Digital Student Portfolios

Most of the time, school performance is not like performance in other arenas. In music, we want people to play something for us. In sports, we want people to show us our skills. Performance in school is filtered through test scores and letter grades. When we ask students how they are doing in reading, we do not expect them to actually read to us or share their thoughts on a recent books they have finished. We expect to learn them to tell us a reading level or point to wherever they are on a rubric. But what does that mean? Have we lost sight of the actual value of the things we are attempting to measure and quantify? What if we looked at school work the way we attend practices, games, and recitals? In Digital Student Portfolios: A Whole School Approach to Connected Learning and Continuous Assessment (Theory and Practice, 2014), Matt Renwick, outlines the rationale for portfolio work in the twenty-first century, including how portfolios can motivate and empower students, provide evidence for report cards and school conferences, guide the instruction of teachers, and share school language with families.

His recommended books included the following:

• Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World by Heidi Hayes Jacobs
• Embedded Formative Assessment: Practical Strategies and Tools for K-12 Teachers by Dylan Wiliam
• Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World by David Perkins
  

Listen to the interview on New Books in Education.