Eportfolios

Digital portfolios or eportfolios is an excellent way to digitally organize artifacts provided by students   Artifacts can include individual, partner or groups work.  The artifacts can include projects, research, demonstrations and accomplishments of an individual.  These artifacts could be used as an office ail record of a student's work of various learnig experiments.  In an online learning environment, eportfolios are useful in organizing digital works to share with instructors.

Eportfolios can also be used as a tool for teachers.  With accountability more and more prevalent, eportfolios could be used to digitally plan and organize lessons, units of study, sites, presentations and more to document and share.  When administrators have access, they can quickly review a teacher's plans, use them for oberservations purposes and answer questions that may arise from parents or others.  Eportfolios can also be shared with colleagues for ideas, critique or others use.  They can also be used to compile work shared be students in an online learning environments and share with others.

Challenges in eportfolios include choosing a tool that will accept any form or program that work is produced with.  Other challenges may include technology availability of student and lack of knowledge in various programs, and files loss in cyber world through the transfer to eportfolios.

In my elementary school, students can sign in as themselves thus having a file on the server to keep work.  The student has access to this work but I do not readily have access which proves to be difficult to provide feedback without the student printing the work.   Emails are through Google but at this time only 5th grade and up have student email accounts.  If Google accounts are created in lower grades, I envision using Google Drive and Google Sites with my students.  Feedback can be given by me as well as other students on a student's work produced on Gooogle Docs.  Writing, research, comprehension questions, processes and explanations on the process to finding an answer could all be created on a Google Doc and shared with others.  Students could also collborate on a project using Google Docs.

Online Community Building

Click on this link to explore Online Community Building

http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=vEDgFyy  

Learning Objects and Authoring Tools

http://www.thinglink.com/scene/584703899395424260

Learning objects can be a fun and easy way to provide an interactive tool for students.  To make math relavent for students, real life events or situations should be used if possible.

Caldwell County is a rather small, close knit district.  The students at my school will attend South Caldwell High School.  They have parents and siblings that attend or attended South Caldwell. The community isupports baseball, especially the San Fransico Giants.  After all, the Giant's star pitcher, MVP of the World Series, Madison Bumgarner, is a graduate of South Caldwell and a member of the community during the off season.  With the excitement of the World Series win, what better way to bring real life math to my students.  

The next unit of study in math is 3.MD.3 which pertains to creating graphs and solving problems using the graphs.  In order to find real life data, I sent a survey out to the staff on a Google Form.  The survey included several pictures from the World Series and staff members were asked to pick their favorite.  It was short, one question, in the hopes of most of the staff participating.  This will provide the data needed for the graphs.  

Using Thinklink.com, I chose a image of a baseball diamond and the World Series.  I search on Discovery Education for videos about bar graphs and pictographs.  These links were inserted along the first baseline and first base.  Along the second baseline I inserted the link to the survey.  The link to the Google Doc with the responses was inserted at second base as well as directions to create a tally chart using the information.  Along the third baseline and third base, links were inserted to create an online bar graph and pictograph. To make it home, the students were directed to create questions and share their questions and graphs with the class.

This learning object could be adapted using team stats, player stats or other types of baseball data.  Thinklink is an easy tool to manipulate and edit.  I plan to use this tool to create other learning objects as the school year proceeds.