Many teachers use portfolios to collect and showcase student work throughout the year. These portfolios demonstrate growth over time, provide a means for authentic assessment, promote communication and reflection, and can give some students an alternative means to demonstrate mastery of skills. Portfolios, whether analog or digital, are individualized and promote student agency and self-efficacy.

While portfolios often reflect long-term projects or activities, they don’t necessarily have to. Small moments, ideas, and “aha’s” happen daily. How can these be captured, reflected and expanded on? The Clips app is a good solution. It is an iOS app for making and sharing videos, incorporating text, voice over, music, and graphics. Using the camera on an iOS device, like iPad, students (or teachers) can capture everyday moments as students work individually or collaboratively.

After the images are collected, they are uploaded into the Clips app. The combined clips are saved to make a video. This video can then be viewed by student and teacher, then reflected on. Some questions for reflection might include: “Tell me about your work” “Why did you choose to do it this way?” “I saw you had some trouble, how did you solve the problem?”This reflection helps make thinking and learning visible for students. The final video can be shared with peers and parents as well. To extend the learning, students may blog or journal about their reflections. Here is an example of Clips demonstrating the concept. You can see the video here.

Clips is a free app in the App Store. It is easy to use and can create short videos or students can continually add to existing videos, much like a regular e-portfolio. There are many benefits to using video in education, such as increased student motivation, enhanced learning experiences, development of learner autonomy, and authentic learning opportunities.

Give Clips a try!