Our English 9 students interacted with Design Technology classes at Roosevelt, The American School of Lima, Peru, to share their experience with ePortfolios. This interaction happened in the form of a webinar over Skype, where students could not only see and hear each other over the webcam but also share the computer screen to show examples of ePortfolios. The English teacher, Dr. Geoffrey Carpenter, was responsible for organizing the webinars with the support of the Technology Coordinator, Dr. Silvana Meneghini. This collaborative project was the result of connections Dr. Carpenter made at the Innovate 2013 Conference.
Grade 9 English, together with HS Arts, have been pioneers in the exploration of individual student ePortfolios to serve as collection and reflection of learning, including artifacts that demonstrate the learning process and the final product. Students currently use Google Sites as a platform for creating the ePortfolios. During the webinar, students showed how their ePortfolios are organized, what type of work is displayed, how they address memory issues, and how they used cloud-based resources.
Enjoy snapshots of the webinars below!
Below is a follow up note from the teacher in Lima, Peru.
ReplyDeleteHi Geoff,
I completely agree. We learned some great tips about cloud-based applications and storage saving that we implemented immediately with our classes. (In fact, I just made my first screencast on Screenr to show my kids how to embed Google docs into their portfolios, all of which I learned from you and your students yesterday!)
Let's definitely make it an annual collaboration. From now on, we are planning to start the school year with this digital portfolio unit so that the kids can get started using them immediately. Would it work for you if we repeated this again in August-September?
Many thanks again for your willingness to share your experience and knowledge with us. The entire inspiration for this digital portfolio unit came from the presentation that you and Jennifer gave at Innovate. Turns out our leadership team is now so enthusiastic about what the kids have created that they have scheduled a meeting with us to discuss rolling out the use of digital portfolios in every classroom by the start of next school year. Since the initiative all started with the seed you planted back in February, we owe you a big debt of gratitude!
As our students continue to develop and use their portfolios, I'll periodically share some exciting discoveries with you. If you run across any with your students, please feel free to do the same.
Very much look forward to continuing the collaboration!
Best,
Hayden