Three Ways to Create Simple Portfolio Websites

We're nearing the point in the school year that many of us start to think about activities for students to do to summarize their highlights of the school year. One way to do that is to create simple portfolio websites. These are sites that have just one page that features only the best work that students are proud to share. 

In this short video I demonstrate how to use three different platforms to create simple portfolio websites. In the video you'll see me use Carrd.co, Adobe Creative Cloud Express, and Canva to create simple websites. 

Applications for Education

Some examples of the things you might have students include in a simple portfolio website are pictures (either of their work or as examples of their work), videos they've made in your class, slide presentations, and documents they've written. 

Create a Portfolio With Carrd.co

I often get asked for recommendations for simple website builders that teachers and students can use to create small websites. Google Sites is fine, but the aesthetics still have a long way to go. Services like WordPress and Weebly are great, but have way more menus and options than what's needed for a quick and simple site. Carrd.co is a new service that just might fill the need for an easy-to-use tool to quickly create good-looking, simple websites. 

I gave Carrd.co a try this afternoon. In ten minutes I created a little photography portfolio site that looks way better than anything I could have created with Google Sites or WordPress. Watch this short demo video to see how you can create a portfolio site with Carrd.co.

Applications for Education
Carrd.co could be a good little tool for high school or college students to use to create simple websites to share information about themselves and their work. They can create sites that are useful to have and share when applying for an internship, a scholarship, or a job.

Book Creator Adds New Options for Copying and Re-using Pages

Book Creator is one of my go-to tools for making ebooks and digital portfolios. In fact, I like it so much that it's one of the featured tools in my Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp. And now there is a new feature that makes Book Creator better than ever. That new feature is the option to copy multiple pages from one of your books and re-use them in another book.

In Book Creator you can now copy and re-use any of the pages in your books including the cover page. This can be done within the same book or be done between multiple books.

Ooh... this is useful. 👀

You can now copy multiple pages in Book Creator. What's more, you can copy pages to other books! 📚

Made an update to a template? With this feature, you can send it out to everyone in the class at once. ➡️

Learn more:https://t.co/9FIxQb98xB#edtech pic.twitter.com/oHJTCp3hYR

— Book Creator Team (@BookCreatorApp) July 14, 2020

Applications for Education
As Book Creator wrote in their Tweet announcing this new feature, copying and pasting pages could be quite useful in creating a template that you want students to use for their books. I find that when using Book Creator as a tool for a portfolio it's nice to have students follow the same structure. Following the same structure makes it easier for a teacher to quickly locate an artifact related to a topic or standard within a portfolio.

Create a Digital Portfolio on PortfolioGen

Disclosure: PortfolioGen is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com.

PortfolioGen is a nice digital portfolio service for students and teachers. Teachers can use PortfolioGen to create a professional portfolio that includes examples of their lesson plans and media they've created. Of course, PortfolioGen pages can also be used to display all of the information like education and certification that would be found on resume.  PortfolioGen pages can include contact forms for potential employers to use to get in touch with teachers.

Students can use PortfolioGen to display examples of their best work in text, visual, and audio format. Students using PortfolioGen as part of a college entrance application can display things like references from teachers and employers.

If you decide to use PortfolioGen portfolio primarily for text and static visual content, you may be interested in the option to download your portfolio as a PDF.

SeeSaw Offers Resources for Back-to-School Night

Disclosure: SeeSaw is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com

Since its launch in January SeeSaw has quickly become a popular tool for teachers and students to use to create digital portfolios. SeeSaw can be used on iPads, Android tablets, Chromebooks, and laptops. Through the service students and teachers can build digital portfolios that feature students' digital work as well as images of physical work. The playlist embedded below provides a thorough overview of SeeSaw's features.


If you're planning to use SeeSaw this year, consider introducing it to parents during your back-to-school night. To help you with that process SeeSaw has published a webpage and set of complementary slides to use during back-to-school night. I've embedded the slides below.