E-Portfolios and You

As a teacher or even a practitioner in a different field of work, do you keep track of your achievements?  These achievements can be seminars or workshops you have conducted or attended, newspaper clippings in which you are included in the articles, your teaching license, current certifications, and etc.  In a nutshell a portfolio can illustrate your personal and professional growth.

I revisit my 3 ring-binder portfolio perhaps once a year, considering I have been out of teaching since 2006.  I have certificates, newspaper articles, performance appraisals, conferences I have attended, articles, my current teaching license, copy of certifications, and past transcripts in my portfolio.  Right now it is located in my office at home. But as technology has advanced so has portfolios.  In fact, a lot of people are using the web to create e-portfolios. 

Think about all the features you could use for an e-portfolio.  You could add videos of yourself teaching your students (an online observation if you will) and instead of making copies of all of your certificates and achievements you could scan and upload the documents to your personal e-portfolio website.  Not to mention, you don’t have to go through the hassle of finding where you put your portfolio last because you can just use your url time and time again.

Learning how to create a e-portfolio is also a great unit to introduce to students when covering web essentials. Take the survey to the right of the page and let me know your position on e-portfolios.