Building your e-portfolio
An e-portfolio is your digital professional showcase. Think of it as a dynamic, multimedia-rich collection that demonstrates your growth, skills, and accomplishments. Unlike a static résumé, it's a living document where you can display not just what you have learned, but how you apply that knowledge.
E-portfolios are used for authentic assessment, professional development, and career advancement. In this course, your e-portfolio will serve as your primary project to demonstrate competency in creating and using virtual labs for STEAM education. Beyond this training, it will become a powerful tool for job interviews, performance reviews, and grant applications, providing tangible proof of your expertise in modern, technology-enhanced teaching methodologies.
Your e-portfolio can include a wide array of evidence. This includes lesson plans you design incorporating virtual labs, video tutorials or screen recordings of you using a lab, reflections on your teaching practice, student work samples (anonymized), links to specific virtual lab simulations, digital badges you earn, and written analyses of how a particular lab improved student understanding of a complex STEAM concept. For a particularly well-developed example showing the range of possible evidence you could present in your own e-portfolio, visit Leonard Nungu's e-portfolio.
How is this different from social media sites such as LinkedIn?
While LinkedIn is a broad professional networking site with a standardized profile format, your e-portfolio is a deeply personalized and reflective learning space. LinkedIn summarizes your career, but your e-portfolio tells the story of your professional journey, showcasing the process and products of your learning with rich, contextual evidence that a LinkedIn profile cannot contain. For further comparison, read this article.
Set up your e-portfolio now
If you already have an e-portfolio of your own, you can continue to build upon it. If not, the e-portfolio platform you will be using here is CourseNetworking (CN). Create your free account now so that you will be ready to start adding new items as you work through the modules ahead, including your final IVLST Lesson Plan activity and certificates.
 |
CourseNetworking · 3:17
Sign up: To set up your e-portfolio, go to the CourseNetworking platform and click the Sign Up button for your free account. Build: Start by completing your profile, then use the built-in tools to create posts and pages. Upload your artifacts (like lesson plans and videos), write reflections, and organize them into a coherent narrative. Share: Use CN’s privacy controls to create a public link to share your portfolio with the rest of us through the e-Portfolio Directory. You can also share the link with colleagues or potential employers to showcase your work. |