High-school portfolios go online with Snoqualmie students' eFolio

By Cara Solomon
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

	TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES Donald Burgess, a 16-year-old junior at Mount Si High School, with his eFolio page, a tool that measures a student's academic progress throughout high school.
	E-mail this article Print this article Search archive

By the time Donald Burgess hits senior year, the story of his high-school life will be right there online, in photographs and films, spreadsheets and songs. With the click of the computer mouse, he can send it off to colleges across the country.

"I chose to talk about myself," said Burgess, a junior at Mount Si High School who began preparing his electronic portfolio a few weeks ago, writing a personal statement and posting his photograph on the Internet. "That way, I'm more than just a bunch of projects."

The Snoqualmie Valley School District is introducing students and teachers this year to the benefits of its homegrown "eFolio," an online tool that measures a student's academic progress throughout high school.

It is one of several computer programs assistant superintendent Scott Poirier has designed for the 4,850-student district. Like other programs developed in the district, the eFolio has the potential to go statewide.

The eFolio gives each student a personal Web page to organize their academic lives, from the senior project to the planning of their careers. It requires students to provide evidence of understanding, year by year, until they have met Mount Si's academic standards.

Mary Alice Heuschel, deputy superintendent of teaching and learning at the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, says the eFolio is a unique way to manage the new standards state officials are trying to implement in all schools.

	TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES Natalie Sinclair, left, and Tyler Strandjord work on their eFolio projects at Mount Si High School in the Snoqualmie Valley School District.

"If we could ever take this statewide, it would be very exciting," Heuschel said.

The system is personalized so it gives students a sense of ownership, she said, yet practical enough to allow teachers to give feedback on work samples their students put online. The eFolio also offers students a sophisticated résumé for colleges and potential employers.

Still, there are some obstacles to taking the tool statewide. State officials say they do not have the computer capacity to store thousands of student personal pages. And there also is the challenge of privacy.

The Snoqualmie district spent about $10,000 to set up the system, mostly in increased storage capacity and expects to spend about $1,500 a year to maintain it. The district is paying for it through revenues from selling this program and previous programs to other school systems, Poirier said.

The eFolio concept already is used at many colleges. But it's also starting to catch on at the high-school level. The Lake Washington School District is launching a similar program but has chosen a commercial product, partly because of the support system that comes with it.

In Snoqualmie, teachers get online access to the eFolios through their class lists, while parents and students are given passwords for 24-hour entry. Students also can invite friends, coaches or employers to view their work by sending secure links to select members of their "growth team."

From math to music, each discipline at Mount Si has its own set of expectations laid out in a box on the student's Web page.

As they move toward their senior year, students choose work samples to put online as evidence that they have met a certain standard. They evaluate their own work on a scale of 1 to 5 and explain what they have learned and how that skill might be useful later in life.

"We're trying to teach kids how to think, not what to think or when," said Charlie Kinnune, a social-studies teacher and football coach at Mount Si. "To me, that's cutting-edge education."

Enthusiasm for the eFolio is a little more muted among the teenagers. And Burgess said there's a good reason for that: His classmates haven't realized what the program can do.

As a peer educator, it's Burgess' job to show them. He has helped make a video guide to the eFolio. And sometime soon, if all goes well, the school may let him make a flashier version — something that goes beyond the mechanics of the system to show why eFolio is really worthwhile.

"One of my goals is to brighten it up a little bit, show that it's a really cool tool and you can get creative with it," Burgess said.

The eFolio asks students to be creative as they cast about for proof of their academic understanding. In some disciplines, such as English, the answer is obvious: A well-written essay would easily meet one of the standards. But what can students put online to show they have met a fitness standard?

Multimedia instructor Joe Dockery had a suggestion: an Excel spreadsheet that shows how, as a student becomes more fit, he stays within his target heart rate for a longer and longer period of time.

Innovative section

Teachers say one of the most innovative parts of the eFolio may be the "reflection" section, where students are asked to analyze what they have learned and show teachers they have moved beyond memorization to a deeper understanding.

"The hardest part will be getting the kids to say more than, 'I learned a lot,' " Dockery said.

Natalie Sinclair, a senior at Mount Si, sees the reflection section as a "kind of hassle." But four years from now, the graduating seniors will have their own online scrapbook of academic achievements. That's a lot more sophisticated than what Sinclair will send to college-admissions offices this year.

"I wish we had started this earlier," she said.

If all goes well, future Mount Si seniors will graduate with an electronic portfolio that represents the progress they have made toward proficiency in each subject. They also will have what the state broadly refers to as a "culminating" or senior project.

Across the state, school districts are working toward a 2008 deadline for implementing that graduation requirement and others mandated by the state.

Most districts have designed senior projects around a basic model: Students explore an interest, whether it's auto mechanics or fencing, using critical-thinking skills they learned in high school. They write a proposal, complete a product and make a presentation to the community.

Snoqualmie has taken a different approach. It has woven the culminating project concept into its four-year curriculum and put it online through the eFolio.

Learning on CD

So before he graduates from high school, moves on to college, studies computer programming and becomes a business owner, Donald Burgess will first stand before the Snoqualmie Valley School community with a computer CD in hand.

All of his learning will be there, loaded on that disk, ready for Burgess to slip it into the computer and make it come alive.

Cara Solomon: 206-464-2024 or csolomon@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company