First of all, the 3rd graders each got their own school e-mail address. I wasn't sure how this would work, but it is actually working very well! They are absolutely loving it! We went all through it with them and had them practice with it. That night I got a question from one student e-mailed to me, spelling words from another student, and the next day a student e-mailed me that they were sick. Talk about authentic learning - wow!
Then we shared with them the first page of their e-Portfolio. Here is a screen shot from one of my students.
This week they will be doing more with the site. I am planning to have them do the Learner Profile and Attitude pages next.I showed the Power Point I made to our faculty this past Wednesday. It went even better than I had hoped. Teachers are excited about using e-Portfolios next year. Many of them had the same feelings I did about too much paper being used, binders getting too full, not being able to share the work the children do on the computer authentically, and only having one copy to share which is always kept at school. Our first grade teacher even got up after my presentation and shared a site she had made for her class that showcased some of the work her class had done. She was very excited about using e-Portfolios. In fact I didn't get any negative comments at all!
My one bump in the road was the survey. I made the survey without any problems. I found it extremely easy. However, when I sent it to everyone, it ended up in their SPAM. Dave, our computer technology coordinator, thinks it was because I sent it from my school e-mail through Survey Monkey to other school e-mails. He thinks the SPAM detector thought someone was trying to get through. So, because of that and having Good Friday off, I didn't get as many responses as I would have liked. I will probably get more next week, I hope. :) Below is the link to my survey.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/MySurvey_Responses.aspx?sm=B64pb3%2fNAyjQfK94ao3JRA0PmjQy4XkfCDj%2f0mGtguQ%3d
So far,
- 80% gained more knowledge about e-Portfolios from my presentation
- 100% said they are currently doing things that can be transferred over to an e-Portfolio
- 60% said they would absolutely want to use e-Portfolios next year, 20% a definite possibility, and 20% maybe
- They are willing to put a variety of work into the e-Portfolios, i.e. photos, links, computer work, scanned work, reflections, and videos
- Answering the questions "Have you done anything with Google Sites before?" 40% said yes, 40% no, and 20% a little
- 20% would feel comfortable using the e-Portfolios, 60% would like to play around with it, and 20% would like a lesson in using it
Now to the official questions for WPP Part D.
Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?
Yes. There were two "bumps in the road" as I've explained in my blogs. One being that the children needed to have e-mail addresses. This took us a bit longer to do and teach, but ultimately it was a great success. The other being the problems I had with Survey Monkey getting e-mailed to my faculty. Next time I do a faculty survey, which I know I will, I will e-mail it from my other e-mail address so that doesn't happen again.
Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice
Again, yes! My problem was using the static paper portfolio binders. I felt like they were too much work, took a lot of effort for the children to organize them and punch holes in their papers, and the binders weren't big enough. Plus we were also running out of space as each class has two different portfolios in them. The faculty loves this idea, and I am very excited and happy about it! We still need to figure out final details and agreements for using them next year, but the biggest hurdle has been overcome.
How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?
I think the only thing I would do differently would be to play around with new tools that I will be using and try them out in exactly the way I want to use it. I had used Survey Monkey when we were exploring surveys with this class, but I wish I would have actually created a simple survey ahead of time and e-mailed it to my tech coordinator to make sure it worked. As I said above, I'm sure I will get more responses, but something that was supposed to be very simple turned into a little bit of a pain.
What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?
I think I have a few lessons.
1. As I said above, make sure and use any new tool in the exact way before the presentation.
2. e-Portfolios are the wave of the future. They are already being used in higher education and high schools. I believe the trend is going down the education ladder to elementary schools. There are some elementary schools using them now, not many, but some. I do believe we will be using these as documentation to see a child's growth from elementary on up.
3. NEVER UNDERESTIMATE CHILDREN! Here we thought third graders might have problems with school e-mail and using e-Portfolios. I know it has only been a week, but I do not see that at all. They are such quick learners with technology and they absolutely love it!
In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again, and what will you change or not do?
I think the next time I get an idea about a change for the school regarding technology, I need to go for it! It shouldn't take me taking a graduate class for me to do something like this. I think I would do it the same way with maybe a change in presentation. I think, now that I have used Prezi, I would use that, or even make a video. Power Point worked very well for my presentation, but next time I can "change it up" and use something different. I also think next time I will use Google for my survey. I really think it is just as easy to use as Survey Monkey.
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