World Language Exchange E-Portfolios
Wendy Burgbacher, World Language Exchange, US World Language Department
An integral part of the Cary Academy World Language Exchange Program is the Exchange Portfolio. Students receive a midterm grade following the exchange just for this piece of work, which displays their reflections on their personal exchange trip experience. In recent years the portfolio has been revised so that students must grapple with questions dealing with cultural differences, difficulties they had, and what they learned, rather than it being simply a daily journal. This has been very fruitful for the teacher chaperones, for we can see more clearly what the students experienced and how much they learned from the experience. In addition to completing a hard copy “scrapbook” as their portfolio format, students may opt to complete their portfolio online. They post their reflections to the class platform or complete it using external websites and software. Matthew Glosson opted to post his portfolio on Haiku Learning, where he embedded his reflections in audio form instead of writing essays. He reflected deeply on his travel experiences and completed a successful portfolio as a result. Matthew’s Exchange Portfolio can be viewed here.
The tool used for this project was the Haiku Portfolio Feature which allows students to create a personal “website” in Haiku that includes audio, video, images, etc. The portfolio can be exported such that it is a stand alone website so that it can be archived after the student leaves Cary Academy. Cary Academy is also able to archive all portfolios in this way.
