1. Wix Sites

Wix offers websites for student who wants to look professional online. you can check out these special student discount websites and start showcasing your skills.

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2. Google Sites

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Google Sites is easy to use and the kind of thing students can list on a resume later in life. It allows students to build a basic website using one of a number of available templates and upload files in almost any format to showcase their work.

Ms. Computer Teacher has a series of tutorials specifically covering how to make a digital portfolio on Google Sites that can help your students get started.

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3. Evernote
 

Evernote is easy to use across devices and offers a lot of functionality within its free version. It’s a good tool for organizing different files and notes, but less optimized for sharing or showcasing your portfolio than some of the other options on this list.

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One nice benefit it offers is how easy it is to create different types of files within the app itself. If you want to add a picture or audio file to your digital portfolio, you can open up programs within Evernote to create them. That makes it easy to capture a moment during class or record something you see outside of class, and immediately have it categorized in the right place within your profile.

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For more in-depth tips, check out one Portland teacher’s experience using Evernote for digital portfolios to work with with elementary school kids.

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4. WordPress

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Like both Google and Evernote, WordPress is a tool that it increasingly pays to understand in the business and work worlds. Students that get some experience with it early will likely reap the benefits long term.

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Luckily, it’s pretty easy to use for basic purposes and, like the other platforms mentioned here, allows students to bring files of all different types into the portfolio they create. Students can choose from a number of free themes and craft a site that fits their personality to help them feel more ownership over the project.

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They can use posts and pages to document their work throughout the year and revisit anything they’ve captured there later in life. Some students may experience a little bit of a learning curve in getting started with WordPress, but once a blog is in place, updating it is simple.

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By the way, stick with WordPress.com here. The learning curve gets much more involved with WordPress.org, and you have to pay for each domain name with the latter. This page goes through all the steps to get started.

5. Edublogs

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Edublogs offers a service very similar to WordPress, but is meant specifically for students. That makes for an easier interface, but a lot of the same functionality otherwise.

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An Edublogs site can be set to private, so access can be restricted to just a student’s teachers and classmates if that makes the student (and more likely, the student’s parents) more comfortable. They also promise a lack of ads on all student sites, an issue that comes up occasionally with WordPress. And some school administrations may have WordPress blocked, which would make Edublogs a promising alternative.

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These two options come pretty close in terms of how they work and can be used by your students, so check them both out and consider which works best for you. Edublogs offers a guide on getting started that covers all the basics.

6. Weebly

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Weebly is yet another platform that makes it easy for students to create a website using the visual template of their selection. The interface for making updates is very visually intuitive. It’s a little easier to use than some of the other options – images can be sized and placed using a drag-and-drop movement, for example. As such, it’s probably the better choice for any younger students.

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You can browse a number of examples of digital portfolios students have already made to get some ideas. And this YouTube tutorial goes through the steps of getting a new site set up.

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