Managing ePortfolios Made Easy!

I recently discovered that I can make myself an owner of each one of the childrens' sites. This made my life much easier because now I can go in and have access to all the portfolios in one place rather than having to sign on as each child. What a big difference that has made! I also just found out that you can create a site and save it as a template. I haven't experimented with this yet, but I definitely will use that feature next year!

I have given more control of the ePortfolios to my fourth grade students and they have been doing an amazing job! I have been so impressed. I was really concerned about showing them how to do everything, however I have several students who have already figured it all out. Those students are now training other students. It has been great!

Managing ePortfolios Using Google Sites

I recently implemented ePortfolios in my Grade 4 classroom using Google Sites. Since my students are in elementary school, I have been uploading all of the pictures and assignments to their websites myself. No small feat for a whole room full of children. I was beginning to get frustrated with having to go into each child’s account separately to upload and make changes. However, today I discovered that if I make myself an (co)owner of the site under “site settings”/”sharing,” I end up with a list of all the students’ sites with the ability to easily go in and out of each site to make changes --all while logged in as myself. What a relief! Next week students will be going through work during class and selecting pieces to put into their portfolios from the month of October. The students will be selecting work based on a rubric which asks them to reflect of the reason for choosing the assignment, what they learned from it, and why they liked that particular piece so much.

Introduction to ePortfolios

This morning I introduced my students to the idea of using Google Sites for reflective journaling as well as a place to collect artifacts. I am also going to make cameras available in my classroom writing center so that students can document any projects they are especially proud of through the year.

After we talked about online journaling and saving artifacts, we watched VoiceThreads that 5th grade students at the International School of Bangkok created as a culminating project. http://tinyurl.com/c95jfu

After viewing the students' work, the 4th graders were very excited to get started! We decided it would be best to start documenting immediately in preparation for a smaller VoiceThread project at the end of the semester.

Student concerns included:
- being confused about what to do
- not knowing what to write in the reflective journals

I assured the children that I, along with our Technology Coordinator will help them every step of the way. I also let them know that I will provide sentence frames for the reflective journals.

Goals for Implementing ePortfolios in My Classroom

My goals for student ePortfolios are to create:

• a student centered classroom focused on collaboration, where the teacher is facilitator and guide rather then main source of information

• a vehicle for authentic documentation of student achievement by giving students the opportunity to “set their own goals, determine their own learning needs, and monitor their own progress”

• opportunities to integrate technology across the curriculum

• a collection of digital artifacts to share with parents and other members of our learning community