The next post, which delves into the variety of options available as repositories for ePorts, is Rebecca's. In the spirit of communication I want to make sure the team knows what we, individually, are experimenting with so she can take a look at where we are headed as a school.
Currently, several MS teachers are using Edmodo for online journaling and assignments.
I am testing Educlipper with my Digital Class, and will be adding a test with Foliofor.me so the students can compare and provide feedback. I may drop Educlipper and try Google Sites instead. Educlipper has a few bugs in its software, and is not as intuitive as I'd like for it to be.
Joanne is considering Portfolio Communities and Folio as well.
Amy Shapiro (Mechina) is using Edublogs (as are several MS teachers.) Thanks to Stacy for passing along that link.
Hope this information is helpful!
Missy
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Monday, September 16, 2013
Lesson 3
From Joanne:
After exploring the different types of online tools, both to
store and organize digital artifacts and to display them in an specific
portfolio, I have many new ideas about implementing these in our school as a
whole, and in my classroom. First of all, I would love to eventually see
students archive all of their files in one consolidated place. Using a tool
like Google Docs at the Davis Academy would be extremely beneficial for the
students to have all of their work and digital projects online to use as resources
for the future. It keeps everything in one place, and it is so easy to send,
share, and edit progress with anyone else. It also teaches the students
important organizational skills, and the technology skills needed to use a tool
such as this. Collecting their data will also allow them a great variety of
materials to use in a digital portfolio.
I am going to try out one of the digital portfolios for my
class trimester. The theme for the larger unit is “Journeys through Genesis”
and I will have a project-based assessment after learning about each
character’s journey. As each project will use a different type of media, and a
digital portfolio will be a great way to display the final production. It will
archive their collection of work and allow the students to become comfortable
organizing their digital work with a new tool.
After exploring the ePortfolios in this lesson, I will try
portfoliocommunities.com with my class. It seems user friendly and like the
best way to display development and the final product, while giving space for
reflection in the journal section. I look forward to experimenting with this
tool with the students as they start to build their digital profiles. I hope
that after exploring this tool with this class, I will be prepared to help
expand a tool such as this to the greater Davis experience.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Lesson 4 - How/Reflection
Note: Joanne's post for Lesson 3 is being revised. She is unable to post on the blog, so will be sending it to me and I will post it. That will make the Lesson 4 post appear to have been completed prior to Lesson 3, but that's not the case.
Interestingly, the issue of chronology is one we will need to examine more closely as a school, depending on what it is we are expecting the ePortfolios to document. This week's readings/videos and supplemental materials cover a huge array of issues ranging from the necessity of an entire school adopting the reflective approach (from student to HOS) to selecting age-appropriate tools for assessment. Parsing through the plethora of resources to find what fits our situation reflects the microcosm of the web in general. Wading through all that is available is a complex and time consuming effort, albeit a necessary one. In order for us as a team to best design an effective implementation, we need to slow down and do our own reflecting.
Over the past several years, the overarching culture of the school seems to have been in transition. As subject area teams re-evaluate curriculum content and delivery methods, the administrative team is directing the "ship" to navigate new waters that are project based, student centered, and technologically advanced. Pappas' Taxonomy of Reflection reminds that each of us, at all levels, must be engaged in the reflective process for the effectiveness of meta-cognition to guide us. We must be constantly stepping back to evaluate and assess whether what WE'RE doing is providing effective learning experiences and opportunities. Dr. Arthur Ellis, in his outstanding lecture on reflective learning, reminds us that modeling the behavior is more critical than implementation in the classroom. Ellis provides excellent strategies for teachers to begin transitioning from grade-based assessments to opportunities for regular engagement with meta-cognition. Perhaps the most valuable "side-effect" of reflection is setting up opportunities for low-achievers to become self-motivated high-achievers. The psychological make-up of our students is much too complex to simply categorize them into Dweck's "Mindsets" and hope to change their outlook. Parental pressures for higher education based on test results and grades, developmental differences, anxiety levels all impact a student's ability to have a growth mindset. Reflective strategies, however, enable us to get a foothold, especially in the middle grade years when the expectations for success become significantly more stringent.
To direct our implementation, we might wish to consider a slightly different model of the feedback cycle. While the "Feed up/Feed back/Feed Forward" provides the teacher with a means of evaluating the effectiveness of the required curriculum and delivery, it is more prudent to consider a two-tiered reflection cycle from the student's point of view. Students continue to learn new content before existing information might be mastered. Understanding occurs at multiple times throughout the chronologically based sequence. In fact, a student of mine recently remarked that an "Aha!" moment occurred for her three months after the completion of a unit of content. Such a delay is perfectly acceptable, and reflects the brain growth and development of that particular child. As such, our reflective opportunities cannot be limited to regularly scheduled interludes. It is the act of reflecting that we want to develop, not the timing, although for some teachers carefully structured reflection will be a necessity for both comfort in the "new" and creation of a new style/habit of instruction. Please see Micro/Macro.(Click to follow link which opens in a new window.)
Dr. Ellis also clarifies that reflection is possible at any age level. The differences will lie merely in the method of information-gathering. Documentation of the reflective process should be sampled in both video/audio and written (blog)/form formats, especially as students develop greater skills for written expression. These reflective pieces will help students determine how they best process information, identify their inherent strengths and weaknesses, and set personal goals. Teachers and administrators must also engage in timely self-reflection, accessible to the students so they can mirror by example until the process becomes clear to them. I believe that for us, the Blackstone Valley Portfolio Handbook is TOO structured. As indicated on our Team Planning Document, grade levels will need to provide input into the appropriate artifacts and level of reflection. Portfolio Reflection by Artifact is an outstanding source for fifth grade through middle school as it enables the student to see the culmination of knowledge acquisition rendered visible through a subject-area project. The six opportunities for reflection provided by Ellis should be utilized in some form by all teachers on a regular basis. Critical, as Ellis points out, is the feedback loop the teacher must provide. These strategies provide a form of scaffolding on the content (micro) level, while the on-line ePortfolio itself will provide reflection on the macro level. Again, this concept mirrors the idea that multiple levels of reflective cycle happen simultaneously.
As a few of our teachers are already experimenting with ePortfolios on different grade levels, we have a "casual" implementation that will allow us to review at the end of the school year what worked individually so we can craft a school-wide implementation for 2014-2015. Reflection is absolutely critical both for us at the macro level, and for the students so they can see the benefits of life-long curiosity and love of learning.
Interestingly, the issue of chronology is one we will need to examine more closely as a school, depending on what it is we are expecting the ePortfolios to document. This week's readings/videos and supplemental materials cover a huge array of issues ranging from the necessity of an entire school adopting the reflective approach (from student to HOS) to selecting age-appropriate tools for assessment. Parsing through the plethora of resources to find what fits our situation reflects the microcosm of the web in general. Wading through all that is available is a complex and time consuming effort, albeit a necessary one. In order for us as a team to best design an effective implementation, we need to slow down and do our own reflecting.
Over the past several years, the overarching culture of the school seems to have been in transition. As subject area teams re-evaluate curriculum content and delivery methods, the administrative team is directing the "ship" to navigate new waters that are project based, student centered, and technologically advanced. Pappas' Taxonomy of Reflection reminds that each of us, at all levels, must be engaged in the reflective process for the effectiveness of meta-cognition to guide us. We must be constantly stepping back to evaluate and assess whether what WE'RE doing is providing effective learning experiences and opportunities. Dr. Arthur Ellis, in his outstanding lecture on reflective learning, reminds us that modeling the behavior is more critical than implementation in the classroom. Ellis provides excellent strategies for teachers to begin transitioning from grade-based assessments to opportunities for regular engagement with meta-cognition. Perhaps the most valuable "side-effect" of reflection is setting up opportunities for low-achievers to become self-motivated high-achievers. The psychological make-up of our students is much too complex to simply categorize them into Dweck's "Mindsets" and hope to change their outlook. Parental pressures for higher education based on test results and grades, developmental differences, anxiety levels all impact a student's ability to have a growth mindset. Reflective strategies, however, enable us to get a foothold, especially in the middle grade years when the expectations for success become significantly more stringent.
To direct our implementation, we might wish to consider a slightly different model of the feedback cycle. While the "Feed up/Feed back/Feed Forward" provides the teacher with a means of evaluating the effectiveness of the required curriculum and delivery, it is more prudent to consider a two-tiered reflection cycle from the student's point of view. Students continue to learn new content before existing information might be mastered. Understanding occurs at multiple times throughout the chronologically based sequence. In fact, a student of mine recently remarked that an "Aha!" moment occurred for her three months after the completion of a unit of content. Such a delay is perfectly acceptable, and reflects the brain growth and development of that particular child. As such, our reflective opportunities cannot be limited to regularly scheduled interludes. It is the act of reflecting that we want to develop, not the timing, although for some teachers carefully structured reflection will be a necessity for both comfort in the "new" and creation of a new style/habit of instruction. Please see Micro/Macro.(Click to follow link which opens in a new window.)
Dr. Ellis also clarifies that reflection is possible at any age level. The differences will lie merely in the method of information-gathering. Documentation of the reflective process should be sampled in both video/audio and written (blog)/form formats, especially as students develop greater skills for written expression. These reflective pieces will help students determine how they best process information, identify their inherent strengths and weaknesses, and set personal goals. Teachers and administrators must also engage in timely self-reflection, accessible to the students so they can mirror by example until the process becomes clear to them. I believe that for us, the Blackstone Valley Portfolio Handbook is TOO structured. As indicated on our Team Planning Document, grade levels will need to provide input into the appropriate artifacts and level of reflection. Portfolio Reflection by Artifact is an outstanding source for fifth grade through middle school as it enables the student to see the culmination of knowledge acquisition rendered visible through a subject-area project. The six opportunities for reflection provided by Ellis should be utilized in some form by all teachers on a regular basis. Critical, as Ellis points out, is the feedback loop the teacher must provide. These strategies provide a form of scaffolding on the content (micro) level, while the on-line ePortfolio itself will provide reflection on the macro level. Again, this concept mirrors the idea that multiple levels of reflective cycle happen simultaneously.
As a few of our teachers are already experimenting with ePortfolios on different grade levels, we have a "casual" implementation that will allow us to review at the end of the school year what worked individually so we can craft a school-wide implementation for 2014-2015. Reflection is absolutely critical both for us at the macro level, and for the students so they can see the benefits of life-long curiosity and love of learning.
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