I am very fortunate to work in a tech savvy district and we have been "thrown" the latest and greatest devices and programs that are out there. Because we are an International Baculorate district, we must have k-8 student portfolios. Some teachers were encouraged to digitize their student's portfolios on the e-backback system that we were converting to as a district. I attended a union meeting last week to find out the e-backpack is going to be discontinued and all the documents must be transferred to another system. One of my fellow teachers about fell off her chair because she had all of her second grade students load their portfolio onto e-backpack. It took her a month to teach them how to load e-backpack now everything has to be moved. I read a great article titled "Using E-Portfolios in the Classroom" by Mary Beth Hertz. In the article she talks about choosing the right tools for electronic portfolios. It won't help my fellow teacher, but may be of help to someone. I had to giggle because e-backpack is one of the options. Here are some of her suggestions:
Some Options
Below is a list of tools that can be used to collect, organize and share student work. Those that are free are marked with an asterisk (*).
This tool organizes, tracks and shares learning in a project-based learning classroom. It includes standards-based grading tools and feedback tools. Teachers have the option to include a digital portfolio website for students.
Create a website to share classwork and projects. Potential users must be at least 13 to sign up. Students can use the "file locker" option to upload files.
These two wiki-creation tools allow students to create a website of their work. Due to the collaborative nature of the tools, student teams can build a workspace to showcase their work. The teacher can create student accounts without an email address. (Note: PBwiki is also known as PBworks.)
Students can create a public folder in Dropbox to share their work. This platform supports multiple file types and can be used collaboratively by sharing folders.
Students can create "notebook" within their Evernote account for each class, and that notebook can be shared publicly. Students can upload files to their notebooks, including documents, photos and audio files.
Teachers can assign, collect, grade and return assignments to students through eBackpack. Students can upload files to their digital locker to create an online portfolio for their course. Work uploaded cannot be seen outside of the closed system.
No comments:
Post a Comment