Goat PSA

Some students of mine were interviewed for a video project they completed.  The article never made it to press, but I was able to secure a copy.

Portfolios: Day 1

I found this image shortly after my class began work on the actual digital portfolio today.  I see it as something of a continuum on a couple levels.  The first is from real to imagined.  The second is more along a time continuum.

We are a big pile of Lego.  There were a number of students with varying degrees of technical expertise. There are some students who know a bit of what's happening and some who seem as though they are at the bottom of the pile wondering why their world looks all randomly coloured.  Adding to this messy pile were numerous technical glitches: some computers wouldn't power up, others couldn't find the internet, while others lost all graphical content (it's really hard to navigate in a text-only environment).  Some students got as far as logging on to their digital space while others were able to surge ahead and were able to build their portfolio structures.

But this is only the beginning and we still have much to learn.  I envision older students helping younger students.  I see teachers getting excited about students getting excited about their learning.  I also don't really imagine an end goal at any point.  And I think that's fine.  What I do see, however, is a journey and we have made a good start in the right direction.

Screen Capture Scavenger Hunt

Anticipating having my students create their own student portfolios, I'm thinking about giving them meaningful ways to learn about collecting evidence from their learning.  A simple way to document this is by taking screen captures of their projects both completed and in process.  So to have some fun with it, I created a screen capture scavenger hunt which mixed a bit of fun and a bit of their current learning, and they had to place the evidence into a presentation.  I tried to build in some difficulties to mimic some of the challenges they would face when building their own portfolios and I was surprised by the resourcefulness with which some of them completed the task.

Digital Portfolios

General:

• Authentic Assessment Resources
• Five Ways to Use Online Portfolios in the Classroom
• Curriculum, Content and Assessment for the Real World
• The reality of assessing ‘authentic’ electronic portfolios [PDF]
• The Beginner’s Guide To Creating Digital Portfolios
• Using ePortfolios for Engaged Learning [PDF]
  

Assessment:

• E-Portfolio Assessment Rubric
• EPortfolio (Digital Portfolio) Rubric
  
  

Student Resources:

• Weebly Help Centre
  Adding Pictures to a Site
  

Daily 5

So here it goes--The Daily 5.  Not sure what I'm doing.  I'm going to go with 'Work On Writing' for the first day and build from there.  We'll begin with recounting narratives of what happened on the weekend.

• Daily 5: Quick Start Guide
• What is the Daily 5?

Change

SmartBoard: How to Draw a Cat