The Best Digital Portfolio Tools for Students

When students share their projects with peers, they have a chance to see different solutions to the same task. It is extremely beneficial to see how other people tackle projects since it expands your knowledge. Doing so, students have a chance to reflect on their learning process and evaluate their results. Reflection allows improving the learning process and approach tasks in different ways.

Digital portfolios help students to evaluate their growth and show their projects to the world. Implementing them in classwork might be a beneficial practice. Let’s discuss this idea in more detail.

Types of portfolios

Portfolios can serve different purposes. In general, we can divide them into the following groups:

• Fine-tuned projects for a wide audience

These are portfolios where students publish their successful projects that gained awards. Doing so, they share the best materials they have, which may connect them with professionals and same-thinkers. Also, such practice allows students to feel themselves as members of a global community. Their voice matters, which builds confidence and excitement around the educational process. Additionally, such portfolios can be a great way to celebrate achievements.

• Rough portfolios for a smaller audience

Another type of portfolio is shared less widely. These are rough projects that are published for family, instructors, and peers. The purpose of rough portfolios is to track student’s growth: when a student keeps a journal for a year or longer, the improvements become apparent. Such journals show the main difficulties students struggle with, so instructors know how to help them are. Family members can track student’s progress and provide support during hard times. Students can track their progress as well and learn to evaluate the results of their work. Some projects from rough portfolios can be improved and shared in public ones. 

There are different tools for both purposes. If you are ready to encourage your students to share their projects, try one of these.

Tools for sharing with a wide audience or class

• Google Slides

With Google Slides, one can create, edit, and share presentations using a computer or mobile device. This tool can be launched offline, so students can work anywhere. The app allows commenting, responding, and collaboration in real-time.

• Flipgrid

Flipgrid is a specialized tool for social learning. This one is a video journal that allows you to post media and track the learning progress. Videos can be summative or act like checkpoints. Files can be shared with a wide audience as well as limited to the classroom only.

• Book Creator

Using this app, students can post all types of media files, including photos, voice recordings, and videos. Each account is called “a book,” and learners can review the pages of their peers. Evaluating their own books, learners can see how far did they go during the study year. The tool is free, but if you want to create more than 40 books, you will have to pay.

• SeeSaw

SeeSaw is an educational tool that allows teachers to create tasks that students can complete and share results with a class or broad audience. The tasks can be created by instructors or imported from SeeSaw’s library. Most activities include tasks on text interpretation, reflection on problem-solving in math, and evaluation of recent projects. Materials shared in this app can be published for limited and wide access.

• Google Drive

This tool allows users to create and edit texts of all types. Media files can be uploaded as well. With its help, students can share their projects with teachers and class. Documents can be viewed to track student’s progress over the year and more.

Conclusion

Digital portfolios can be used for different purposes. They can help teachers to track students’ progress, find their weak spots, and help them improve their approaches. Also, instructors can use the tools described above to plan lessons and boost students’ motivation. What is more, digital portfolios enhance the culture of learning. Students benefit from discussions and the opportunity to look at each other’s projects to increase understanding and knowledge. Progress and personal growth over the year can be tracked easily with the help of digital portfolios or personal essays written by Darwin essay writer.

Give these applications a try – communication and sharing can bring fresh air to the classroom!