The article “Electronic Portfolios: Blending Technology, Accountability & Assessment” focused on a joint project of the Woonsocket Area Career and Technical Center (a public school in Rhode Island) and an educational software company that designed electronic portfolio software specifically for the school’s goals and needs.   The objective of this collaboration was to create an assessment alternative to standardized tests.  The author, June Ahn feels that e-portfolios are a great way to have a standards-based assessment combined with the personal work of students.

According to Ahn there are many benefits to electronic portfolios.  The first is that through the planning of portfolio assessments schools create clear goals and standards.  The second is that students reflect on their work throughout the creation of their portfolio.  The third benefit is that teachers can contribute support and feedback to students as they go through the entire process.  And finally she included the fact that through the portfolio assessment, schools gained a clear view of student and school community progress in an organized and comprehensive package. 

Planning out how they were going to create a system that set clear objectives and was flexible enough to allow student to be creative took the most time.  The author explains that to do this they created templates which allowed schools to plug in standards and have students attach their work directly.  The article goes on to state that more work needs to done revise the software to make it even more specific to the classroom and school settings, but that through these pilot programs a lot has been learned so that future programs will be more efficient and affective for school use.

Reflection and feedback were critically important to the success of the program.  Students wrote a critique for every item they included.  Ahn includes that students stated their opinions of the assignments, how they felt they understood the standards and if they meet the requirements for the assignment.  Teachers then included their feedback to the portfolios.  A benefit to teachers noted by the author was that they could compare their evaluations with others and become develop consistent standards and methods.  In conclusion the author explains that e-portfolio development becomes a long-term project because of the need for reflection and revision as teachers, students, and administrators go through the process.

This article reminded me so much of what we are doing in class.  Based on the experience thus far with this course I completely agree that reflection and feedback are so important to the learning process.  It wasn’t stated in the article but the feedback from classmates is as important as that from the teacher.  This article helped reinforce many of my beliefs about the importance of technology integration.  One thing that I would have like Ahn to include in the article was student reflections on the e-portfolio program.  Their opinion on the subject would have been interesting.

Ahn, J.  (2004) Electronic Portfolios: Blending Technology, Accountability &     Assessment.  T HE Journal, 31, 9.