2001 Annual Grant Issue
Susan Hunsinger-Hoff: Barra Technology Grant Report
Digital Portfolios

When I first began work on this Kast Grant in the spring of 2001, I had grandiose ideas of implementing a full-fledged digital portfolio program in the Lower School of Germantown Academy in the fall. Equipped with a scanner, digital camera, CD-RW drive, and a trusty iMac, as well as neatly organized "artifacts" such as photos, test papers, notebook pages, video clips, and artistic renderings, reflecting the "life and times of a student, PK-5th grade," viz., Ian Hoff, I began the pursuit of a long-held dream. I had chosen Ian, my son, as a subject for this case study, because I had been gathering his mementos of school days past for many years. Organizing them was a cinch, just chronological arrangement, and voila, I was ready. I honed my scanning skills, learned to press a CD, and began to create a file of what was to be, I'd hoped, the prototype for Lower School teachers to use to create their own multimedia portfolios of the students in their classes. I researched various ways to store the files, from hard drives, which quickly became cluttered, to CD-ROMs, which quickly became full and cumbersome, to webpages on the GA Website, to web-based iTools, which made me nervous, for it was someone else's server to which I'd be entrusting my precious, sometimes confidential, documents, to DVDs, which I decided holds the most promising potential for my purposes. It was about the time when I was deciding on the graphic interface I'd use to present "Ian's Portfolio," and as I was researching the various means to my end, that I realized I wasn't creating a portfolio at all, at least not one that would be useful to the teachers of the Lower School of GA. I was, in reality, compiling a lovely multimedia scrapbook of my son's efforts and achievements, a meaningful collection to the Hoff family, but not one that would benefit many beyond the immediate family, and definitely not one that would prove useful in fulfilling the pedagogical needs of GA teachers and their students. I had begun work on a fun project that would refine my technology skills, yes, but would not add much to my understanding of just how a digital portfolio can be used to aid and enhance learning in the classroom. My research had prompted more questions than answers and I found my initial efforts on this project were not where I needed to be in order to answer the questions that kept recurring. I was starting with the technology, when, in fact, that's where I needed to end. Previous Kast Grants I'd been awarded (1997, 1999) had prepared me technologically for this project. As the technologies have been introduced to the Lower School teachers over the past four years, and our hardware and software, and comfort levels with technology have become commensurate with our ideals, I thought we could plunge right in at this point. But burning a CD of a child's work, as a final product, is actually the EASY part of the whole portfolio system, now that the above components are in place. It's the what and the how, the who and the why decisions that are the more difficult to tackle. That's where I need to begin my work in order to see a portfolio system brought to fruition in the Lower School. So I put my scrapbook aside, and decided to dig into the research, talk to other educators, and attain a clearer view of just what the digital portfolio could do for us as a Lower School faculty whose plates were already full of teaching, assessing, and technology integration. The following represents a summary of my findings, and concludes with my suggestions on how we might, as a faculty, proceed with the introduction of digital portfolios in the Lower School.

What Is a Portfolio?

Artists have maintained portfolios for years, often using their collection for seeking further work, or for simply demonstrating their best works of art. Financial portfolios contain a comprehensive record of fiscal transactions and investment holdings that represent a person's monetary worth. By contrast, an educational portfolio contains work that a learner has selected and collected to show growth and change over time; a critical component of an educational portfolio is the learner's reflection on the individual pieces of work, often called artifacts, as well as an overall reflection on the story that the portfolio should tell. Grant Wiggins' defines a portfolio as "a representative collection of one's work. As the word's roots suggest (and as is still the case in the arts), the sample of work is fashioned for a particular objective and carried from place to place for inspection or exhibition."

The traditional storage format for portfolios in education is paper-based, usually in manila folders, three-ring notebooks or larger containers. Most often, the artifacts are comprised of text and images on paper, although the use of video or audiotape has been emerging, adding an electronic piece to the "cardboard box" portfolio. A portfolio at the K-12 education level is essentially a collection of a student's work which can be used to demonstrate his or her skills and accomplishments. An educational portfolio is more than just a group of projects and papers stored in a file folder. It includes other features such as teachers' evaluations and student self-reflections. According to the Northwest Evaluation Association, a portfolio is "a purposeful collection of student work that exhibits the student's efforts, progress, and achievements. The collection must include student participation in selecting contents, the criteria for selection, the criteria for judging merit, and evidence of student self-reflection." A portfolio may be used to demonstrate a student's achievements in specific subject areas such as mathematics and science or it may be used across the curriculum to assess abilities in all subject areas.

For years, several teachers in the Lower School have shown increased interest in experimenting with a different from of assessment in the classroom, assessment that includes authentic and performance-based measures. These methods of assessment allow students to demonstrate desired performance through real-life, dynamic situations, and are not limited to multiple-choice and standardized tests. They include projects which require students to demonstrate their problem-solving skills as well as their skills in analyzing and synthesizing information. It has been determined that one method of gathering and presenting data for this new type of assessment is the multimedia digital portfolio.

What Is the Purpose of a Digital Portfolio?

Portfolios and Assessment

There are three general purposes for developing portfolios: Learning (Formative) Portfolios, which usually occurs on an ongoing basis supporting professional development; Assessment (Summative) Portfolios, which usually occurs within the context of a formal evaluation process; and Employment (Marketing) Portfolios, which are used for seeking employment. There are Working Portfolios, Showcase or Best Works Portfolios, and Assessment Portfolios.

As noted above, portfolios can be a form of alternative assessment. The terms alternative assessment, authentic assessment, or performance-based assessment are often used synonymously to mean variants of performance assessments that require students to generate rather than choose a response. The characteristics of this type of assessment are: the student is involved in meaningful performance tasks; there are clear standards and criteria for excellence; there is an emphasis on metacognition and self-evaluation; the student produces quality products and performances; there is a positive interaction between assessor and assessee (Burke, 1999). There are two central features to alternative assessments: "First, all are viewed as alternatives to traditional multiple-choice, standardized achievement tests; second, all refer to direct examination of student performance on significant tasks that are relevant to life outside of school" (Worthen, 1993, p. 445). Since Lower School teachers teach in manners consistent with the philosophy behind alternative assessment, they need an appropriate tool designed to provide a richer picture of student work than traditional transcripts allow. The digital portfolio can provide such a tool.

Kay Burke (1999) and Robin Fogarty (1998) advocate a balanced approach to assessment, with a focus on three components:

• Traditional assessment, with a focus on grades and rankings, knowledge, curriculum, and skills, implemented through classroom assessments (tests, quizzes, homework assignments), and standardized tests (either norm-referenced or criterion-referenced)
• Performance assessment, with a focus on observable results and standards, application and transfer, implemented through standards, tasks, criteria and scoring rubrics.
• Portfolio assessment, with a focus on growth and development over time, implemented through selection, reflection and inspection of classwork, along with goal-setting and self-evaluation

Performance assessment focuses on the direct observation of a student's performance. Students create projects or perform tasks based on predetermined standards, criteria, and indicators, which are evaluated by scoring rubrics. Teachers have always observed student learning in the classroom. However, until recently documenting these observations has been difficult and time-consuming. In the early 1990s, several tools were developed to collect and organize these observational data; the Greater Victoria (B.C., Canada) School District developed a system using bar codes to record student classroom activities. Subsequently, the software was published by Sunburst as Learner Profile, and moved from using bar code readers, to using Apple's Newton and now Palm hand-held devices to collect data in the classroom. My work on an earlier Kast Grant explored the use of the Newton as a means to gather data, but I found it to be too limited to provide a feasible means of true assessment. The most promising application of the Palm involves linking data collection to generic database applications to allow more flexible use of observational data.

There are significant differences between performance assessments and portfolios. A portfolio is a container that holds examples of student or teacher work (the "artifacts") and reflections on that work that transform the artifacts into "evidence" of achievement. Many of those artifacts could be the results of performance assessments with associated evaluations and reflections. A standards-based portfolio creates linkages between student tasks and performance assessments, with their associated scoring guides, and the standards that they are designed to demonstrate.

An electronic portfolio uses electronic technologies, allowing the portfolio developer to collect and organize portfolio artifacts in many media types (audio, video, graphics and text). A standards-based portfolio uses a database or hypertext links to clearly show the relationship between the standards or goals, artifacts and reflections. The learner's reflections are the rationale that specific artifacts are evidence of achieving the stated standards or goals. Often, the terms electronic portfolio and digital portfolio are used interchangeably; however there is a distinction: an electronic portfolio contains artifacts that may be in analog form, such as a videotape, or may be in computer-readable form; in a digital portfolio, all artifacts have been transformed into computer-readable form. An electronic portfolio is not a haphazard collection of artifacts (i.e., a digital scrapbook or a multimedia presentation) but rather a reflective tool that demonstrates growth over time.

Most of these definitions include the word collection; collections of work can be folders, or scrapbooks or portfolios. What differentiates a digital portfolio from a digital scrapbook or an online resume is the organization of the portfolio around a set of standards or learning goals, plus the learner's reflections, both on their achievement of the standards, and the rationale for selecting specific artifacts, as well as an overall reflection on the portfolio as a whole.

Given the GA community within which Lower School teachers must function, I suggest a combination of all of the aforementioned forms of assessment, with the digital portfolio becoming just as integral a part of the "whole picture" as the periodic report card. There is a place for Multimedia Scrapbooks, but they should not be confused with the true intent of the Digital Portfolio.

Why Use a Portfolio? Deciding on the Type of Portfolio to Use

The benefits of developing electronic portfolios for students include:

• minimal storage space
• easy to create back-up files
• portability
• long shelf life
• learner-centered
• increases technology skills
• through hypertext links it is easier to make argument that certain standards or goals are met
• accessibility (especially web portfolios)

Schools may wish to develop an e-portfolio system for a variety of reasons. The following are types of portfolios:

• Developmental portfolios - A teacher who is interested in documenting a student's improvements in writing or mathematics throughout a school year can have the student keep a developmental portfolio containing samples of the student's work along with self-evaluations of specific assignments. Such a portfolio provides specific documentation, which can be used for student evaluations and parent conferences.
• Teacher planning - Teachers may use an existing portfolio system in order to receive information about an incoming class of students. The teacher may gain a better understanding of the ability levels of his or her students prior to the start of the school year and plan accordingly.
• Proficiency portfolios - Central Park East Secondary School in New York City uses portfolios as a means for determining graduation eligibility. Students at this school are required to complete fourteen portfolios, which demonstrate their competence and performance in areas such as science and technology, ethics and social issues, community service, and history.
• Showcase portfolios - A showcase portfolio can document a student's best work accomplished during an entire educational career. It can include the research papers, artwork, and science experiments which best represent the student's skills and abilities.
• Employment skills portfolios - Businesses across the country are increasingly interested in viewing student portfolios in order to evaluate a prospective employee's work readiness skills. Students in the Michigan public schools, for example, are creating employability skills portfolios to demonstrate their skills to prospective employers.
• College admission portfolios - Colleges and universities are using showcase portfolios to determine eligibility for admission. By requiring portfolios from prospective students, college or university admissions officers are better able to assess applicants' potential for success at their institutions.

How are Digital Portfolios Created?

Creating a digital portfolio can seem daunting, but it becomes less arduous if viewed as a series of stages, each with its own goals and activities. A framework for digital portfolio development can be formed from two bodies of literature: portfolio development in K-12 education and the multimedia or instructional design process. These complimentary processes are both essential for effective electronic portfolio development. Understanding how these processes fit together and how standards or goals contribute to digital portfolio development, teachers gain a powerful tool for demonstrating growth over time.

Creating an electronic portfolio can develop teachers' as well as students' multimedia technology skills. The multimedia development process usually covers the following stages:

• Assess and decide - The focus is on needs assessment of the audience, the presentation goals, and the appropriate tools for the final portfolio presentation.
• Design and plan - In the second stage, focus on organizing or designing the presentation. Determine audience-appropriate content, software, storage medium, and presentation sequence. Construct flow charts and write storyboards.
• Develop - Gather materials to include in the presentation and organize them into a sequence (or use hyperlinks) for the best presentation of the material, using an appropriate multimedia authoring program.
• Implement - The developer presents the portfolio to the intended audience.
• Evaluate - In this final stage of multimedia development, the focus is on evaluating the presentation's effectiveness in light of its purpose and the assessment context.

Each stage of the portfolio development process contributes to teachers' professional development and students' lifelong learning. Danielson and Abrutyn (1997) lay out this process for developing a portfolio:

• Collection - Teachers and students learn to save artifacts that represent the successes (and "growth opportunities") in their day-to-day teaching and learning
• Selection - Teachers and students review and evaluate the artifacts they have saved, and identify those that demonstrate achievement of specific standards
• Reflection - Teachers and students become reflective practitioners, evaluating their own growth over time and their achievement of the standards, as well as the gaps in their development
• Projection (or Direction) - Teachers and students compare their reflections to the standards and performance indicators, and set learning goals for the future. This is the stage that turns portfolio development into professional development and supports lifelong learning.
• Presentation - Teachers and students share their portfolios with their peers. This is the stage where appropriate "public" commitments can be made to encourage collaboration and commitment to professional development and lifelong learning.

Either of the above formats, or a combination of the two could be adapted for use by Lower School teachers as they continue to explore the use of digital portfolios.

Combining both the Multimedia Development Process and the Portfolio Development Process, five stages of Electronic Portfolio Development emerge:

1. Defining the Portfolio Context & Goals - In this first stage, the primary tasks are: Identify the assessment context, including the purpose of the portfolio. Identify the goals to be addressed in the portfolio. This important step sets the assessment context and helps frame the rest of the portfolio development process. Knowing the primary audience for the portfolio will help decide the format and storage of the formal or presentation portfolio. Before making any decisions about the development software, identify the resources available for electronic portfolio development.
2. The Working Portfolio - This stage of the electronic portfolio development process occupies the longest span of time and is the stage often called, "Becoming a Digital Packrat!" Phy Chauveau became a "video junkie" during this phase as she explored iMovie technology last summer. Knowing which goals or standards you are trying to demonstrate should help determine the types of portfolio artifacts to be collected and then selected. Select the software development tools most appropriate for the portfolio context and the resources available. Just as McLuhan said, "The medium is the message," the software used to create the electronic portfolio will control, restrict, or enhance the portfolio development process. Form should follow function as well, and the electronic portfolio software should match the vision and style of the portfolio developer. Teachers should use whatever software tools are currently being used to collect artifacts, storing them on a hard drive, a server, or videotape. Electronic folders will need to be set up for each standard or goal in order to organize the artifacts, and a word processor, database, hypermedia software or slide show can be used to articulate the goals/standards to be demonstrated in the portfolio and to organize the artifacts. Then the developer must identify the storage and presentation medium most appropriate for the situation (i.e., computer hard disk, videotape, local-area network, a WWW server, CD-ROM, etc.) There are also multiple options, depending on the software chosen. The multimedia materials that represent achievement are gathered in this working portfolio. Collecting artifacts from different points of time will help to demonstrate growth and learning that has taken place. Writing short reflective statements with each artifact stored will capture its significance at the time it is created.
3. The Reflective Portfolio - This stage of the electronic portfolio development process usually precedes evaluation reviews. In the formative portfolio reflections typically occur at significant points in the learning process, and are added contemporaneously as noted in the previous stage. Reflection on one's work is requisite if the portfolio owner is to learn from the process.
   Three simple questions to ask which clarify this reflective process are:
   "What?"
   "So what?"
   "Now what?"
   To use these questions, the student would first summarize the artifact that documents the experience, in order to answer the question "What?" Second, the student would reflect on what he or she learned and how this leads to meeting the standard, which answers the question "So what?" And third, the student would address implications for future learning needed and set forth refinements or adaptations, in order to answer "Now what?"
   
4. The Connected Portfolio - To some degree, this stage is unique to the digital portfolio, because of the capability of the software to create hypertext links between documents, either locally or on the Internet. At this stage, create hypertext links between goals, work samples, rubrics, and reflections. Insert appropriate multimedia artifacts. Create a table of contents to structure the portfolio; use the outlining capabilities of either Word or PowerPoint, or the graphical organizing and outlining capabilities of Inspiration. The choice of software can either restrict or enhance the development process and the quality of the final product. Different software packages each have unique characteristics, which can limit or expand the electronic portfolio options. It is important to select software that allows easy creation of hypertext links, to be able to link evidence of achievement to the goals and reflections and identify patterns through this "linking" process. The process of creating a portfolio with hypertext links contributes to the summative assessment process. When using the portfolio for assessment, the transformation from "artifacts" to "evidence" is not always clear. Linking reflections to artifacts makes this thinking process more explicit. The ability to create links from multiple perspectives (and multiple goals) also overcomes the linearity of two-dimensional paper portfolios, permitting a single artifact to demonstrate multiple standards (i.e., national technology standards, our mission statement, NCTM standards, etc.)
5. The Presentation Portfolio - At this stage, the developer must record the portfolio to an appropriate presentation and storage medium. This will be different for a working portfolio and a formal or presentation portfolio. The medium for a working portfolio is videotape, computer hard disk, Zip disk, CD-RW disk, network server, or DVD. The best medium for a formal or presentation portfolio is CD-Recordable disc, WWW server, videotape. or DVD. Present the portfolio before an audience (real or virtual) and celebrate the accomplishments represented. This will be a very individual strategy, depending on the context, and an opportunity for professionals to share their teaching portfolios with colleagues for meaningful feedback and collaboration in self-assessment. This "public commitment" provides motivation to carry out the professional development plan of a formative portfolio. At this point you can valuate the portfolio's effectiveness in light of its purpose and the assessment context. In an environment of continuous improvement, a portfolio should be viewed as an ongoing learning tool, and its effectiveness should be reviewed on a regular basis to be sure that it is meeting the goals set. The portfolio is then posted to WWW server, or written to CD-ROM or DVD, or videotaped.

In addition to the stages of portfolio development, there appear to be at least five levels of electronic portfolio development, each with its own levels of expectation and suggested software strategies at each stage depending on technology skills of the student or teacher portfolio developer. Germantown Academy teachers will have to decide which of these best fit their needs.

1. No digital artifacts. Some videotape artifacts.
2. Word processing or other commonly used files stored in electronic folders on a hard drive, floppy diskette or LAN server.
3. Databases, hypermedia or slide shows (e.g., PowerPoint), stored on a hard drive, Zip, floppy diskette or LAN server.
4. Portable Document Format (Adobe Acrobat PDF files), stored on a hard drive, Zip, Jaz, CD-R/W, or LAN server.
5. HTML-based web pages, created with a web authoring program and posted to a WWW server.
6. Multimedia authoring program, such as Macromedia Authorware or Director, pressed to CD-R/W or DVD, or posted to WWW in streaming format.

Given the GA community within which Lower School teachers must function, I suggest a combination of all of the aforementioned forms of assessment, with the digital portfolio becoming just as integral a part of the "whole picture" as the periodic report card. A portfolio without standards or goals is just a multimedia presentation, or a fancy electronic resume, or a digital scrapbook. There is a place for Multimedia Scrapbooks, but they should not be confused with the true intent of the Digital Portfolio.

Case Studies

Reviewing some of the attempts to incorporate a digital portfolio program in schools has enabled me to understand some of the issues involved in implementing a digital portfolio program at the elementary level. From 1994 to 1997, the Coalition of Essential Schools and Annenberg Institute for School Reform conducted a research project investigating "what it takes" to put digital portfolios in place -- and how schools need to change to use them as a tool for reform. This project involved six member schools of the Coalition, and was funded through the IBM Corporation. The following ideas were generated from these case studies.

What yo Include In Electronic Portfolios

Most of the programs I studied included some form of the following in their digital portfolios of young students:

One school made the following distinctions between submissions from primary students and those of older students:

All Grade K-2 Portfolios Include:

• Table of Contents;
• An entry slip on each piece;
• Writing - 3 samples (early, middle, late), including revision;
• Reading - a grade level standardized running record; last one of the year with audio tape;
• Math Assessment continuum: 1-3 pieces based on problem solving;
• Personal profile from student and parent perspectives;
• Reflection (only on writing)
• For Kindergarten - concepts of print.

(It may be helpful to make the menu for the K-2 digital portfolio entirely out of graphics rather than text so that all of the school's youngest students, including those who could not read, could access it.)

All Grade 3-5 Portfolios Include:

• Table of Contents
• 8 to 10 pieces - Drafts should be included with final copies
• An entry slip on each piece (See appendix e for Entry Slip ideas.)
• A reflection on at least 3 pieces
• Pieces that demonstrate process & product
• 1 piece that demonstrates oral language
• Reading log noting date, title, genre, with help/without help
• Letter of Introduction

The Carrie E. Tompkins Elementary School instituted a Digital Portfolio wherein the primary organizing principle is a set of four "selves:"

• Social Self
• Problem-Solving Self
• Artistic Self
• Academic Self

Such a system obviously takes into consideration the different intelligences of its constituents.

Assessment of Electronic Portfolios

Many times, the individual pieces of work in a portfolio have already been assessed. (See Appendix for sample rubrics for individual multimedia submissions.) But assessing the entire portfolio process is important if all are to grow and learn from its inclusion in the curriculum. Teachers may decide not to evaluate the entire portfolio and may prefer to just use it as an organizational method of showcasing and storing student work. However, if the student has any part in creating, editing, and/or maintaining the portfolio, it's important to assess their final product.

Many students' electronic portfolios are evaluated according to a rubric. Students would be given a copy of the rubric at the beginning of the course or assignment so that they are aware of the criteria before they begin. The third column in the rubric below, shows what is expected of each student, or, the standard. If the student fails to meet the standard, he/she may score 5 or 10 points. If the student goes above and beyond the standard, he/she can earn 17 points in each category. A percentage is figured by adding the points earned on each category of the rubric. For example, if a student is right on target in the first five categories and hits a "Bulls Eye" on the final category, he/she would score 92.

Electronic Portfolio Scoring Rubric - a Sample

Missed the Mark!	Getting Close!	Right On Target!	Bulls Eye!!!
5 pts.	10 pts.	15 pts.	17 pts.
Title Page:
Design is inappropriate	Design could be neater or might be inappropriate	Design is attractive and colorful	Design is attractive, colorful, and shows creative.
Mechanics:
Spelling and punctuation errors are distracting.	Spelling and punctuation errors are evident.	Errors in spelling and punctuation are minor and few.	There are NO errors in spelling or punctuation.
Buttons/Links:
The student portfolio contains 4 or fewerlinks to artifacts.	The student portfolio contains 5 or 6 links to artifacts.	The student portfolio contains 7 links to artifacts.	The student portfolio contains 8 links to artifacts.
Sounds:
Many sounds are inappropriate and/or distract from the content.	Some sounds are inappropriate and/or distract from the content.	Sounds are of high quality and are appropriate.	The sounds enhance the quality of the piece.
Content of project reflections:
Few reflections include: the program used and the main skills learned.	Some reflections include: the program used and the main skills learned.	All reflections include: the program used andthe main skills learned.	All reflections include: the program used and a detailed account of all skills learned.
Personal reactions to projects:
Few reflections include personal reactions. Reactions are vague or repetitive.	Some reflections include personal reactions. Reactions may be vague or repetitive.	Reflections include personal reaction that clearly reflect the student's feelings.	All reflections include personal reactions that are descriptive and insightful.

Of course, rubrics used for evaluating portfolios need not be as detailed as this. A simplified version listing criteria important to the students, like "*It is neat. *We put effort into it. *We are proud of it. *It contains unique ideas. *It contains detail and description." would suit the needs of primary teachers much more than an elaborate rubric would.

How will you store the working portfolio?

The working portfolio is distinct from the formal one. It serves to store all artifacts of student work as they are collected. The medium selected thus should allow both easy access and reliable storage. Examples used in the past include computer disks (floppies or hard drives), scannable paper, rewritable compact discs (CD-RWs), videotape, high-density disks (e.g., Zip or Jaz disks), and intranet or password-protected servers. It's been my experience that, with the increased use of video, the working portfolio quickly becomes an unwieldy, memory intensive project that does just not "fit" on a disk or hard drive. Even CDs, seemingly "bottomless pits," do not hold all of the data which sometimes needs to be manipulated. We are on the verge of having access to DVD technology, and I believe that when we are able to burn DVDs at our individual workstations, even this part of the development process will be made easy. The question of where to store the working portfolio will need to be addressed by individual teachers, and will depend on the types of artifacts they are gathering from and with their students.

How will you publish the formal portfolio?

Once portfolio artifacts are collected and organized, a formal or presentation portfolio is developed. This usually requires a different publishing format or medium. Decisions here should be based on the portfolio's primary audience and the type of technology available. Examples include CD-ROMs, videotape, Intranet (building or district) or password-protected servers, and the Internet (in appropriate circumstances), and, soon DVDs.

How will you guarantee secure assessment information?

In other words, how can you make sure that the electronically stored student assessment information will remain secure and confidential. Again this will depend on the intended audience, the types of artifacts and input gathered, and the school's legal responsibilities. Administration would have to be a part of any discussion involving the publishing of this material and the protection of individual rights.

As a result of my investigation into the feasibility of incorporating a Digital Portfolio System in the Lower School, I have determined that more preliminary work needs to be accomplished before teachers, already stressed by increased workloads and new technologies to conquer, will be able to embrace the idea. Therefore, I recommend that a pilot project be begun in the fall of 2001, with participants volunteering to be part of a small test group. Hopefully, by the time this group analyzes the possibilities, decides on an individualized plan that will meet their needs and those of their students and students' parents, and creates a digital prototype, the technology that will facilitate the actual publication of the portfolio, will be at their fingertips. Right now it is not, and attempts to make it happen at his point would only cause frustration, as it would entail increased time commitment, borrowed equipment, and outside assistance with the newest technologies.

I envision that the goals of this committee include the following:

1. The Lower School Faculty decide what the minimum expectations are for all portfolios attempted, using the samples listed in this report and resources such as the suggested readings as guides. Students might be asked to add to their portfolio for three years during kindergarten, first and second grade, before starting a new portfolio for third, fourth, and fifth grades.
2. Monthly staff development should be planned to support teachers in this effort
3. Provide continued opportunities for teachers to experiment with multimedia resources as a means of capturing "artifacts."
4. Meetings with parents should be held so they too could learn about portfolios.
5. A Pilot Portfolio group be established in October 2001. I suggest we begin by adding 2 pieces of work indicative of student effort or achievement to a desktop folder by early December. Teachers and students involved in this pilot project choose 2 - 4 pieces of work of any subject that they are most proud of for inclusion in their portfolios. These pieces might be work they like the most or have worked hardest on, and not necessarily their "best" work in either their own eyes or their teacher's eyes. They will later compare their work to previous work they have done, using the portfolio as a vehicle for this self-reflection and self-assessment. Rather than using a set of standards or other students' work as a basis of comparison, students should be encouraged to look at where they are solely in terms of where they themselves have come. For students as well as teachers, the portfolio should be seen as helpful and nonthreatening.
6. A Portfolio Pilot Party will be planned for December to explore essential questions, such as:
   
   • Why are we doing portfolios and who are they for?
   • What should their structure be?
   • What information is worth keeping?
   • How do we know if what we are doing is any good? If we use portfolios for learning purposes only and do not use rubrics, how will our reporting of student work in the larger world mean anything?
   • What other items might be included? (The assignment, or directions for the work; the student's reflections on their own work; the teacher's evaluation of it; comments from the student's parents; a list of skills the work is exercising; a "baseline" piece of work by the student in a given area to which other pieces of work could be compared to show growth over time.)
   • Should the "Entry Slip" be a uniform format throughout the divisions?
   • What are the standards and goals we wish to use for our Digital Portfolios?
7. During the winter months, determine the standards that will frame OUR Digital Portfolio program. A standards-based portfolio creates linkages between student tasks and performance assessments, with their associated scoring guides, and the standards that they are designed to demonstrate. This will not be difficult for us to do, once we have clearly defined standards for which we are observing behaviors and or growth. Standards used for portfolio development need not be attained solely from state or national norms, but should be derived from the mission statement and objectives of the institution. At GA, we already have in place many competencies and minimal requirements which lend themselves to more authentic, performance based assessment.
8. Use appendix worksheets included with this report for discussions, faculty meetings, and workshops with interested faculty members throughout the fall, winter and spring.
9. Provide faculty with literature on the topic of Portfolio Development throughout the year.
10. By June, 2002, guidelines for a Lower School Portfolio System be in place for implementation in the 2002-2003.

Since Lower School teachers teach in manners consistent with the philosophy behind the alternative assessment described in this report, and with consideration of the various learning styles and intelligences of their students, they need an appropriate tool designed to provide a fuller picture of student work than traditional transcripts alone allow. The digital portfolio can provide such a tool. Following some preliminary discussions with educators in our region, and some initial meetings with the Lower School Technology Committee, many important questions have emerged, but there is clear indication that interest is high in pursuing the idea. My hopes remain high that the digital portfolio can become an integral part of the Lower School curriculum when its specific purposes are defined, understood, and approved by the larger community (faculty, administration, and parents), and when it is designed to:

• help students become more reflective about themselves as learners;
• demonstrate evidence of student growth and achievement;
• inform instruction, influence practice, and set goals;
• further our understanding of learning styles and intelligences;
• extend children's learning;
• support and explain the grading system that is already in place.

I'd like to see the Lower School of Germantown Academy adopt a digital portfolio program that will help us detect and document the lifelong skills our youngsters need in today's world, a world in need of more self-directed learners. In developing self-directed, self-reliant, lifelong learners, we need to take a more constructivist approach in developing learner skills in: information access in a world where information is exponentially increasing; research processes in a world where everyone needs to be able to evaluate information intelligently; technology access in a world where technology is changing by the minute and provides unlimited opportunities of distance and virtual learning; collaborative, groupwork methods and technologies in light of a distributed knowledge economy and distributed social networks and organizations; knowledge building for creativity, entrepreneurial activity, mutual benefit and profit; responsible citizenship for self identity, for community health, democratic participation and global citizenship; leadership in a world where we are subject to ever increasing pressures to deliver more for less; and, learning self-assessment where continuous process improvement can be applied to self-assessment of learning. Our current system of documenting and reporting on such learning cannot deliver the richer picture of student behavior and progress in lifelong learning skills such as these. Digital portfolios can. Though my research and experimentation has led me down a different path than I'd expected, and though my dreams of an inclusive multimedia portfolio program have not been dimmed by my findings, the ambitious plan of beginning full-fledged immediately has been refined to a much more realistic, doable arrangement that may very well fit seamlessly into the very busy lives of the classroom teachers of the Lower School.