Thing 16

Glossary of Education Reform: Portfolio

I love the idea of keeping e-portfolios.  As teachers we are required to keep portfolios of student work anyhow.  This allows to keep more work and is much easier to manage.  Instead of keeping folders, which is a waste of valuable space, everything can be kept in an e-file.  This allows for more articles to be retained and provides easier access.  Another pro for me is papers can be soiled, torn or worse lost.  In an e-file it is nice and safe and can be backed up so there can be no accidental deletions. 

The author makes a few other points that are very important.  One is that you shouldn’t be keeping the best work, but rather an array of student progress.  I would see this as keeping multiple drafts of the same project.  I like to this with my students now.  If they only remember the final product than they forget all the hard work it took them to get to it.  This causes a headache every time we start a new project.  We go through their drafts, remember how horrible it was when we started, then we edited, revised and look at the finished product.  This also gives the kids a sense of accomplishment and pride.  Having these things electronically at your fingertips would be great, especially for us teachers that travel and do not teach in the same room all day.  I could have all of my kid’s portfolios on my computer and access them at the push of a button.  If the file could be like a google file that would be even better.  That way it could be shared with the student and they could access it as well.  One more thing the author talks about is parent connection.  The files could be shared with parents, or if the parent happens to stop in or be in for a conference you could easily bring up work samples to share.

The power of digital student portfolios

I would never have thought to use photographs of students and student work to enhance their portfolio.  But as I reflect on this it makes sense.  I think the portfolio should be more than just a teaching tool, but maybe a story to bring back memories.  I remember having a file folder given to me when I graduated high school.  There were a few work samples from every grade, things that brought back memories that I hadn’t thought about in years if ever.  Photos would enhance that type of experience.

After reading this article I went and explored the evernote app.  It is an amazing tool.  I was thrown aback with how much stuff is available to the user.  Although it was a great tool the down side to me was the lack of teacher control of the record keeping.  As an educator I would not be willing to hand over complete control of decision making on what to archive to the kids.  I understand sharing the control, but not having physical control would drive me crazy.  What if they do not archive something that I need them to have.  I will continue to look through other options.

After looking at a couple other tools, I think I am going to try and set up a few portfolios for my resource room kids.  This will allow me to get my feet wet with the app, and allow the kids to archive their work.  I like the bulb app because it is teacher controlled, but the students still have some power over what goes into it and who can see it.  I like the security of the tool as well as the compatibility.  It seems to be able to work in any operating system that we have access to.  So the kids that want to use Microsoft products can and those that want to work in google can.  It also allows for audio, video, type, photo and many other files.  EXCITING

Thing 14

Why and how I Bitmoji in my classroom?

Well this was interesting.  I liked how she included the use for the stickers and all of the ideas.  She said she uses these in 6^th grade and it keeps the kids attention and helps them to regain focus.  I cannot think of a time when I would use this as a physical thing with my eighth graders.  And to be honest, the idea of formatting and fitting templates on the printers is way outside of my technology skill set.

A place I could envision adding these Bitmoji would be in video lessons.  My math teacher uses video lessons for the student’s math curriculum.  In the lesson the kids watch the teacher’s notes on the screen and hear her voice.  They follow along and keep their notes in a packet.  Some of the kids get frustrated at some of the topics, this would be a great time for an inspirational Bitmoji.

Bitmoji in Your Classroom

I love the idea of a letter of introduction for the incoming group using Bitmoji.  It seems like a fun light hearted way to introduce yourself to the kids and parents that you will be interacting with. 

The writing prompts idea seems interesting.  I have more questions having not used Bitmoji.  If you could customize the image to fit the writing it seems like it would be a fun idea.  For instance if you were writing about George Washington and you could get the Bitmoji into Washington uniform or something like that.  Another idea would be paragraph set up.  My students struggle with writing stamina.  Maybe a few Bitmoji as prompts, one to say start you intro here, then one to remind them what body paragraph one is about, then paragraph 2and one saying something like here’s the conclusion don’t give up.

The signature posters would work great in my math classes.  The students in these classes are self-paced so they are all in different places.  Keeping track of where the students are has been our biggest challenge.  Using these posters would help us keep track of the kids pacing, and also act as a tool to put onus on the kids.  When they come to ask us what to do next we could direct them back to the assignment sign in poster.

I enjoyed reading this article, but many of the ideas seemed to be geared more towards a younger age group.  I did like these few that I picked out and will continue to contemplate how to incorporate the others.

And after a ridiculous amount of work TA DA my bitmoji

Thing 3

10 Ways To Use Instagram In Your Classroom

The ideas historical figures and literary characters is awesome.  I am not currently working in Social Studies, but the ELA classes would be an awesome place to use this.  We are currently reading The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and the students struggle with character mapping.  Setting up an Instagram from Bruno would be amazing.  So far the kids have only read a few chapters but the main character describes his house and town in Berlin, then he describes the new place he moves to.  I picture kids developing an Instagram showing different images he describes.  Then they would have ownership and have to create #tags to show understanding of relevance.

Instagram for Teachers

As I read through this section I came to a different conclusion than the author was talking about.  The article discussed sharing Instagram between teachers, I thought what about sharing with parents.  It would be like Dojo but it automatically pings your phone (I am guessing because I do not have Instagram…YET).  I would be so excited if I had the app and my daughter, who is going into Kindergarten, teacher had Instagram to share photos.  For instance when teachers go back to set up their classrooms, like the author says, they are proud so they want to share.  How much stress of going to a new place could be relieved if a teacher instagrammed the classroom to parents to show their kids? It would provide some sort of familiarity for that first day.  They could share selfies and pics of the staff and around the school all to give the kids an idea of what they are walking into. 

Also, the teacher could share student work, bulletin boards and even upcoming assignments or due dates.  That is something I have run into a lot.  Parents say they didn’t know about projects or test dates, etc.. Teachers could be sending these out this way as a compliment to all the other ways they post this important information.

My problem with this idea is learning how to use Instagram.

Thing 2

Top 10 Tips For Student Blogging (guest post by @mrodz308)

This post in thing 2 was particularly interesting.  It shows that giving students some independence with their education that they can enhance their own experience.  As the author explains the ten tips each one seems to go back to a few key points; student ownership of the work, trust and independence.  These students grew by making choices and being vested in what they were writing about.  On top of getting the kids to take control of their education it allowed the kids to get their work in front of a larger audience.  Reading through the kid’s responses in the article, they seemed to be expressing joy in how their work is being viewed beyond the classroom.  We are using DOJO to connect with parents, but blogging seems to be a much more effective way to share a wider spectrum of the student work.

Huzzah class blog

This link just hit me with a ton of great ideas.  Here at 28 School we constantly have things going on during the school day.  Celebrations, assemblies, guest speakers and recognition's.  This would be a great way to share these events with the public and beyond.  We would be able to implement the blogging into writing time in ELA.  This would provide opportunities for the kids to get more info in what is actually happening in the school and be able to share what they are excited about.

Even farther forward thinking is with our after school programs and clubs.  We run an after school club for archery and another for agriculture club.  We are looking for new ideas of activities to do and the kids love to share.  Blogging would let us share what we are doing here, and allow kids to communicate with others around the world that are doing similar activities.  It would fulfill a piece of the academic portion of the club with more meaningful assignments.  The kids could share their hands on experiences.

Looking through some of the other tabs in this section there are many ideas that seemed to be beneficial for different reasons.  In one of the videos I observed a teacher speaking about a school that uses blogging that travels with them through grade levels.  This allowed the school to build a running record of student work that teachers could go back and review.  My current position is in a building that has a high number of kids that track from k-8^th grades.  This type of work would build a bigger connect across grades between teachers and students, but also between staff.  It would be a common tool that the whole school can work with.