Web Based Portfolios

As a writer, blogging has been a natural fit for me to begin integrating technology into my practice.  While I have made many, many mistakes since my first blog post and have had some dry spells, I find the process a great way to think aloud and write at the same time.

I have had some success in working with teachers on the integration of blogging into their classroom practice but I believe that it must fit a need in the classroom.  Technology should never be done just for the sake of the technology.

I am particularly drawn to the work of Jeff Utecht, and in particular his blog posts about creating Web Based Portfolios (WBP).  In this post, he explains why blogs are one alternative for creating WBP in schools:

There are many reasons why blogs as WBP make sense. They are easy to use, highly customizable, allow you to embed almost anything the web has to offer, upload your own content, and they can be installed locally or hosted virtually. Blogs are a natural web-based container for portfolios. Even their reverse chronological order of placing the most relevant ideas, knowledge and understanding at the top is a way to show learning over time.

And don't miss the work of Isabel and her blog as a great student model of what can be done!!

So my blog readers - are you using portfolios in your school? How effective do you think they are? Would the integration of technology make them a better form of assessment? (Or maybe I should say - would the integration of technology make them more user friendly as a form of assessment?) Why or why not?