Albany Senior High School/e-portfolios

Overview
At Albany Senior High School we use e-portfolios for a number of things:
 * In student learning, to celebrate success, monitor progress and seek feedback
 * In teacher learning, to collaborate on research projects, present finding and discuss learning, and
 * In Impact Projects to collaborate and monitor progress.

Students
By the end of week four, you need to have completed the following:
 * Join your tutorial group on the e-portfolio system.
 * Copy the Learning Profile template, customise it to you and share it with your tutor.
 * Edit the view access to include a secret URL and email this to your parents and/or caregive. You must CC your tutor in this email.

Set up your e-portfolio
Go to the start page (http://start.ashs.school.nz) and click on e-portfolio. This will log you into the system.


 * Set up your profile, search for your tutor and add them as a friend
 * Set up your Learning as Inquiry e-portfolio (use template: http://myportfolio.school.nz/view/view.php?t=Akofv8Mqvh7I6VIqVsd8)
 * Use these tutorials if you need to:
 * How to create an e-portfolio in Mahara
 * How to use a template in Mahara (copy a view).
 * How to create a group in Mahara
 * How to add feedback to an e-portfolio in Mahara
 * Update on your e-portfolio.
 * Checklist. Have you:
 * Invited your tutor to be a friend on the system?
 * Emailed your tutor the secret URL for your portfolio?
 * Emailed your parents/caregivers the secret URL for your portfolio?

Use it to improve your learning
There is a three-stage cycle you should follow when using your e-portfolio:

1. Gather evidence


 * For each of your subjects, you should choose an artefact that demonstrates your learning. Try to find evidence of a new concept you have taken on board or a new skill you are perfecting.

2. Getting feedback from teachers, peers and family. Once you have put an artifact into your e-portfolio and reflected on it, you should also use the feedback feature of your portfolio to seek suggestions from others on how you could have improved. Your teacher will probably have given you some feedback during the task; take this onboard and learn from it.


 * Share your portfolio with teachers, friends and family. Ask them to suggest things that worked well and things you could try to improve.
 * If the evidence you are using has been marked by a teacher, what feedback did they give you?

'''3. Reflect on your learning and set goals. '''When you complete some learning, you should always reflect on it so you can improve next time you do something similar. Some questions you could ask include:


 * What went well? What things could you have improved?
 * What made learning easier? Can you take this knowledge and make learning easier in other areas?
 * What other areas of learning does this information link up to? Can you take what you've learnt in one area and create success in another?

Staff
We also use e-portfolios with our staff professional inquiry research groups. This helps staff to showcase the learning they are doing in their inquiry groups and to share it with other teachers.

Staff Professional Inquiry Groups

 * Log into Myportfolio from the start page http://start.ashs.school.nz/
 * Send a friend request to Mark, who will in turn add you to the Staff P.I. Group. This means you will be able to see work from all of the staff P.I. groups. There is a screecast covering this here.
 * To add to a group view, log in, click the ASHS Staff Professional Inquiry Group, then click 'Views', then 'Edit this view'.

Advice for tutors

 * Make time. Set up a regular meeting with half your students one week and the other half the following week. Spend 10 minutes with each student going over their portfolio and discussing their next learning steps. Put it in your Google calendar and share it with your students.
 * Use a learning blog as a reflection tool. Each fortnight students should make a new learning blog entry answering questions like: 1) What is going well in my learning at the moment? 2) What am I finding difficult in my learning at the moment, and 3) What is one thing I can do in the next two weeks to support my learning. Have the student add this blog to their portfolio by using the 'recent blog posts block'. That way when they write a new blog entry, it will automatically appear on their portfolio.
 * Add each student's e-portfolio to you watchlist. (There's a link at the bottom of each e-portfolio). This will notify you when that portfolio is updated.
 * Have students add a secret URL to their portfolio and email that secret URL to their parents and CC you in the email. That way parents can see and comment on their teenager's e-portfolio.

Help videos
Use these videos to get to know the e-portfolio system better:

Examples of e-portfolios:


 * Combining technology and flexible learning spaces
 * Koha, the open source library management system
 * What can we do with m-learning?