Next week, we will be having conferences. My team always works together on everything and in the past they have put together portfolios to show at conferences. There are six different areas of the portfolios. Within these six subjects, we put 4 pieces of student's work in the portfolios throughout the year. This way, the parents can see how much progress their child has made in each of the areas throughout the year. (Hopefully this all makes sense!)
Anyways, I've been thinking a lot about different ways to show "portfolio-type" work digitally. Something that came to mind immediately, and maybe obviously, was taking pictures throughout the year of different activities we do in & out of the classroom. I know when I was in elementary school, the school counselor would take lots of pictures and videos of each classroom every year and when we had our 5th grade graduation, we got to view all of the pictures throughout our elementary career. It was so awesome! She would also video-tape us & ask questions about ourselves. We got invited back to our elementary school when we were graduating from high school to watch the slideshow again! It was just as fun when we got older to see ourselves in elementary school. Something that I wish could have been different about this experience is that we could actually have gotten a copy of the slideshow so we could come back and watch it any time we wanted. I would love to do something like this for my students so they could have it forever. I could take videos and pictures and put them on a CD for parents at the end of the year. I would also somehow like to include student work that they complete throughout the school year. I know it will be a lot of work, but I'm really excited!
Can anyone else think of anything more I could add to the digital portfolio?
These are all great ideas! I hope you do decide to do put pictures/video on a cd for parents. I love that kind of stuff, and I know parents will appreciate it as well. When I was in eigth grade, we wrote a letter to ourselves that would be given to us our senior year in high school. That was the coolest thing I have ever gotten back. I still have this letter and it's so much fun to go back and read it. I wish I could help you out on the digital portfolio! I have only seen a very portfolios, and I can't think of anything else to be added. Hopefully someone else can help you out. Good luck in conferences!
ReplyDeleteI love this idea of the pictures/video! It's a great idea and good way to keep stuff for parents. The students will love it too. They will love to watch themselves and everything they have done throughout the year. Good job and good luck with conferences!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! I know that parents always want to know what their kids are actually doing while they are at school, and what better way to show that their kids are actually learning and happy than through pictures. I do not have any experience with portfolios nor with the younger grades, but perhaps you could use Wordle to describe the personality or some characteristics of the learners. This would add an additional personal touch to each portfolio. If the students would be kind and nice, they could write a sentence about each student, and you could enter that into Wordle, but knowing kids, not every comment you receive might be something that you could use. This works pretty well with older students though as they understand what is socially acceptable and what not. Good luck with the conferences!
ReplyDeleteWay to think outside of the box. As a mother of five I love all the extra touches that teachers put on my childrens work. Especially when they share or give a copy to us. I never minded paying for the year of memories. Now that I have had a good introduction to some new ideas and ways of thinking and using technology I see the doors opening for many options in the way of students portfolios. I do a book of the students writing at the end of the year and I have brainstormed ideas of how to put that on the computer.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many book forms and things I'm sure you will come up with a great ending project and as I stated before it will be priceless to most parents.
I'm glad to see you are thinking of options.
Believe that your classmates have given you some great ideas! In terms of performance assessment, I am so glad that you do keep portfolios on each of your students, whether it is digital or not.
ReplyDeleteOne thing you might consider, since it is your first year! Maybe you do a class portfolio that documents all of the interesting things that you do throughout the year. That would highlight everyone in on movie/project etc. Then that would be shared with parents/guardians at the end of the year. Doing a digital portfolio for each child might be a bit difficult - something to think about.
Keep in mind student releases on something like this. Who has given permission to have their picture taken etc. Check with school policy! Great ideas!