Keeping Parents Informed - Electronic Portfolios in Technology Classes.

For the third year I tried electronic Portfolios in my classroom, and as with anything you do a number of times, there is improvement.  I believed this to be so but I wanted to make sure the students thought so as well.  There were 2 students that have been doing electronic portfolios for two years with me.  The growth was extremely evident but both students were not happy with their first year of Information Technology so they deleted the old work, and tried to make a portfolio that is more professional.  Although I was sorry to hear this and I explained to them that showing growth was good, pride trumped it.  Take a look at this sample and this one. Both students are in Grade 10.  I only do electronic portfolios with the Grade 9 though 12.  Please remember, these are students that have done electronic portfolios for two years.

After the completion of the course I asked my student (29 in total) to fill out a survey, and the results. are below. Some of the results are a surprise.

I did student lead conferencing this year with parent conferences (see student's self-assessment for student lead conferencing) .  Many of the parents stated they already knew exactly where their child was so they did not have to come to the conference.  In a month's time I asked parents to email me comments in regards to their child's work.  All parents had to sign a note or email me saying they saw their child's work.  Between the portfolios and emails, parents were kept in the educational learning loop.  There were no surprises for them or for their child.  Both formal and informal feedback was constant.

This was a nice surprise.  The students reviewing their own learning (see photoshop final entries for self-evaluation and critical thinking) increased the need to do better.  As you can see below, students liked to learn on their own and self-reflection of your own work over a period of time helps the students to see (with evidence right in front of them) their own growth and their accomplishments.

The question below was in direct relationship to the photoshop unit I taught.  See the evidence of what Grade 9 and 10's can do and how creative they can be when they show me evidence in specific skills taught:

Example 1 

Example 2 

Example 3 

But of all the evidence gathered by this survey, what made me feel that electronic portfolios made a difference is the results below.  It's wonderful to see that this manner of assessing has had a positive effect on my students.

Portfolios online for  assessment that has become very popular with blogging of student learning and self reflection of learning.  How is this change in environment (learning though critical thinking) going in our school?  Do the student like this manner of assessment?  Take a look at what the students want.

Things to Help with Assessment of Portfolios

Although I use electronic portfolios in my classroom (see blog these blog entries for some reflection on the progress I've made over the last two years) I find that many of the forms I have used can be used with paper portfolios.  But I'm willing to  share with everyone and by all means make the changes that suit you but please keep the recognition/names of the owners of the forms on them, as I have, they worked hard to make these forms.

Good luck.


Grade 8 portfolio assessment sheet
My starting booklet for teaching students to start the portfolio and how to reflection on their portfolios.
Intel's "Anna's Assessment Plan"
Assessment in the 21st Century Classroom Blog Rubric by Intel.
Assessment in the 21st Century Classroom Communication Rubric by Intel.
Intel Teach Elements Critical Thinking Rubric
Digital Portfolio Parent Assessment and Student Self-Assessment - to have parents involved in the assessment of their child.  This one needs work.
Products and Performances to include in your Portfolio by Intel.
Self Assessment and work Assessment handout for students for e-Portfolios (can be changed for portfolios).
Student Reflection sheet
Parent Portfolio Reflection Sheet
Portfolio Record of content
Student Portfolio Planning Sheet.
Frames and Prompts for Portfolio Assessment.
Digital Portfolio Guidelines for Beginners by the Ministry of Education, SMS Services Team (2011) in New Zealand.
Teacher Portfolio Planning sheet.
Portfolio scoring record (with no marks), just pure assessment.

Thanks for Val Lees (@lees_v) a teacher in Surrey for sharing some of these forms as well as the Surrey School District who compiled many of these forms to help with portfolios of students.  Hope this helps you.

Reflections of Grade 9 Students....

OK, I'll admit right now, he's one of my "great" students (Your a genius!!! - from Terry Small @terrysmall).  But that's not why I've chosen to share the Eportfolio blog reflection of these students.  You'll understand why after you read the blog.

When my students entered my classroom  I had a youtube video ready for them to watch.  We've been working on Social Networks in my Information Technology 9/10 classroom, hoping to teach some understanding of the negatives and positives of these tools.  We use a lot of social networking at Sullivan Heights, web classrooms, blogging portfolios, and tweeting out homework, successes and updates of our school.  The idea is to teach the students about your digital persona but also to make sure they understand that no one controls the Internet and when you put something out on the net, there's no going back.

So here's one of the videos I showed students, and below it is the blog entry I requested.  I asked students to write 100 words or more about what they learned from the video.  This entry makes me smile with pride that a student went further then just reciting was he heard or saw, he analyzed the information and came up with his own conclusions.  He extended his knowledge, and applied the learning of MySpace to Facebook.  Read below and hopefully it will make you smile as well.  He's in Grade 9.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11064451/ns/dateline_nbc/t/why-parents-must-mind-myspace/#.UHbptcU0WSo

 "   This video mainly introduced what Myspace is, and the dangers in the use of Myspace. Myspace as a social networking site is convenient and easy to use, and everyone wants an account in it (now its Facebook having the same thing happening). While friend can communicate about all sort of things on it, there are also many hidden dangers. But many teenage users are not aware of the dangers. The girl in the video, Shannon Sullivan, only thought it was her friends reading the information on her page. So she threw on everything needed to find her in person, and she "didn't thing twice about it". She put on a fake age, even though she was underaged to use Myspace. Like many other teenagers, she had no idea about the online predators stalking people like her.

    

Because her mother had settings that allowed her to see the internet use on the computer, she found out about Shannon using Myspace. She grounded Shannon for two weeks, then had her place private setting on her page. This is very fortunate compared with other parents who has not the slightest idea about things like this. Teens put on all sorts of revealing pictures and personal information about themselves, and the online predators takes advantage of this. That's why parents have to monitor the use of social networking of their teens, to protect them from harm. I believe this is very important, and applies to all social networking sites, not just Myspace or Facebook. Teens should be careful about what they put on the internet, and what they do put on should be protected by private settings."

Just to show that not all students are as proficient in writing in my classroom, the intent to show learning is still there in other examples and show just as much learning.

"      In infotech today I watched a vodeo on how myspace can be "the" site for predators. in the video, it explained how a girl signed up for myspace when she was underage she signed up, and I was thinking, who's to say that people that are under the age of 10 are signing up. and if that happens it clearly means that they know a lot less about pravicy settings. So what I am trying to say is people signing up under age makes it so much easyer for predators to find people. 

         In my opinion i think that there should be a perant part of the sign up form so if there underage, so that way kids wont sneek on websites like myspace to sign up without permission"

Remember, it's only been a month for these students, and we're still in the process of setting up the eportfolios,and understanding critical thinking and analysis but they do understand that when they blog, it is an opinion and they explain their opinion to show their learning (critical thinking skills).

Both entries make me proud.  We're on our way to expanding our learning and developing learning skills.  ;)

Eportfolios

Another year starting and my students are on Eportfolios again. This time we're using Webnode, a program I've been examining and using for the past two years. We 've been exploring/studying/using Eportfolios for a year now and this year's process has become easier for the initial set up. The website has a photo gallery for screen shots of work or Photoshop examples. There is a homework/assignment section, and best of all a blog section for reflection and critical thinking evaluation.

UBC had an explanation of Eportfolios and learning (http://elearning.ubc.ca/toolkit/eportfolios/) but I believe their best quote of what is reflection is the following - "thinking that enables self-awareness, personal and professional growth, and improved teaching and learning experience." I believe that students DO teach themselves when they stop and thing of what they just heard or read, and consider what their position or opinion is on this learning.

That's why I blog, to reflect on my own learning, and what I should do next to continue my path of learning. Don't we all? But more importantly, I'll be using these portfolios for assessment. See this study on this subject. 

So why am I exploring eportfolios and blogging?  Because of an entry of one of my student just this year reminding me that students who enjoy learning learn deeper then those that don't.  My next post will give more details on this.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Weebly Analysis from the Students' Point of View.

With all the summaries that I've posted last month in regards to the learning of my colleagues at the school I realized that I have not posted my own summary.  For the past 3 months I've had two groups of students  doing e-portfolios on Weebly.  The program is simple to use, lets you have 40 accounts for free, and for teachers to assess, instead of gathering up the individual web addresses of each student who creates a eportfolio web site, Weebly lets the teacher control the sites, make it private or not, and change the passwords.  See my blog entry on Weebly to understand the Pro's and Con's of the program.

At the end of the school year I asked my Grade 8 students a number of questions in regards to Weebly and doing electronic portfolios for their learning.  The following is the results of the 28 students that answered the survey.  

I was happy that students realized that reflecting on their learning through the eportfolios helped them learn more and helped them realize that they were learning.

The data below did surprise me.  I asked twice for parents to assess their child's learning with the electronic portfolios.  From these results it's clear that I need to do a better explanation to parents of the reason for electronic portfolios and what they can do for both the child and the parent in talking about the learning.

I was happy that students realized they were choosing the activities and what they added to their portfolios, giving them ownership of their learning and help them understanding their learning more.

The data below was no surprise.  I knew that by reflecting on their learning, they would learn more.  What I am hoping for this coming year is more peer assessment, opening up their electronic portfolios to their friends.

 After reading about developing curious and creative minds (John Barell - Developing More Curious Minds)

I can honestly say that I did not use the blogging section of the electronic portfolio to it's full capacity, I should target a day (Friday would be good) with a reflection question every single time, so students can get use to this and be prepared to come up with their own reflections.  Although I am happy with the results of the survey, I could of done more.

Finally, you can see from the data below that the students did not need to spend the entire class to do their portfolios, it ranged from 10 - 30 minutes, depending on what they were working on, and this was not every day, only 1 - 2 days a week.  This is manageable in regards to time for any teacher.

The final question was a question of preference that I had asked my class and it was completely different then the response I got from  my 1st term class.  The 2nd term loved Weebly more then Webnode, whereas the 1st term students like Webnode more then Weebly.  The only difference was which web designing site was introduced first to the students.  Students liked the 1st web site introduced to them best.  In the 2nd term I introduced Weebly to the students first, and here are the results.  Interesting to look into more.

I hoped these results helped you as much as they intriged me.

What to use with your Students for putting their learning online.

Many people are into Wiki, many are doing Blogger, some are into easy web designing programs like Webnode and Weebly.  So which do you do use with your students? It all depends on what reasons you want to start putting up your students work on the internet.  I have done Blogs with my students using Blogger, have helped teachers with their Wikis, used Facebook for e-portfolios for student work on Illustrator and Photoshop, and now I'm trying Weebly with my Grade 8 students for e-portfolios and ease of marking.  So which ones do I recommend?  I show a number of them to the teacher and let them decide.  It may take some time but in the end they can do their own comparisons and take responsibility for their own choices.

The following are some advantages and disadvantages of each program for you to consider before you make your own choice.  These are a few that I have come across or thought of.  I hope this helps you

Advantages	Disadvantages
Facebook
·      Great for using the photo albums ·      Students can “Poke” you when they add something to their photo albums. ·      The program gets the other person’s comments on your desktop when they have added something. ·      Great for peer assessment, students all become friends  and can comment on each others work. ·      Easy for the teacher to assess with comments, for instant feedback without giving a mark. ·      Can add videos if doing animation in your classroom. ·      Security is good, to keep others out. ·      Parents can become Friends so they can check out their own child’s work.	·      Additions are not sortable ·      Hard to search what was done. ·      When you have 30 or more students doing work and adding to their desktop, your desktop gets flooded. ·      Need to have a YouTube channel to add videos. ·      Cannot embed other Web 2.0 programs (ie Glogster, Prezi, etc)  in Facebook. ·      Need to watch student’s friends, sometimes they invite their friends and  they don’t watch their security, so their “desktop” gets crowded if garbage. ·      Students add games to their  account so they can play online during class time.  It also adds to the teacher’s desktop. ·      Students can hide through security what they are doing.
Webnode
·      Free ·      Easy to set up and use. ·      Can be individualized with your own pictures, colors, etc. ·      Many different Templates and different pages you can put into your Webnode. ·      Has stats you can see. ·      Has RSS feed ·      Has different types of pages you can choose including a Portfolio section. ·      Can embed any other program using the HTML code, like YouTube, Prezi, Glogster, etc. ·      Can have more then one web site on your account. ·      Can have as many pages as you want. ·      Many designs that are free. ·      Easy to use and self explanatory. ·      Can Tweet anything on the page. ·      Has many gadgets you can add to your web page, ie poll, codes, different videos from different web sites (educational sites). ·      Can have a list of student sites to your list.	·      To embed you need to know some HTML coding. ·      Does not feed in well with Blogger “Blog lists”. ·      Does not appear well if you use the RSS feed for a newspaper program like “paperli”. ·      Cannot lock it down.
Weebly
·      Free ·      Easy to set up and use. ·      Has RSS feed ·      Has a page for a blog. ·      You have 5 pages and as many photos as you want. ·      Easy to add in columns with picture on one side and a write-up on the other side. ·      Can embed any other program with easy, a copy and a paste. ·      Easy to embed a video ·      Instantaneous so there is no need to wait for a publisher to create a new edition or update information ·      Teacher creates the account for all students, giving them individual user names and passwords. ·      Teacher has access to all accounts, so it’s easy to assess as well ·      Can set it up so that you cannot see the site unless you have a password to get on the site.	·      When you embed other programs sometimes they affect the running of the program on the Internet.  An example is “Prezi” will freeze your Weebly home page. ·      Open to SPAM and Vandalism if not managed properly. There are easy ways to restore a page however, and on WikiEducator you must be logged in to edit pages so this reduces vandalism by automated spam bots. ·      Only get 40 accounts to set up.  So if you want more, you either pay or get a colleague to join and this gives you more accounts for students. ·      Limit of size of a photo.
Wikis
·      Free ·      Easy to set up and use. ·      Some wikis allow for a lot of formatting. ·      Can use this program to collaborate – giving control of different pages to different users. ·      Can be password protected. ·      Can check to see when the last update of the Wiki was. ·      Has RSS feed ·      Give permission to anyone that you want to have access to edit ·      Wikis are instantaneous so there is no need to wait for a publisher to create a new edition or update information ·      People located in different parts of the world can work on the same document ·      The wiki software keeps track of every edit made and it's a simple process to revert back to a previous version of an article.  All the drafts of a document are saved.  If a team of people have altered a document several times and feel that using the original introduction would now work better than the revised version, they can easily go back and retrieve the original. ·      Some of the Gadgets you can add to your Wiki are very interactive, and easy to do. ·      Has Stats.	·      Does not feed in well with Blogger “Blog lists”. ·      Does not appear well if you use the RSS feed for a newspaper program like “paperli”. ·      Not to crazy about the look of the Wiki. ·      Need to know some HTML coding if you wish to embed some programs. ·      Wikis do make it easy for several people to brainstorm and collaborate on projects by adding content to a group website, but if no one is keeping tabs on the content, it can get pretty confusing.  ·      Although this program is user-friendly, it doesn’t look like it.
Blogger
·      Free ·      Easy to set up – step by step, easy to use. ·      Can be individualized. ·      Create your own design. ·      Can save drafts of post and work on it later. ·      Has a number of apps you can use with an IPads. ·      The App lets you take pictures with your IPad and then put it up on your Blog ·      Teacher can have a “Blog list” of students blogs and this makes it easier to mark. ·      Instantaneous so there is no need to wait for a publisher to create a new edition or update information ·      The “Blog list” can be set up so that when students add something to their blog the blog address goes up to the top of the list, and you can see the date of when it was added. ·      Can embed anything in your Blog. ·      They can add their own blog list ·      Easy to embed a poll, a video from your YouTube account. ·      Once you set up Blogger, you have a gmail account and a GoogleDoc account as well.  Easy to embed all together. ·      Parents can follow their own child’s work, see what is happening in the class. ·      Easy to make a homework list or embed a Twitter school account for tweeting homework. ·      You can add pages to your blog for different subject areas.	·      There is a limited number of setups for the template but you can change the look of it.  Does take some time to set the template.  You may lose the kids in the initial setup so give yourself and the students time to play with the look of it. ·

Mobile IPads

We've been doing something a little different at Sullivan Heights with our IPads, we've been using them as COWS (computers on wheels - yes I know, this acronym makes you smile).  That means that students get different IPads every time different teacher signs out the cart full of IPads - we're sharing.  This action would not usually make a difference except most of the Apps on the IPad use email to save your work or send your work to someone and most of these apps want you to put in your email address on the IPad setting.  Why is this a problem?  When the student sets up their email, they will then have to  removes the email before they put the IPads away at the end of the classroom period.  This procedure will take up valuable teaching time.  So what do you do?  The only thing is to ask the creators of the Apps to make some changes or to get a generic account that everyone uses to email their own work to themselves.  The second problem with this situation is that all IPads are on the "guest access" system in SD36 and this WiFi system does not let you email out.  Well, back to the drawing board....

As you can see, the booking calendar for the IPad COW is very busy, with teachers using them for projects for 3 - 5 days, but in between the project other students are using the IPads and the different Apps for different reasons.  We've had a number of incidents already where one student forgets to log out of their Twitter Account and the next classroom using the IPad uses this twitter account.  

One brilliant teacher (K. Phillips) is using blogs for students to record their learning, and to help in assessment of learning.  But when she was using the IPads and using Blog Press, once you log into this app you cannot log out.  So we've looked at others (BE Write HD - excellent look and great for sharing on Google Docs your work - I liked this one and Blogsy - we're still investing this rich one) and decided to use Blogger, a simple app specific for blogspot, and for the needs of the student.  They can add pictures from the photo roll with the IPad (to help record any scientific information they need).  I've seen their work and I (as well as Phillips) am amazed at the learning, the analytical evidence shown, the exploration of learning in different areas that the student chose.  

So where to next?  We're still experimenting with Blogsy, and BE Write worked for one student but not another.  We're looking at apps that have a "sign out" feature.  So beware, those that get a COW of IPads, make sure any app you purchase has a sign out feature and also has it so there are a number of ways to get your info to the teacher.

On a side note, I love Comic Book but if you don't finish your comic in that time period and post it to Twitter (the great feature I loved), then you're hooped.  Because you can't save it to your system without it disappearing when sharing the IPads.  Sorry Comic Book, you need to fix that  ;)

The Wonders of Weebly

My students have been learning a number of Web 2.0 tools, photo modification, sideshows, the need for Avatars, etc.  Because of all of these different programs on different sites, we needed an area where all can be put, and that way, seeing the growth of their learning would help build confidence in students, would help them self-assess, and would help students in comparison, and analysis of different tools with the same purpose.  It is the hope that the students will be able to synthesis all these tools and come up with an analysis of which Web 2.0 tool is the best for what situation.  The  evaluation in this area is to make judgements of each tool with their own defined criteria of needs, for a specific project that is called for in any course or subject, not just my  course.

Weebly is a simple, free Web design and hosting system that takes nearly all the pain out of creating a site.  You use drag and drop features to create the pages.  As a teacher you can set up a class of 40 students, setting the user names and passwords of the students one by one, or by uploading a text file of students names, etc.  The program lets you print out all passwords and as the teacher you can lock up the web sites so no one can see the student sites unless they have a password that you set up.  This is for the security and safety of the students.  


Another excellent feature of this tool is their blog area, which you can use for critical thinking activities and also for peer assessment as there is a comment section for his area.  

Weebly has big gaps in its feature set (when dragging and dropping, sometimes the machine lags in this area and sometimes the embedding feature jams up the visual look of the site but by closing off the site and then opening it, all rights itself.  As a quick-and-dirty site host, it's not bad. I really like its simplicity. You can start by selecting a page layout from Weebly's templates (all of which look good - see above picture), or just start typing on the default template. Adding elements like pictures (via uploads or Flickr), YouTube videos, and Google maps to a page is very simple, just drag and drop the feature.  Adding pages to your site is also easy, a click of a button.   But there are some limitations in this service. You can't put a picture into a block of text after the fact--there are separate module types for text and for text-plus-image. You can't put a headline or a caption on an embedded object (like a Google map or YouTube video);  And I'm not sure about space (how many pages you are allowed).  

At present it suites our needs for our eportfolio.  We'll continue to explore this aspect, and I'll continue to assess Weebly in this blog.

Below is a YouTube video on Weebly.

Here are more Web 2.0 tools that my students will be exploring this year in Grade 9/10.  As you can see below, Google covers many of the aspects of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy with their aspects.

http://blog.kathyschrock.net/2011/03/google-tools-and-blooms-revised.html

Finally, just to see how you too can integrate some Web 2.0 tools into daily practise see the Prezi below.

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy and Web 2 Tools on Prezi

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