Working on the Critical thinking - assessment in the E-Portofolios.

Students are beginning to collect their information and submit it on their portfolio.  With this understanding I have been giving open ended - or a variety of choices for their assignments.  One such assignment in Information Technology class was for the student to pick either a poster creating program they knew (Glogster) or a program to create a timeline (below is a list of several that I like and so do the students) to sequence the history and growth of the internet.  Students were to name at least 40 different events that changed the internet (from the start with Spotnix to the 250 million users today).  They were to add pictures and graphics to their timeline but the most important aspect of this assignment was not to memorize dates, but to see what changes the Internet.  So this is where the reflective question comes into the process.

With the correct prompting, I can assess where they in comprehension for of the goals.

Goal 1 - Learning a timeline program

• What was the learning intention or goal for this work? Did you achieve it? How do you know? Give evidence from the work.
• What can you do now in your work that you couldn’t do before? What contributed to your growth in understanding, knowledge, or skill?
• What strategies did you use to complete this work? If those strategies had not been available, is there another way you could have done the work?

Goal 2 - What was the importance of looking at the history of the internet?

• How does this work connect to your interests or life experiences?

Goal 3 - What did you learn?  Do all three.

• Which aspects of the assignment were easy for you? Which ones were difficult?
• What surprised you about this assignment?
• What are you still wondering about now that you have completed the assignment?

With the shortage of time, and the need to learn, I believe I can do the three goals simutaniously, Students worked on learning the new program they chose for the first day.  They had 3 web sites as references to start with.  The 2nd day they had a PowerPoint presentation where specific points of interest were to be added to their time line.  On the 3rd day they continued to work on the timeline but comments thrown out there diagrams like the ones below:

http://www.satmagazine.com/cgi-bin/display_article.cgi?number=1609810110

http://webhostinggeeks.com/infographics/the-internet-growth/

or