Along with discussion of format and design of electronic portfolios, this article addresses the larger question of what happens to teachers when they invest in creating a professional portfolio. Are they able to transform this experience into more authentic assessment with their own students? Beside acquiring proficiency in using portfolio…

Describes one middle school's two-week end-of-school-year unit called Community Studies, in which students select several activities (from more than 40, many of them outdoors), which are assessed through portfolios. (SR)

Electronic portfolios allow students to include video, images, hyperlinks, and audio, along with written texts, to create varied and comprehensive representations of what they have accomplished. Such collections of information also change the ways that teachers and students choose to present themselves and the ways that we read these presentations…

Theoretical background for researching student learning, engagement, and collaboration through the development of electronic portfolios is described in this article. After providing an overview of the limited research on portfolios in education, the author discusses the accepted definitions, multiple purposes, and conflicting theoretical paradigms…

Describes how a portfolio process implemented at an alternative secondary school encouraged resistant students to join in school-related literacy activities. Notes how it also gave the students a chance to self-assess, set and attain goals, and develop a personal relationship with the teacher. (SR)

Electronic portfolio technology can be used in different contexts to create classroom communities in which everyone, not just the teacher, cares about each student's learning. The authors describe how students in an urban middle school, undergraduate teacher preparation program, and graduate leadership program used an electronic bulletin board and…

As digital portfolios become more prevalent in teacher education, the purposes and processes for creating them have become contested. Originally meant to be critical and reflective spaces for learning about multimedia and conceived as contributing to professional growth, research shows that digital portfolios are now increasingly being used to…