tompkins Elementary School in Croton-on-Hudson, NY has gradually been implementing an innovative means of capturing and displaying student work using computer technology through "digital portfolios." These electronic collections of student work mirror in many ways the paper portfolios students have been using in this school since the spring of 1994. Still in their infancy stages, these digital portfolios have been a fun way for students and teachers to present work in more appealing ways than paper portfolios allow. As leaders in this school look to the future, their hope is that these digital portfolios will also allow for the enhancement of instruction by enabling students, teachers, and parents to analyze large amounts of work quickly, easily, and in more interesting ways than through paper portfolios. They also see that digital portfolios have the potential to enhance the assessment of student work, should they choose to use them for this purpose. While this potential has not yet been tapped, the process of implementing digital portfolios has helped this school learn about the pedagogical purposes, uses and audiences for portfolios in general, as well as some interesting applications of technology in particular.
I would like to express my appreciation to the many people who made this case possible. First, thanks to David Niguidula, Michelle Riconscente, the Coalition of Essential Schools, and IBM for their generous technical and financial support of this project. Second, thanks to Dr. Sherry King, Superintendent, for her thoughtful and strong leadership regarding school improvement in general, and digital portfolios in particular. Third, thanks to all the members of both the District and CET Technology Committees in Croton who allowed me to observe their meetings and showed through their example what hard work is involved in bringing digital portfolios into a school. Finally, and most of all, a big thank you to Lauren Campbell, principal of the Carrie E. Tompkins Elementary School. Lauren has given many hours of her time to answer countless questions, review drafts, and facilitate my meetings with others in her school. Her assistance has been invaluable, and her good humor much appreciated.
The Carrie E. Tompkins (CET) Elementary School educates students in grades K-5 in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, a town about 32 miles north of New York City. Serving 620 students, the school is the sole elementary school for this predominantly white, upper middle class, suburban community of 7,000 people. After graduating, students are served by one middle school and one high school in this Croton-Harmon Public School District. The area's hills and trees provide a peaceful ambiance for the many artists, New York City commuters, and local merchants who reside here. The town's taxpayers have been strongly supportive of their three public schools over the years, passing budgets and bond issues whenever needed. The school's teachers have been stable, with eighty percent of them having at least 15 years seniority at CET. Leading them is Lauren Campbell, the school's principal since November 1992.
Throughout the Croton-Harmon School District, Superintendent Dr. Sherry King encouraged a culture of innovation. With King's full support, Campbell attended a meeting convened by the New Standards Project during the autumn of 1993, and became excited by the potential of paper portfolios to help teachers and students look at students' work in new ways. In addition to helping chart learning over time, these folders of student work provide the means for rich discussions between student and teacher; discussions which, in turn, can profoundly impact instruction.
During the spring of 1994, Campbell asked all teachers to each choose two students to keep paper portfolios of their work during the '94-'95 school year, so that they could test the usefulness of this methodology. Unlike some other school staffs around the country, the CET staff decided to use the portfolio as an instruction and learning tool rather than an assessment tool. As a result, they did not develop and use descriptive assessment measures, or rubrics, to evaluate student work. Rather than being concerned primarily with how children were learning relative to each other, the staff wanted to see how each child's learning progressed relative to previous points in time. To support their experiment, Campbell regularly distributed articles on portfolios to her teachers, and hosted monthly staff development meetings and parent meetings on the topic. For the next year, the staff discussed the research, examined actual portfolios, and shared with each other how these portfolios have directed their instruction as well as their conversations with students and parents.
As the spring progressed, teachers' interest in portfolios mounted. In June of 1994, all four fourth grade teachers decided they would pilot portfolios for their whole classes during the '94-'95 school year since the NY State Education Department was looking at alternatives to standardized tests for their grade level anyway. Four other teachers also chose to use portfolios for their entire classes.
By the autumn of 1994, momentum for portfolios had increased further, based on their previous year's work, and a portfolio plan was proposed by Campbell and revised by the school's faculty at their opening fall meeting. The stated purpose of portfolios in this plan was to "Collect-Select-Reflect-Direct", i.e. to help students collect their work, then select those pieces they are most proud of, reflect on it, and direct their learning as well as their teacher's instruction. The plan further explained the purpose of portfolios as:
After setting these general goals, Campbell and the staff outlined what they wanted students to include in their portfolios. Given the vast developmental differences between younger and older children, they decided to outline one set of expectations for what grades K-2 portfolios would include, and another for what grades 3-5 portfolios would include. These expectations are as follows:
All Grade K-2 Portfolios Include:
I. Table of Contents;
II. An entry slip on each piece;
III. Writing - 3 samples (early, middle, late), including revision;
IV. Reading- a grade level standardized running record; last one of the year with audio tape;
V. Math Assessment continuum: 1-3 pieces based on problem solving;
VI. Personal profile from student and parent perspectives;
VII. Reflection (only on writing)
VIII. For Kindergarten- concepts of print.
All Grade 3-5 Portfolios Include:
I. Table of Contents
II. 8 to 10 pieces*
III. An entry slip on each piece
IV. A reflection on at least 3 pieces
V. Pieces that demonstrate process & product
VI. 1 piece that demonstrates oral language
VII. Reading log noting date, title, genre, with help/without help
VIII. Letter of Introduction
*Drafts should be included with final copies
These expectations were intended to be the minimum expectations for all portfolios in addition to any experimentation with portfolio designs which each teacher would try. Students were asked to add to their portfolio for three years during kindergarten, first and second grade, before starting a new portfolio for third, fourth, and fifth grades. Monthly staff development was planned to support teachers in this effort, while meetings with parents were also held so they too could learn about portfolios.
Beginning in November 1994, and each February, May, and November since then, students involved in this pilot project choose 2-4 pieces of work of any subject that they are most proud of for inclusion in their portfolios. These pieces might be work they like the most or have worked hardest on, and not necessarily their "best" work in either their own eyes or their teacher's eyes. They then compare their work to previous work they have done, using the portfolio as a vehicle for this self-reflection and self-assessment. Rather than using a set of standards or other students' work as a basis of comparison, students are encouraged to look at where they are solely in terms of where they themselves have come. For students as well as teachers, the portfolio was (and still is) seen as helpful and nonthreatening.
While CET was doing its initial portfolio work, two other activities were occurring elsewhere. First, the two other schools in the District, the Pierre van Cortlandt Middle School and the Croton-Harmon High School, were exploring their own work with both paper portfolios and digital portfolios. They, too, were creating variations of the "collect-select-reflect-direct" process. Momentum was building district-wide for portfolio and digital portfolio usage.
Meanwhile, researchers had been exploring how technology could be used to support "exhibitions" (i.e. alternative assessments) at the Coalition of Essential Schools, a school reform group based at Brown University of which the District's high school and middle school are a part. David Niguidula, the Coalition's technology specialist, had completed a three-year study, funded by IBM, on general strategies for using technology for exhibitions.
In 1994, the Coalition and IBM were negotiating a new grant to continue the work on technology and exhibitions. One key component was to expand the set of schools using prototype digital portfolio software. Because of the factors listed below, the schools in Croton-Harmon School District were designated as three of the six research sites to be involved in the new grant. These factors included:
While unofficial reports that the grant proposal to IBM would be approved were received in July of 1994, the official report came in October, 1994. The project was approved as a two-year grant, extending from July, 1994 to June, 1996. The District as a whole would receive approximately
$200,000 for new IBM equipment, while CET's share would be over
$80,000 for 18 new computers with a variety of supporting software and hardware. IBM would be able to expand its technological presence in schools, while the Coalition would be able to learn, from a research perspective, how digital portfolios could benefit instruction. King, Campbell and their staffs would learn how all of it might benefit Croton's students.
As a first step, Niguidula and a Coalition software developer, Michelle Riconscente, met with Campbell and outlined what digital portfolios might look like. These digital portfolios would be an electronic filing, storage, and retrieval system which would enable the District to keep large amounts of student work in a small amount of space, and access and analyze it far more effectively than they could without the help of the computer. From the Coalition's perspective, CET was a good test site to see how digital portfolios might work in an elementary school. From Campbell's perspective, such an experiment with digital portfolios would guarantee that the school would be able to get a significant amount of hardware and software which it could use for multiple instructional purposes. In the process of the experiment, it also appeared likely that students would gain a valuable learning experience, and the school would gain positive press for being on the cutting edge technologically. Furthermore, they also would not have to worry about how to store bulky paper portfolios over time.
Excited, Campbell turned to her staff in January 1995 to see who might be interested in digitizing student portfolios, and received six volunteers. Collectively, the staff endorsed these six to begin a pilot project with digital portfolios, while the rest of the staff who had less familiarity with technology could watch.
As the prospect of new technology became a reality in the District in late 1994, both a District-wide technology committee and a CET technology committee were formed to help direct the change. The District-wide committee, composed of School Board members, as well as key administrators and teachers from each school, discussed District-wide issues regarding technology's purposes, uses, costs, and inter-school coordination. Meanwhile, the CET technology committee, composed of volunteer parents, one teacher from each grade level, and administrators in CET, made visits to eight other schools outside of the Croton District to learn what they were doing with their own advanced technology. One person sat on both the District-wide committee and the CET committee and was able to report the progress of each to the other.
On October 27, 1994, the District Assessment Committee met and debated an article which described two different purposes and approaches for portfolios. The first approach, called a "positivist" approach, uses portfolios primarily as assessment tools, while the second approach, a "constructivist" approach, uses them primarily as learning tools. As the group debated these two approaches, a clear preference for a constructivist approach emerged. The discussion highlighted several central questions for the Croton-Harmon District, none of which had to do with technology per se:
I. Why are we doing portfolios and who are they for?
II. What should their structure be? What information is worth keeping?
III. How do we know if what we are doing is any good? If we use portfolios for learning purposes only and do not use rubrics, how will our reporting of student work in the larger world mean anything?
The group finally decided that each school in the District needed to answer these questions for itself and define its own needs before much progress on digital portfolios could take place. Even knowing this, however, it was tempting for people to address questions about what a computer might or might not be able to do with a digital portfolio. King reminded them that they need to focus instead on what they wanted a portfolio to look like, and then decide how to make the technology do what they wished. For example, in the case of the fifth grade, the portfolio might show what fifth graders need to achieve in order to be ready to leave the school for middle school.
On November 30, 1994, Riconscente met with the CET technology committee to get their input for the initial design of digital portfolios at CET. The committee shared their philosophy of two separate digital portfolio formats, one for grades K-2, and the other for grades 3-5, and the contents for each (see above). As the group reviewed some actual paper portfolios, it quickly became obvious that the younger the children, the more they would need to rely on video, audio, and pictorial media rather than print media in their digital portfolios. Since video and audio required far more memory on a computer than does text, this meant the digital portfolios for the youngest children would require the District's most powerful machines.
Riconscente then shared a sample digital portfolio with the committee from the Coalition of Essential School's collection, and explained how its various menus, screens, and features worked. The committee learned what it meant to be able to access a document through several different access headings, and review the same document from multiple perspectives. Together they saw how the computer could help them check for a work's scientific content, then its writing style, and other relevant aspects. The committee eagerly asked Riconscente what the computer could and could not do, and how the Coalition's digital portfolio prototype contrasted with an existing software product called "The Grady Profile". Could the computer scan work written in pencil or did it need to be in pen? Did the main menu of the program need to outline their District's vision and goals for all students, or could it describe the nine common principles of good schools which the Coalition espoused instead?
While the committee's questions were sincere, both Campbell and Riconscente soon realized that people were thinking about what they wanted in their digital portfolio based on what they thought the computer and existing software could do, as opposed to asking Riconscente to design the computer program to do what they wanted from a pedagogical perspective. Technological constraints rather than learning objectives were starting to drive their thinking just as they began to drive the thinking of the District-wide Technology Committee a month earlier. Even when Campbell pointed this out, it was difficult for the group to make this shift.
At last, the group was able to send Riconscente on her way with a few directions: Use the school's outline of items to be included in paper portfolios as a guide for what they wanted in a digital portfolio. Make the menu for the K-2 digital portfolio entirely out of graphics rather than text so that all of the school's youngest students, including those who could not read, could access it. Help them get machines that are fast enough and have enough memory to handle all their mixed media needs. Set up a demonstration of the Croton-Harmon High School's digital portfolio on one of their computers so they could look at it and learn from it. Send them the learning outcomes from other schools working with digital portfolios (including schools in Kentucky, Maine, and New Hampshire) so they can compare them with what they may wish to use for their own digital portfolios. And finally, compose a "rough draft" of a digital portfolio which would meet their elementary school needs, and be prepared to show it to them in two months.
On January 25, 1995, a week before the CET Technology Committee reconvened with Riconscente, the District-wide Technology Committee convened with Niguidula to discuss its overall technical needs. At that time, Campbell explained that the CET staff was having difficulty explaining what their digital portfolio would look like since they were not sure yet what their paper portfolios would look like. They wrestled with questions such as how to get art, physical education, and music represented in the digital portfolio with scanners, video and audio equipment, as well as what their computer menus should look like. Should these menus list the academic outcomes they were seeking? Or should they list subject areas? Would it be confusing to list subject areas since their lessons often crossed academic disciplines?
Campbell related hardware questions they were considering as well. Should they add a color printer? Or would a color monitor suffice since they will have the original work as well? How many scanners would they need to scan student work? (And what will happen when children realize they can scan anything and everything?) Where were they going to store all this equipment before it was assembled? The questions were numerous. They finally decided upon 3 scanners as well as one color printer for the primary grades. Along the way, they realized that learning about new technology could be so time consuming that it was easy to forget why it was being ordered in the first place.
While questions of hardware, software, and the purpose of digital portfolios were whirling around committee tables, CET's other teachers were being introduced to computers as well. Through the NY State Board of Cooperative Educational Services (B.O.C.E.S.) teachers received four half-day training sessions over the months of January and February, 1995. Through this training, teachers became familiar with the very basics of IBM and Macintosh computers, and addressed years and years of computer phobia. Everyone was making progress in some way.
On February 1, 1995, Riconscente brought the CET Technology Committee a model digital portfolio from a high school in Kentucky for them to review collectively. On the first screen, the Committee viewed the name of the student with her photograph superimposed on it. The next screen contained information such as parental contacts, home address, etc.. Following this, the user moved to a third screen containing the key goals for all students, and the vision for the school's graduates. Beyond this screen was actual work this student had done and subsequently scanned into the computer. Next to this student work, Riconscente clicked on a list of performance goals, then a copy of the student's assignment, followed by an evaluation of the work. The committee learned that everything they saw could be examined in "View" mode in which the contents could not be changed, or "Update" mode in which they could change anything. The computer could display text, video, graphics, and audio.
As Riconscente's demonstration progressed, the committee's questions became more numerous and diverse:
Q: "Where will students' work be stored?"
A: "All work will be saved on a hard drive rather than a floppy disk."
Q: "Is the portfolio going to go with the child from year to year? Will they be able to edit past years' work?"
A: "Student work will be stored in a database. What they do with past years' work is your decision."
Q: "Can the format of the digital portfolio change from year to year?"
A: "Yes."
Q: "Will it still be necessary to maintain the paper portfolio for back-up?"
A: "Yes, for now at least."
Q: "Should people be waiting until the end of the year to decide what to put in the digital portfolio?"
A: "Probably not."
Q: "Are there going to be safety devices to prevent kids from taking out work?"
A: "We can put in different passwords."
At this point, Superintendent King interjected, "A more important question is 'who owns the work?' If it is the student, then it may be appropriate for him or her to delete work since this will become a constant selecting and resorting process."
Q: "On the elementary school level, will students put in their own work into the computer?"
A: "In Gorham, Maine, second graders are putting in their work with the help of fourth and fifth graders. Younger kids need the help of older kids."
Q: "How does kids' work get from fifth grade to the middle school?"
A: "Actually, that's no problem. You simply bring the disks of the work to the middle school."
At this point, Riconscente directed their attention to several tasks that would help organize the work as a whole. "We need to decide what is on the main menu of your digital portfolio. Specifically, we need to decide the structure, i.e. how you get from screen to screen, and the content, i.e. what kinds of things you include on each screen such as assignments, learning goals, and evaluations, etc..
King added several other tasks and questions for the group. Said she, "There are also educational questions that need to be addressed. For example, is the portfolio going to be used for assessment? Would work be previously assessed or would the computerized version be the assessment tool? Does a student need to demonstrate all the benchmarks you seek in grade 2 before going to grade 3?"
King's list of questions continued. "How do you want to present work? The Middle School started by showing individual disciplines while the High School started with an inter-disciplinary approach. Now the Middle School is moving toward something more general. So for CET, is it possible to build a language arts portfolio now for this year and then change the structure for math and science later?"
While Riconscente replied that it was possible to change the structure of the digital portfolio at a later point, several teachers encouraged the group to think about the needs of all their disciplines at once. The conversation moved on to technical aspects of the digital portfolio. Through a brainstorming process, teachers explained that they would like the computer screen to be in color, and show the student's name, picture, birthdate, address, phone, and parent's name. After some discussion, they decided the address and phone number was not important to include since this was on another database, and this particular digital portfolio was about student work. Other ideas included a short biography of each child, a self-portrait, and a device which automatically updated a child's age on the computer.
Riconscente explained to them, "If a student writes a poem, reads it out load, and draws a picture of it, this is a 'cluster' which can be called up on the computer and presented together. Many things can be clustered in the portfolios. Evaluations can be clustered. Student work can be clustered. You all simply need to decide where you want things to appear on the screen."
Said one teacher, "I like having subject areas. We think of things that way."
Replied another teacher, "What about Howard Gardner's seven intelligences?"
King interjected, "Why would some other menu be preferable to the subject areas?"
Replied the Gardner advocate, "I think it is good to get people to think more broadly."
The group resolved to review Gardner's seven intelligences and then decide. One person commented, "It seems like the technology lends itself to looking at the work from a number of lenses- subjects, intelligences, etc." The group considered starting with subject areas and then adding and modifying them later.
To this, Riconscente replied, "You don't want to have multiple main menus but you can."
New questions emerged from this line of thought. Asked one teacher, "Would the definition of goals for each subject change at each grade level or would there be K-2 goals and 3-5 goals?"
King answered, "This depends upon what you are using this for and that's a hard question you need to discuss over the next several weeks." Once again, technical questions led back to pedagogical questions.
"What other pieces of information might you want to have about a student and their work in this portfolio?" asked Riconscente.
The group brainstormed, and produced the following possibilities:
After the group completed its brainstorming, Riconscente asked the group, "What do you want on your main screen versus on screens you need to click to?" After some discussion, the group decided the main screen should include the prompt, the skills the assignment sought to develop, and the student's work. All other information would be on other screens. Riconscente relayed that she hoped she would be getting a new machine in several weeks so that she could begin to build all of this.
Finally merging the technical concerns with the pedagogical ones, the group asked perhaps the most basic question of all: "Why do we need technology to collect kids' work?" After some discussion, the group finally decided that the computer allowed them to have multiple lenses on students' work, as well as the ability to link multiple pieces of work and other information together in innovative ways. They decided it could serve as a learning tool without being an assessment tool, and ultimately, might even be so much fun that it would help students develop a love of learning. The committee's hopes were high, and the meeting was adjourned.
At the outset, the vision and plan for the second and third year of paper portfolios was to gradually set standards and rubrics, choose exemplars, and begin to look at portfolios as evaluation vehicles. Portfolios would be expanded to all students in all classes, and all parents would be involved in analyzing them. The purpose and process used for portfolios would be significantly expanded.
By the end of the first year (1994-1995) this vision had shifted. Campbell and many of her faculty members found portfolios to be extremely useful learning tools for helping students reflect on their work. They were fearful that if portfolios also became assessment vehicles, this original purpose would get lost, and conversations about the work would be significantly less rich.
At the same time as this shift in the staff's goals was occurring, word was spreading that New York State Education Department would be developing rubrics for portfolios. Should the State mandate rubrics for all portfolios, they reasoned, they would have to use them as assessment vehicles. In any case, it did not appear sensible for the staff to invest time in developing their own rubrics for them if, for either reason, they would not be used.
As the 1995-1996 school year began, the staff reflected both on how far they had come and how much was yet to be done. While they had hoped to have received all parts of their new computers the previous February, their first shipment of eighteen monitors were delivered on May 5, 1995, while the "brains" for these 18 machines arrived over the 1995 summer. Thirteen of them were delivered to a room designated as their new computer lab, while five of them went into each of five second grade classrooms. Thus, the school's original plans to put a few students' work into digital portfolios by the end of the previous year had to be postponed.
By September, 1995, the staff was ready to move ahead. Teachers were far more familiar with technology than they had been a year earlier, having had training on IBM and Apple hardware, and using software like Microsoft Windows and the word processing program, Clarisworks. A teaching assistant had also retired, enabling Campbell to hire a technical person to run the computer lab and help teachers in the classrooms with computers. A dozen parents also expressed their active interest and support. All the school needed now was the finalized digital portfolio software from Riconscente, and the first student work could be loaded. As the fall progressed, however, the wait for the digital portfolio software continued. These delays were frustrating for the staff, and Campbell found it difficult to sustain their enthusiasm.
However, while the CET technology committee waited for the digital portfolio software, the committee made progress in other areas. On November 9, 1995, the committee reconvened and set goals for both themselves and students in the area of technology usage. Their main goal continued to be increasing faculty comfort and familiarity with computers, while a number of new "sub-goals" were set.
Later in November, several outside people came to the District to help them begin networking all three schools in the town, the town library, and citizens in the community via electronic mail. Plans are in place for further wiring and an upgrading of the school's electrical system during the summer of 1996 so that this project might continue. As of May, 1996, a rudimentary network in CET is up and running, allowing for students to type in one room and have their work printed in another. By the summer of 1996, it is hoped that the bugs in this network will be fixed, and more uses of the network will be possible.
Finally, on January 26, 1996, the school received its digital portfolio software. At that point, Riconscente and Niguidula loaded the software at the school, and met with two fifth grade classes and showed them how to use it. While the video and audio component was still not ready to be loaded at that point, students and teachers could see what the text and graphics components of the digital portfolio looked like. Students and teachers alike were excited and began immediately inputting student work. Occasionally e-mailing or calling Riconscente and Niguidula with their questions after this meeting, the teachers began navigating a whole new medium on computers.
As students input their work, they found their digital portfolio software would allow them to categorize it four different ways. These four categories were chosen by the staff because they reflect the major ways in which the staff thinks about students' work, much more so than the academic subject categories or Howard Gardner's seven intelligences which had been considered earlier. The first of these four categories is a "problem solver self" category for math, science, or other projects in which they have solved problems. Other categories include their "communicator self", their "academic self" and their "social self". Each of these categories are listed in the main menu of their software, and enable students to cross-reference works as well.
In February, 1996, the technology committee realized that they could purchase a "dual platform" which would allow them to use their "Hyper-Studio" multi-media software on both their Macintosh computers and their IBM computers. Excited, they purchased the software and marveled at the photos, video, and audio they could add to the digital portfolio.
For an hour each week from February to May, students in the fifth grade dutifully input their work into their digital portfolios, scanning text and pictures, and recording voices and other sounds for the audio component. Thus far, a large quantity of print and audio work has been loaded, and many expect this to continue. Due to the memory limitations of their computers, however, very little video segments have been added, although many people hope this problem will be addressed shortly.
In April 1996, David Niguidula came to CET once again to meet with the two classes of fifth graders. Most students had input five or six pieces of their work into their digital portfolios. Niguidula and these fifth grade classes reviewed this work, and talked about stumbling blocks they had encountered along the way while inputting it onto the computer. Everyone was excited with the progress they had made.
As students, teachers, and administrators look to the future, many possibilities for digital portfolios lay open. First, many would like to include comments of teachers and parents on student work into the digital portfolios, and use them to enhance instruction and learning. Others would like to use the digital portfolio as an assessment tool. Most also look forward to the day when computer memory problems will be overcome, and video use will be commonplace.
Many also predict that several years from now, digital portfolios will be adapted for use by younger children in the school as well. To do this, new software with far more pictures needs to be developed so that the digital portfolio is more user friendly for these younger children. For the 1996-1997 school year, however, CET will be continuing its experiment with the two fifth grade classes only, and seeing how the addition of teacher and parent comments to the portfolios affects instruction and learning.
Beginning in the fall of 1996, six teachers will also be piloting the use of three annual academic goals for each of their students, and using the paper portfolio as a means of showing progress in each of these goal areas. The two fifth grade teachers who are already using digital portfolios will also use students' digital portfolios as evidence of progress. While the work in these students' paper portfolios and digital portfolios is the same, the added audio, video, and computerized presentation of the digital portfolios will add a new dimension to the way this student work is discussed.
All in all, Campbell and others have concluded that digital portfolios are a powerful presentation tool to augment paper portfolios. While they are not yet used as reflective and assessment tools, digital portfolios have taught students about technology, and provided them with an exciting way to display their work. The process of implementing them in the school has provoked interesting dialogues about instruction in the context of new technology. As staff members look ahead to the future, most expect these discussions to continue, and hope that the digital portfolio will be used by all grade levels for an expanded set of purposes.
David Niguidula
Coalition of Essential Schools
Annenberg Institute for School Reform