HOW IT WORKS
In Digital Portfolios, students learn the art of Web design through html and the Microsoft FrontPage program. They also take the time to do creative writing and then choose their best writing samples to make Web pages. Topics in their portfolios include book critiques, music and television reviews, family stories, culture, and personal thoughts on various themes and ideas. The students draw pictures and then scan them to add to their Web sites, and are taught how to make a frames Web site so that they can bring all of their writing into a digital portfolio. They also edit each other’s work for grammar, spelling, and aesthetic quality. Finally, they make corrections and upload the Web sites. This project allows enrichment for gifted students who wish to advance their Web skills independently and even add JavaScript and Flash to their digital portfolios.

THE STUDENTS
One hundred and twenty sixth and seventh grade students at Christa McAuliffe Intermediate School 187 in Brooklyn, New York created digital portfolios. The students’ ages ranged from 11 to13 years old and they came from various cultural backgrounds. These heterogeneous classes met twice a week for forty minutes. This project can be adapted for the fourth grade and up. The students were all very interested in the Internet and in learning to design their own Web pages.

THE STAFF
Marlene McGarrity is a technology teacher at Christa McAuliffe Intermediate School 187. She has been teaching for ten years, with seven of those years spent in the Board of Education. Marlene has won District 20 grants twice and participated in a fellowship in robotics and mechanical engineering at Polytechnic University this past summer.

WHAT YOU NEED
Digital Portfolios requires the use of at least one computer with Internet access along with a printer, a digital camera, a scanner, a Gif Construction Set, and Microsoft FrontPage or Microsoft Word software programs. This project can be adapted students in the fourth grade and up.

OVERALL VALUE
If you want excitement and a real-live use of technology, making Web sites is the way to go! Building digital portfolios makes students excited about writing, editing their work, and publishing it.