In yesterday’s Practical Ed Tech post I mentioned that if you have been using a service like SeeSaw all year to have students create digital portfolios, it is relatively easy to have students create an end-of-year showcase of their best work. Of course, SeeSaw isn’t the only way to create a digital portfolio. Here’s are my five go-to recommendations for creating digital portfolios.
Google Sites
For students that have G Suite for Education accounts, Google Sites offers a convenient way to create a digital portfolio. Students can import documents, slides, videos, and just about anything else stored in their Google Drives into pages in Google Sites. In the following video I demonstrate how to create the first pages of your first Google Sites website.
SeeSaw
As mentioned in the opening, SeeSaw is a great tool for making a digital portfolio. It is accessible to students of all ages including those who don’t have email addresses. You can have students sign into SeeSaw via student codes and or QR codes. Students can select the items that they want to include in their portfolios. You can view all of your students’ portfolio items from one page. Get a big picture overview of SeeSaw by watching the following video.
ClassDojo Portfolios
ClassDojo is best known for its behavior and habits tracking tools. Over the last couple of years ClassDojo has made an effort to be more than just a behavior tracker. Last June ClassDojo introduced a portfolio tool. ClassDojo Portfolios let students select the items that they want to include in the portfolios they build to share with you and their parents.
Weebly for Education
Weebly for Education is the free website creation tool offered by Weebly. Weebly for Education lets you create and manage student accounts. Students can use those accounts to create websites in which they showcase examples of their best work. Here’s a quick guide to getting started on Weebly for Education.
FreshGrade
FreshGrade is a digital portfolio service that enables teachers and students to create portfolios containing video and audio files, pictures, and text files. Teachers using FreshGrade can create and manage accounts for their students. From their dashboards teachers can assign tasks to students and see the work that students complete. A nice end-of-the-year aspect of FreshGrade is the option to create a “video yearbook” of up to ten highlights of a student’s portfolio. That video slideshow can be shared directly to parents.
On a related note, you may be interested in exploring this rubric for digital portfolio assessment.
