Laura’s Eportfolio

 

Eportfolios are an excellent way to show folio thinking which is can be a positive learning experience.  At a minimum, students choose what is entered into it. Students then have the opportunity to explain why they chose the items and then reflect on their learning experience. During this time students can identify their strength and weaknesses and make plans for growth. Folios are meant to show authentic learning and evidence as assessment.  They allow a learner to show their strengths and students can access ways they need to grow. Eportfolios are meant to an ongoing, every changing collection of evidence-based learning that is learner selected.

Learners should be able to provide evidence of their learning. Learners can do this by providing a digital collection of artifacts that demonstrate ability including electronic files, multimedia files, blog links, images, etc.  Being able to show an eportfolio demonstrates more than a student’s abilty to take a test and get grades. Eportfolios are a true authentic reflection of the work the student is doing and allows them to self-evaluate. The learner is able to showcase what they believe they are doing well.

Eportfolios afford the learners some simple software advantages. Eportfolios give the learner a place to store the knowledge and organize it a way that they choose.  They can be updated and shared easily. Most programs that create eportfolios also help in the aesthetics of it; appearance, editing, and organization on the page. The appearance also gives a little insight into the person and their personality. They allow the learner to build self-confidence since they select their work that will be displayed.  Students are able to showcase what they think is their best as well as their learning and connections.

I choose to use the new Google Sites.  Since students are already using google docs, slides, and sheets, it is easy to embed them into a google site. All the student needs is an account to access google site and the students in our district have that.

TPACK Reflection:

CONTENT: The content varies by student choice.  The idea is any item that showcases their best work can be added to it.  One added feature is the students may write their reflection ir connection which allows learner hone their writing skills.

PEDAGOGY: Eportfolios simply allow a way for a student to gather work of his/her own choosing.  The contents can be of many different subject matters, as long as the student choose it. It allows for collection, selection, reflection, and connection.

TECHNOLOGY: Computer, desk tops/laptops would be the best form of technology to use updating their eportfolio, although it can be done on a tablet.  The tablet will need to be in desktop view, and it is just frankly not as user friendly, but very possible.

Our school district has been implementing eportfolios for a few years. The requirement in elementary is as little as one artifact a year. I’ll be honest and say that I have viewed eportfolios in the past as a chore, I now see them differently.  I can see the value in students choosing their best work that shows their learning. I think learners will show pride in an eportfolio when they are the ones that choose the artifacts and can show ownership in the way it looks with their own unique personality showing through. There is also value when the learner reflects on the contents over time and thus have a learning experience, not just have a collection.

Link to the beginning of my own eportfolio:

Laura’s Eportfolio

 

Laura’s Eportfolio

Choosing the Right Blog:

When I begin this week and saw we would be discussing blogging as out tech play testing I thought this was going to be pretty simple.  I have read a ton of blogs, and I have created blogs before, but only on blogger.  I had a personal blog years ago to keep up with people long before facebook became the way to do that and then I had actually created a couple on blogs where I had something called Roving Reporter where the idea was a different student would contribute to it daily and then one that was like a online reading log where students could share books they read.  When I started to create this one, I wanted to do something besides blogger since I had experience with it.  I looked at several including tumlr, wix, weebly, edublog and decided to go back and try blogger, but it just wasn’t working out for me either. I didn’t like anything I was doing, I was confused about the formatting, even when looking back at old ones I had created. I went back and looked at several and decided on WordPress.com because it looked the mosts user friendly.  It looked like a blogging site I might could use with my students successfully (I will need to read the terms and conditions to see if we could even do that first though)  I actually first began by making a google site, which I soon realized was not going to work because it would not meet the definitions of a blog since there was no ability to comment.

Definition:

A blog is a place where people can share thoughts, ideas, express opinions, give information, share experiences, and more to a world wide audience.  The audience is then able to interact by adding comments.  It can contain writing, photographs, links, vlogs. There is usually a calendar of blog post on the side and sometimes a search engine to help you look for a specific title. Bloggers come out their post into categories at times also to help readers find a topic.                                                                                                                            Synonyms could be on online journal, online diary, online record,                       blogger: person who blogs                                                                                                    blogging: the act of writing a blog

Affordances:

Blogs can play a role in the classroom.  Blogs can be a teacher created newsletter for parents to see what is going on in our room.  It can give information about upcoming events, assignments, showcase student work, provide links for parents to check grades, the possibilities to benefit the parent is endless.  Blogs can be used to give students information as well about a topic they are studying.  Teachers can use blogs as a resources to for students to contribute information as well.  Blogs can be used as collaborative tool as where students shared what they learned about a topic. Blogs also allow for students to practice and use digital citizenship.  They could be utilized for Flipped lessons, including a possible video of a lesson and/or links for the lesson students are doing at home.  I think the most vital part of a blog is the ability for students to practice their writing across all areas of the before mentioned ideas fo the classroom. Specially in my math classroom, I am picturing a problem solving blog where students are contributors, not just commenters and where they take pictures of their work and share their answers with the goal of showing different strategies to solve the same problem.

TPACK Reflection:

CONTENT: The content in an education blog can be very wide.  It can literally be any content at all.  Writing is the one strand that can be used through out the whole experience of a blog across all subjects. I would think all levels of Blooms Taxonomy potentially could be reached within a blog.  If students are added as contributors they could certainly create post to a blog if appropriate.  I think specifically with what I am teaching this year in math and trying to have my students think critically with math and think deeply, that a blog could be useful in explain their reasoning for questions, explaining how to do a simple problem, developing and creating their how problems using a taught skill.

PEDAGOGY: I think students learn best doing and then if they can do, explaining it to someone else and since I teach mostly ESL students, explaining it with explicit, correct vocabulary.  This can be done through contributing/commenting on blogs.

TECHNOLOGY: Computers, tablets, phones, or anything devices that reachers the internet can view a blog.  I believe computers, laptops/desktops,  would be the best way for students to contribute to the blog and tablets and phone would allow for brief comments on blogs.

Classroom Obstacles:

I could see where blogs could be difficult for students to learn to navigate since it is not a form of technology that most students are familiar with.  It could take important instructional time just to teach the basics of how to use one.   Although, I think that blogs would allow students to practice digital citizenship, there are certain areas of concern with digital citizenships and blogs.  There is the possibility to publish anonymously, which I am sure the students will figure out which could lead to a number of inappropriate actions by youth.  In my experience with blogging, the most difficult aspects of blogs or a teacher is that they tend to be a long term commitment.  You have to be intentional about updating and if you are using it as tool in the classroom where students are contributing, you have to be deliberate to check the student work.  One thing teachers have to do as well is decide the accountability part.  Are you going to just have students contribute or is there going to be a grade that come in the form of a rubric expectation from it.