E-Portfolios

Between illness and the demands of being a 1st year teacher, I'm afraid my attendance to this class has been less than stellar. As such, I missed our discussion on E-portfolios, so I will have to simply share my experience with them. In the post bac program at the U, everyone is required to create an E-portfolio. I realize that there must be circles where this would be a valuable way to communicate information about oneself as a teacher, but in education (at least in Minnesota), districts are still a little behind the times. Each district application has a number of documents that must be attached, and therefore all things that one might put on an efolio are made redundant.
Further, I found that even though I did give out the address for my efolio and encouraged people to go and look at it, the paper copy that I had in my hand was much more useful. I carried a binder with pictures of former students, examples of unit and daily lesson plans, my teaching philosophy, letters of rec, and other projects that I had done during student teaching and in my time teaching in Ecuador. Unfortunately, this is one area where the gap between what academia thinks is going on in schools and what is actually going on in schools (in my experience) is quite wide. Many principals (and teachers for that matter) have just learned how to use email. They are unable to fathom the idea of an online C.V. Still, I know that eventually this will be the way of the future, so I am glad that I know how to do it.
As far as using this technology with students, I think it is excellent. Right now, even though my kids don't know it, they are creating a portfolio of work that will exist for them for a very long time (hopefully forever). They will not only be able to look back over their work from the beginning of the year, but also for their work during 7th grade. It is very empowering for the kids to be able to see what a difference their hard work and effort makes to their learning. I can tell now that kids are excited about the improvement they've made just from one wiki project to the next. We've even used the revision tool on the wiki to show the progress they've made from when they first began the wiki page to when they "turned it in" for credit. Meta-awareness of the learning process is a valuable tool in building motivation and engagement, and it serves as the truest example of natural positive reinforcement.
In all, I believe that like most other things, efolios have their place and their value. This depends largely on audience. One has to ensure that the audience is able to access and appreciate the effort and the progression of the efolio in order for it to be truly valuable.