Alas, necessity is the mother/father of invention. With a return to school in the middle of a pandemic, with so much uncertainty about how much in-person time we are going to get together this year, with people coming and going and panicking and chilling, the time seems right to return to using portfolios of student work. Why? Maybe a better question to answer is why did I stop using them. I stopped using portfolios because they were more work for less return than I would have liked. Google Sites were clunky and I had to ship out a template portfolio that by nature was pretty generic and I fou ..read more

When I teach my students about the evidence for species change I am often confronted by parents (and students, teachers, and school board members) who want to influence what students will learn. I know that there are people in my community that view the teaching of species change as a threat to their particular brand of Christianity. They may not always confront me face to face, but recently a certain letter was shared with my wife, the local Presbyterian minister. As a geology minor and physical anthropology major in college, she is well qualified to rebut this letter, but she handed it ..read more

In commenting on another post on this blog, Abigail Pierson asks an excellent question: It’s been almost three years now. Are you still using this (portfolio) format? Can you comment on what you have learned since this original post? Sure! And thanks for helping me dust off the keyboard to do some writing after a long break. The short answer: no I am currently not using the student blog and portfolio system for a number of reasons that I will detail in a moment. Before hitting the bad news, however, I would first like to comment on what worked well while using student blogs and ..read more