Alternatives to e-portfolios

Since I published my are e-portfolios portfolios are past their educational used by date? post there’s been a lot of conversations about the use and purpose of e-portfolios. I’ve had a couple of companies try to peddle their wares.

Here are some tools I’ve found that work instead of a stand alone portfolio.

Flickr/instagram

My class loved flickr. I set the class up with an account, logged all the iPads into the app so the kids had easy access to their photos and videos both at home and school. My classroom assistant also shared photos to the account via her phone. Flickr enables kids to write descriptions and title their photo. The kids created their own folders and often would tag photos of events or learning into their folders, enabling them to see changes quickly over time. Flickr also has a huge source of creative commons images for reuse, is vigilant about deleting inappropriate  and lets users have control over whether photos are publicly posted. To be honest I wouldn’t bother with flickr if students images weren’t able to published and/or you don’t have ready access to mobile devices.

Pinterest/Flipboard

I introduced pinterest to my class at the end of last year and never had the kids fall in love with a service so quickly. Kids like to collect images of interesting things they’ve found, pinterest lets them do that quickly. I set up a class account and the kids had their own boards. Pinterest then became a way to see the research the kids have been doing quickly. I spotted an obviously photoshopped images and from there we had a conversation about the accuracy of the information. The kids could pin images to things they’ve been learning about or upload images to boards.

A folder on Google drive

If you are in a GAFE school just have a folder labeled ‘portfolio’ that the kids can move stuff into that they can show their parents/refer back to later. Simple, easy effective. Drive’s functionality has vastly improved on iPads in the last year. Photos and videos can easily be uploaded to a folder where kids can comment on learning.

Book creator

Book creator lets images, videos, text and audio sit within one native app. However downside is that the media chews through a lot of memory.

So in answer to my question, are eportfolios out of date? Stand-alone tools probably are.

Adding functionality to what you and the kids are already using?

Probably better.