If students learn largely through an electronic medium, the obvious way for them to organise their work is through a hypertext portfolio. We encourage students to build a Humanities portal site as a means of storing and linking all their electronic learning. This is an example from a student currently in Year 9. When uploaded to a web server, this becomes a safe, portable and easily accessible portfolio of student learning. This 'multiple-intelligence portfolio' allows for a  far more flexible and therefore authentic expression of student learning than was ever imaginable within the confines of an exercise book full of handwritten exercises. 

Students as producers: Websites as platforms

Perhaps the most obvious function of a student website is to give the student a wider audience for their work. By providing students with a platform, they cease to be passive consumers of education and instead become active producers.  Recent research carried out at the United States National Learning Lab in Maine suggests that this is the most effective way for young people to learn. (see John Simkin - 'Most teachers use methods that are fairly ineffective!') Occasionally, student websites can result in original content being produced that might be of genuine use to a wider learning community. (see for example work produced by IB Humanities students at the IST on Roman Toulouse, Mozart, John Rae and the cartoons of David Low)

For further thoughts about the radical implications of learning websites in education see Richard Jones-Nerzic - The Laptop Revolution