As part of my Michigan State University Masters in Educational Technology (MAET) I created this blog as a forum for reflection on my teaching, creative, and technological practices in education. Currently, I am reflecting on the use of Portfolio’s in the visual arts. Specifically, I am implementing the use of digital portfolio’s in my middle school visual arts courses to improve on challenges that I have with traditional types of portfolios.

The voice thread below briefly outlines my approach to investigating potential formats for digital portfolios. For a deeper reflection, you may read my blog post below. Please visit the “iPortfolio” google page that I created for use with my middle school visual arts students as a result of my reflection process.

Portolios are an integral component to visual arts education programs. They represent both content knowledge and skill development mastery of the person to which they belong. The content of a visual arts portfolio may include drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, graphic designs, sculpture, jewelry/metalwork, ceramics, video art, and other media. A written reflection of the work within the portfolio is often included.

There are different purposes for the creation of portfolios in visual arts courses. Most often they serve as evidence for assessment by the instructor. The artwork within a portfolio is traditionally put on display for public viewing.

As a teacher in the visual arts for over 10 years now, it has always been a pedagogical practice of mine to require students to maintain a portfolio of their artwork. At the end of a course, students write a self assessment on their body of work. While a valuable practice in terms of student reflection on their growth and understanding, and visual evidence of their technical skills, there are aspects of the traditional portfolio method that I consider a hinderance to their purpose.

In reflecting on these challenges, I came up with the solution to have students create “iPortfolio’s”, a digital image portfolio to replace the original artwork and also include their self reflections. Before investigating possible technologies through which to create them, I developed outcome criteria that iPortfolio’s should meet.

I investigated possible technologies that I could use as the format for the iPortfolio’s.

The first technology that came to mind was the all familiar PowerPoint presentation. This format lacked the potential to reach a public audience, so I disregarded it as a possibility. The next possibility I explored were wikis. I compared and constrasted the variety of formats provided through wikispaces, wetpaint, and pbwiki. The problem that I encountered in each one was that they didn’t provide me complete control over design, layout, and navigation. There were pages such as “To Do’s” on wetpaint that would have no relevance to the content of the iPortfolio’s. Additionally, I would have to decide how to best maintain the content if students were set as contributors to the site with the potential for content to be overwritten accidentally. The use of a wiki became a “possible” format. I next considered a blog hosted on blogger or edublogs. These would provide an appropriate framework for reflection, but may lack the formatting capabilities desired for the images.

Not knowing what else was “out there” I consulted with my school tech coordinator. He introduced me to voice thread, an online application for importing media, commenting on it through voice, text, and video and sharing the image and commentary with others. It seemed I had found my solution, until I investigated the application further and realized that viewers would either need to join the site themselves or I would need to embed the content created into another format.

I decided that voicethread would be a great way to display a gallery of images with descriptions and a blog would be an appropriate format for students to reflect on their creative process. However, I wanted a format that would allow me to house these two technologies together and provide my students with tutorials on how to use the applications and outline expected learning outcomes in the same location.

Google page creator, introduced to me in my Michigan State University MAET coursework, was exactly the format I was looking for. It allows one to create a webpage with extensive control over content and format without needing to know HTML code or having to purchase an application such as Adobe Dreamweaver. Another application that was introduced to me through my coursework is Photoshop express. An online photo sharing and editing application.
After weighing all the options, it was clear which technologies would best provide a framework for the iPortfolio’s. A google page creator would allow me to create a website with multiple pages for oulining student assignments and learning outcomes, include links to voicethread, blogger, and Photoshop Express, and other pages to highlight content from class. I then moved on to the task of building the iPortfolio google website to house the content, assignments, and tutorials for student learning.

The implementation of iPortfolio’s into the visual arts curriculum will address the challenges associated with traditional portfolios. However, there will be new sets of challenges in students learning the technologies to create their iPortfolio’s. To address the challenges that I anticipate students will encounter, I have created an “assignments” page within the iPortfolio that includes directions for creating an iPortfolio, tutorials through voice thread and screencasts through jing that step students through challenging tasts such as setting up user accounts, learning to use digitial cameras, and navigating the tools of the online applications.

I look forward to implementing iPortfolios into the visual arts curriculum beginning in August. It is my hope that the technologies I have chosen and the creation of iPortfolios will enhance student learning and reflection while providing them an authentic and realtime public audience. Please visit my blog again for progress reports throughout the school year or subscribe to my RSS feed.