Tag Archive | ePortfolios

Online Spaces – Portability and Longevity

Aug15

online spaces

In a previous post a comment by Ray Tolley got me thinking about what happened to the various online spaces I had set up for Primary 7 stage children in the past.

Ray commented:

“Perhaps one important point missed so far is about longevity. Having taken the trouble to help pupils build up an e-Portfolio, what happens if there is no ‘portability’ to the Secondary school or beyond? I doubt that promises of ‘interoperability’ will really materialise in the next 10-15 years! I think that it is very important to invest in a system that is future-proofed. I feel that children will get very frustrated if they have to start from scratch all over again when they move on to another school.”

I’ve been revisiting some of the spaces I set up and contemplating primary/secondary ‘portability‘ and ‘longevity‘ issues mentioned in Ray’s comment. Stories of some missed opportunities are outlined below:

  • Portability Issue 1 – Jamie’s Story

Jamie was typical of most of the boys in the class that year. They seemed less motivated than the girls when it came to imaginative writing tasks. When they were given their own space in a wiki, however, and allowed some freedom as to the subject matter, Jamie demonstrated that he was actually very capable of writing a great imaginative story. I’ve copied some of his story here:

His face shone dark in the moonlight, while his coat lay torn slowly floating in between the reeds. His shirt was dirty and wet. The dark waters that lay behind him gave him the appearance of a demon or a dark shadowy creature moving in the night. His sheath was well padded and worn away because of constant usage, it had three diamonds encrusted in it. It had a gold rim and a thin copper lining wrapped around it. This lay on his back but it never wieghed him down as it was as light as a feather. He had black boots on and they were half-covered by his camouflage trousers.
He walked on at a normal pace when he heard a purring noise, after a while he ignored it and carried on his stroll. He heard it again. He was watching a certain bush knowing that there was a creature behind it because of all the wierd purring noises. the world stayed as still as a stick insect as they lay eyes on eachother there was more rustling then the beast came out, a tiger that was as orange as sunset heading speedily at Kai. In reaction Kai drew his sword from his sheath and took a deep slash at the tiger’s leftpaw then stabbed it twice roundabout the same place the tiger had gave in to the pain and there it lay dead……

Everyone in the class was full of praise for his effort. It turned out that he liked a particular type of story and had read lots of them. He also enjoyed writing them in a notebook that he carried around. His Laughing in the Face of Death story started a craze and soon the boys in the class began carrying their own notebooks where they wrote similar styles of stories. I remember hearing them comparing stories, as well as seeking and giving advice.

Soon after Jamie’s story appeared on his wiki, we had a visit from two High School teachers from the English Dept. I’m not sure of the original purpose of  their visit but at some point our HT had asked some of the pupils to share the class wikispace with them. They were impressed with Jamie’s attempt at story writing and had also heard about our primary stage ‘two stars and a wish’ assessment strategy and had left a comment for Jamie on his wiki space:

Star 1 ~ Fabulous use of imagery
Star 2 ~ Fantastic description
Wish ~ Develop the use of personification

… but that was the end of the High School teachers’ involvement. They had no idea of the ‘behind the scenes’  information I was privy to. On reflection, it would have been great if more had been made of that opportunity to bridge the gap between Primary 7 and S1.

  • Portability Issue 2 – High School Induction Days

In June each year, the Primary 7 pupils from our cluster spend three days getting to know their new High School. This is great for helping the transition to s1, and the children’s blog posts about their experience gave further insight into how they coped with adjusting to their new environment.

Lisa appeared to have no reservations at all! She wrote:

“I loved Larbert High, it has been one of my  best experiences. I made a lot of cool new friends……”

Tessie, however, wrote about her confusion over the lunchtime arrangements:

“….after that it was lunchtime. a confusing nightmare. we had to line up and put money on our card which was easy. but then we went to the hub *dinner hall* and we got told to get a drink. easy. but then if you went and said can i have a burger please she would say something about do you have a meal deal drink. and i was like what??? it was weird.”

Maryam was anxious from the outset:

“I was shaking in the back seat. My Mum gave me £2.50 for my dinner money. Then when we eventually got there I stepped out the car not knowing which way too go then I saw some other people walking by that were in my class so I just followed them.”

Last year on the three day visit, I gave the primary 7 pupils some of our mp3 players with built in microphones (they had been used to using these in class) and they interviewed some of the teachers and ‘buddies’. We shared these interviews once the children had came back from their visit. I’ve included one of them here – I have permission from all involved to share this online:

 

I wonder what potential blogging has for smoothing out the primary/secondary transition journey?
 

  • Longevity Issue 1 – Marc’s Blog

 Of all the primary 7 pupils, Marc was the most successful in keeping his blog going as he moved on to High School. In fact, in April 2008 he received a comment from David Gilmour:

David commented:

“Hi Marc, this is just to let you know that last month, April 08, your home page was the second most popular entry page on edubuzz.org, with 2571 visits.”
 
 
Marc obviously enjoyed his blog that had been set up for him in Primary 7, and he continued writing posts until Second Year at High School. His main love was for drama/singing/dancing (and probably still is!). He began receiving comments containing words of encouragement from like-minded people … comments such as:

“Hi Marc, i’m the drama teacher at Knox Academy, just wanted to wow and well done for doing your own theatre company, it’s very hard work but liking your name and what you are doing! keep me posted in your future projects! break a leg!”

… and:

Hi Marc – can you give me the details of the Flannan Isle play that you are doing. I will be doing a project with my class based on the mystery of the Flannan Isle and would be interested to know where I could get a copy of the play. Thanks

and …

I’m glad you like Wicked! one of my favourite musicals! if you haven’t seen it yet you must! i seen Idina and Kerry and now booking to see the new Elphaba. We just took S2 and S3 students to see it in London

These comments were from Drama teachers – not from Marc’s own school, but from schools in another Local Authority. Despite the popularity of Marc’s blog, no-one in his own school ever commented (and the chances are that no teachers there were even aware that he had his own blog). It’s been a wee while now since Marc last updated his blog, but it is worth mentioning that he regularly posted to it for two years after he left primary School.

  • Longevity Issue 2 – Kayleigh’s New Home

Marc wasn’t the only one that year who continued to post to his blog after he’d moved on to high School. A handful of others posted during their first year of High School. Danni was one of these … and it was amazing to see a comment on her last blog post from Kayleigh.

Gi Day Danni
sorry it’s a long time since i spoke last. Iv’e just been so busy at school. I came 4th in the school cross country and 18th in the interschool cross country leauge out of a 110 people the lap was about 3km. They after that we had our faction sports carival (there like the houses we used to have) am in beard which is blue. these are the individal avents i took part in : 100m sprit i came 3rd out of the 8 people i raised ,i came 4th in the 200m out of 8 people, i came 3rd in long jump my longest jump was 3.29m and the last of the these events was the 400m i came 4th out of 8 people. After that we went onto team avents this is what they were: my team got second in leaderball, we came 3rd in flag relay, tunnelball,zigzag realy and shuttle relay But sadly we came last in passball. I have done other this as well i will tell you about them some other time
have a good on
from your friend kayleigh

The comment was from Kayleigh, who’d left Carronshore half way through primary 7 to go and live in Australia. It was just fantastic to read her blog post to say that she’d arrived safely and was settling in to her new life ‘down under’. It was also wonderful that there were 15 comments on that post in reply. These included comments from:

  •  friends in her old Carronshore school
  • virtual friends she’d met via her Carronshore blog who live in another part of Australia
  • classroom assistants from carronshore
  • teachers from Carronshore
  • the HT from Carronshore!
  • a member of staff from another authority in Scotland

You can read Kayleigh’s post and comments here

Longevity and portability Issues  – Troubles with edublogs

The blog posts from the next group of Primary 7 bloggers didn’t have as much success when it came to either ‘portability’ or ‘longevity’ issues. Unfortunately just as these primary 7’s left primary school, edublogs began to have problems with bloggers logging on to their blogs. Passwords had stopped working and I looked for help on the edublogs forum – I discovered that others were also having difficulties accessing blogs.

I asked for advice:

I’m also very concerned that all the blogs I set up last session for my class now can’t be accessed by them. They were all added as users (admin status) but have now moved on to High School. If they try to log in, will they not gain access? Although I still monitor their blogs, I’ve no easy way of showing them a way around this new problem. Their blogs can be found at http://mvass.edublogs.org/examples-of-pupil-blogs/

Luke replied that I should ask the pupils to reset their own passwords … not straight forward in my case because I’d set up the blogs in such a way that I had given the pupils control over their own passwords … equal admin rights.

Hi Luke,

The students have their own blogs (set up with the gmail hack). I can reset their passwords because I know their usernames, but can’t then change the new passwords back to their own on because I don’t know what this was.

They’ve all moved on to High School now so i can’t even ask them!!

The blogs were set up in August 2007. I know that some used them just recently.

Because of the gmail hack set up I can access them with my own username and password as I also have admin rights to each of their blogs, but that doesn’t help them to gain access

The reply was:

@mvass:
Quite a sticky situation there. You could maybe add a contact form/note on your blog, asking students who can’t log in to contact you. You can then give them the new password. Other than that, maybe James might have a better idea.

This problem led to a lot of the primary 7’s being confused as to why they couldn’t access their blogs. I know this was happening because I was receiving ‘change password’ email requests – but I’d no way of getting the new passwords to the ‘High School’ pupils.

Ok, that was hard work writing this and it’s time to press the  publish button – but I’m thinking that there might be a way forward with some of these ‘portability’ and ‘longevity’ issues  ….. watch this space 🙂

 

Digital Storytelling ….. and ePortfolios?

Aug4

 

digital

Last session I demonstrated to various groups of teachers how to use Audacity with Windows Moviemaker to make what I termed a ‘Vodcast’. I think this was the most popular of the courses that I presented. After taking part in the ‘hands-on’ sessions, even the teachers who lacked confidence in their ICT skills went away with something that they knew they could use in class the next day. I’d used the process with my own classes on quite a number of occasions, so was able to demonstrate a variety of possible uses. A few examples are included below to show how pupils used this to:

  •  recount what they’d learned on a class trip by using photographs to jog memories
  • illustrate a story they’d written, and retell it orally
  • talk about favourite books and show a slideshow of front covers and page illustrations
  • provide an oral and visual account of what they’d learned about a particular topic

Windows Moviemaker and Audacity (and lame encoder) are installed in all PC’s in our Local Authority, and next session I’m hoping that Photostory3 will also be installed.  I’m looking for ways to develop the opportunities for using ‘vodcasts’ in the classroom next session. I’ve heard the phrase ‘digital storytelling’  and decided to investigate this concept further.

Of course, there’s also a wide variety of freely available online tools that can be used to create your own web-based story, too, and more than 50 of theses tools can be accessed here. The wiki ‘owner’ mentions that it wasn’t long ago that producing multimedia digital content required expensive equipment and technical expertise, but that we are at the point now where we can do some very compelling content creation with nothing more complex than a web browser. The stories can include  basic use of media types – images, text, video, and/or audio.

So – what else have I found out about digital story-telling?

The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling website describes how British photographer, educator and digital storyteller, Daniel Meadows defines digital stories as “short, personal multimedia tales told from the heart.” He maintains that the beauty of this form of digital expression is that these stories can be created by people everywhere, on any subject, and shared electronically all over the world.

I also found a publication by the Educause learning Initiative and I’ve copied bits and pieces that seemed to make sense to me and I’ve included them here: 

  • “Digital Storytelling” is an emerging term, one that arises from a grassroots movement that uses new digital tools to help ordinary people tell their own ‘true stories’ in a compelling and emotionally engaging form.
  • It is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component.
  • Digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective
  • Some learning theorists believe that as a pedagogical technique, storytelling can be effectively applied to nearly any subject.
  • Constructing a narrative and communicating it effectively require the storyteller to think carefully about the topic and consider the audience’s perspective.
  • ……. to facilitate various learning styles and connect to students’ interest in technology, and, for students, to develop their ability to appropriately evaluate and use online content and electronic tools as a means of personal expression.
  • A digital story typically begins with a script. The storyteller then assembles rich media to support the ideas and emotions in that script, including music or other audio effects, personal or public-domain images, animations or video, and other electronic elements.
  • Digital stories let students express themselves not only with their own words but also in their own voices, fostering a sense of individuality and of “owning” their creations

But I also found this statement:

  • Moreover, digital stories are a natural fit for e-portfolios, allowing students not only to select representative artifacts from their academic careers but also to create compelling resources that demonstrate the student’s learning and growth.

Could helping the children to use digital storytelling in their wikis be a starting point for setting up their ePortfolios as described in my previous post?

I’ve also been looking at the ePearl Portfolio Project mentioned by David in a comment on that last post and now have usernames and passwords to check out their demo site. And today I’ve been checking out the UniServity website after being made aware of it via yet another blog comment. Both these projects look like they’re full of great ideas, but could a wiki serve the purpose just as well?

Next blog post pending …….

ePortfolios in the Upper Primary Classroom?

Jul22

Recently, I’ve been reading about ePortfolios … e-portfolios …. and even Eportfolios (not sure which one to use!) Anyway, when I first heard the term I looked it up and immediately thought that the concept would be great to use when giving children their own online space. I’ve been introducing teachers here to class blogging … but after a time, they tend to ask me how they can give the children their own space. I can understand this – it’s exactly what led me to giving the children in my own class a page in a class wiki – then eventually their own wiki, and their own blog. The next question I’m asked is always…. ‘So – how should the pupils use the space?’ After more than two years of giving children their own online spaces, you’d think I’d have been able to answer that question straight away – but I always hesitate. I’ll attempt to reflect here on why that was.

Year One

The first attempt at giving the children an on-line space was via a page on a class wiki. There were four wikis, actually – one for each type of writing. The children either wrote class work directly on to the wiki or, if they didn’t have the typing skills, they would put on a short section of whatever they had hand written. They also had a space on our topic wiki, and they learned how to upload pictures, slideshares, videos, etc. There were even maths group problem solving spaces where they wrote about on what they’d been doing in class …. and early attempts at making group podcasts to say how they’d solved some maths problems. At some point the children were given their own blogs where they wrote about school related items.

Year Two

With my next class, I began to allow the children more freedom over how they used their on-line spaces. To begin with, I’m not sure they knew what to do with this freedom …. this quote from Anna’s blog will demonstrate what I mean:

‘Well a couple of days ago me and courtney were pestering Mrs Vass and asking her about blogs and stuff and me and courtney were a bit stuck about what we could write on our blogs.So Mrs Vass made it very clear to me anyway that a blog is like an online diary and i found it intresting because everyone in my class thinks a blog is only for school stuff and its not its like courtney has been writing about Dundee.Anyway i just wanted to make it clear that a blog is not only for school stuff so thanks Mrs Vass for telling me that! ‘

What happened after that was just great! The children began to use their blogs for reflection – what they wanted to do when they were older, worries – and hopes – for High School, thoughts about family life, hobbies, etc. etc. They were also keen for the blog posts to be read out to their classmates, and this led to inspiring others to go home and write their own post. I’ve written a few blog posts in the past about the positive impact of giving the children more ownership over their blogs.

The children also began to use their wikis for writing imaginative stories. The quality of writing on their wikis was far superior to the writing they were producing in jotters during class time. Again, I’ve blogged about the great teaching opportunities that arose from sharing these stories on the whiteboard ….. not to mention important lessons that were learned about copyright issues 😉

So why the hesitation in recommending that other class teachers leave  children to their own devices?

Well, on reflection, it may have worked so successfully for me because the children were actually very well aware of the fact that their use of their online spaces was going to be used in the case study I was writing up for my Chartered Teacher course. Because I was going to be quoting them in my write up, permissions had to be granted by everyone involved. They were also aware that I was blogging about the whole journey, and a couple of them even left comments on my blog.

I’m not sure what would happen if children were just handed these spaces and told to ‘get on with it’ …. would it turn out to be no more that a bebo or myspace type of thing??  ….. not that I think that would be totally wrong, either – but that’s another story 🙂 What I’ve been lookng for, is something in between simply using the space for classwork and a kind of ‘laissez faire’ policy.

Could a type of ePortfolio be the answer – and if so, what form would that take? I’ve been reading a bit about ePortfolios and here are some thoughts so far ….. wee snippets taken from literature I’ve visited (apologies that there’s no direct link to original sources)

What is an ePortfolio:

  • In general, an ePortfolio is a purposeful collection of information and digital artifacts that demonstrates development or evidences learning outcomes, skills or competencies.
  • A collection of student work that tells the story of the student’s efforts, progress, or achievements 

What should they look like?

  • They should be purposeful. Without purpose, an ePortfolio is just a folder of student work
  • The student work included in the portfolio should be that which best tells the story they want to tell – so they need to justify their choice of content.
  • There should be evidence of student self-reflection

What’s the teacher’s role?

  • They will only have the desired effects if  planned for carefully
  • There needs to be clearly defined criteria to allow students to paint a picture of their efforts, growth, and achievement
  • Effective feedback should be given to students, to encourage them to observe their own learning journey
  • Assessment techniques should improve achievement and not just monitor it
  • Assessments should align with what is considered important outcomes in order to communicate the right message to students and others about what is valued

What about the pupils?

  • Students need to see samples of good self-reflection so that  thoughts and comments go beyond “I think I did OK” or ” I think I have more to learn.”
  • Criteria should identify what is most valued by students and teachers alike
  • Pupils should be monitoring their own learning so that they can adjust what they do when they perceive they are not understanding.

Well there it is! My new recommendation for next session when teachers ask about giving children their own online space.

Blogs or wikis?? I’ll suggest wikis –  I have recollections of the primary 7’s not liking the fact that their blog posts seem to disappear (archived).  Also, on a wiki, the menus at the side and the discussion facility facility on blogs  just seem to lend themselves more to the purpose?

Wow!  Writing this post has been a learning journey for me ……. and it’s only thrown up more questions that I want to find anwers to ….. time to hit the publish button 🙂