E-Portfolios: A Parent's Perspective

As a teacher it’s easy to see the advantages of an e-portfolio, especially when compared to the traditional paper portfolios that are often left behind, misplaced, or long forgotten. However, I want to focus on the parent perspective and as a parent, I LOVE e-portfolios! My son’s e-portfolio allows me to see most of the major papers and activities that he has completed during 10th grade English. In the future, I really hope his teachers, of English and other subject areas as well, will continue to utilize his e-portfolio. Other than seeing his accomplishments, e-portfolios offer the benefit of transportability. For example, if we should move again, one of the hazards of being posted overseas, then he can take all of his work with him electronically. His papers, poems and thoughts won’t be lost in the process, or sit molding in some still packed box. In addition, we can share his work and growth with family members in the United States. What grandparent wouldn’t want to read a 10th grade analysis essay on The Catcher in the Rye!

In addition to all of the items that make me so happy with the e-portfolio, I am extraordinarily pleased with the way his teacher, Dana Watts, implemented the project. She gave them the steps and they create and personalize their e-portfolios. While doing this, she taught them about being a digital citizen and internet safety as well. Once they were created and personalized, she had them critically evaluate other student’s e-portfolios.

While both the parent and teacher in me LOVE the e-portfolios, my son HATES it. He is a very private person and doesn’t like to “expose” himself to the world. He doesn’t like to blog, he rarely uses Facebook, and he doesn’t see the advantages of having most of his work collected in one place. However, he just may come around…during a recent teacher workday I received a phone call from him, for the sole purpose of sharing an interesting current event commentary he had just read, posted on a friend’s e-portfolio! (And if you’re the parent of a 10th grade boy, you know that in and of itself is pretty amazing!)

Image from: http://www.featurepics.com/selections/Valentine-heart-design-946.htm

Stressing Over Health: Student Movie Suggestions & Examples

After students completed their stress imovies, students offered some suggestions for making better imovies. Here are some of their tips:

What worked in the imovies:

Using many examples of stress and showing solutions

Showing how to “solve stress”

Creativity

Humor

Using titles, subtitles, words

Using techniques like “Dear Diary” and a narrator

Using a story as an example

Suitable music

Spending time on the editing

Paying attention to transitions

What didn’t work in the imovies:

Shaky camera

Can’t hear: low volume, not speaking clearly

Lack of planning

Here’s some of what they said:

“…the comedy scenes caught my interest”

“…giving a lot of good examples and solutions to solve these problems”

“Something that caught my interest was that almost all the videos that showed the solution”

“good video... had the effects of stress and it was humorous. They had subtitles which was a very smart idea. They show not only what cause stress but how to get rid of it.”

“…realistic reason why someone might be stressed, what not to do and what you should do, it was very clear and concise. I thought that the editing was very good, I especially liked how they used a journal showing how the character felt inside. What caught my interest was when they used teachers in our school to act and it worked to get my attention because teachers are whom students listen to.

“They used different filming techniques to make the video more interesting. They had bloopers at the end, which was very smart because it added humor to the whole movie; it really caught my interest.”

“We could have added some music or background sounds to the video that could’ve made it a little more interesting.”

“I also believe that adding the songs at the right places made the video more appealing and less awkward.”

“I think we planned the video pretty well, we planned exactly what to do and how to do it. The filming was average, not really shaky but sometimes we zoomed in too close on the person’s face. We did not really edit the videos (no cutting parts) but we inserted writing in between the clips.”

“I thought on a scale from 1 to 10 our video was a 7 because our filming was great and the plot, we answered and contained all that we needed in our movie from the rubric. The only thing that wasn’t so good was the editing and transitions.”

Feedback on Stressing Over Health

As usual, I seem to do everything a little backward! (In university, somehow I took Freshman English 2 before Freshman English 1 and Art History, part 2 before Art History, part 1). So it’s not surprising that I’ve actually done my Stress imovie health project two times, before I was able to have my pre-conference observation, my observation, and post-conference debrief for my Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy course.

In spite of having taught this lesson before, the advice and observations made by my course adviser, Kim Cofino, were extraordinarily helpful and enlightening. Kim is able to see the giant tech picture much more clearly than I am and she sees how to take this project to the next level. She had some really great suggestions for making this project more “real” for the students and some ideas about showing their work to a larger audience. Some of her ideas included sharing their stress movies with other people by posting their movies to their blogs or YouTube. For a school wide audience, she suggested sharing their movies with all of the synergy teachers or presenting them in a middle school assembly. As a future imovie project, she thought students might enjoy “teaching” sixth and seventh graders about stress and using the younger students as the target audience.

As a classroom teacher, new to technology, I usually think of “audience” as our class, our peers, our parents…I am not use to thinking about the larger community of “school” or even the virtual world. This is one of the things I’ve enjoyed about this course: the way it makes me think differently about technology and the various, practical uses of technology.

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amymctigue/3161095736/in/set-72157618479097416/

Stressing Over Health: Student Comments

During this school year, I've written several blogs about our health project: Stressing Over 8th Grade Health. At this point, two groups have completed their stress imovies and have either written reflections (first group) or blogged about their imovies (second group). Currently, the third group is still working on their imovies, which have been delayed due to the cancellation of school because of the current political situation in Thailand. So based on the first two groups, here's what the students have to say about stress and how they deal with it.

What causes stress in ISB 8th graders : Overwhelmingly, students reported that their own stress is school related, mostly homework, projects and the pressure to earn good grades. After these items, body image and how they look was most often cited as a stressor.

"Homework and school are the major stressors in my life."

"Stress has always been my major weakness; I am constantly worrying about school, grades, friends, family problems, and my own personal concerns regarding my own self. I am a victim for stress so, therefore, my dealings with stress aren't very good... "

"The major stressers in my life are the future and body appearances. My parents always nag me about grades and I'm hard on myself on the way I look."

"The major stressors in my life are homework, and keeping my appearance looking good. I really care about my appearance and I stress alot over the fact that I am not as skinny as I would like to be. "

How they deal with stress : Overall, music, friends and physical activity are the ways ISB 8th graders deal with stress.

"I deal with my stress by playing basketball or hanging out with my friends."

"I get stressed out by lots of things such as homework till the end of grade test as well. I deal with the stress by listening to music, and chat with someone so that my stress can faint away. "

"I deal with my stress usually by running around the lake or just exercising in general. It helps when I listen to music, mostly calm soothing music which helps me to calm down as well. I also dance out all the stress I have or mixed up emotions inside me. "

"Usually I would ask my mom to help me with my stress or listen to music and take a break."

"To deal with this, I try to start my homework as soon as I get home so that it is finished before dinner. I also sometimes listen to music while I do homework and this relaxes me. "

"I like to talk to my friends on MSN and discuss the stress because they can make me laugh about it."

"I deal with stress by working out till I can't possibly move anymore. It soothes me. "

"To deal with my stress I like drawing (only sometimes) and when I don't have time to draw, I watch TV, go on the computer, listen to music, and eat as much as I can fit in my tummy."

"To deal with my stress I usually exercise to really loud heavy metal music and the music and the adrenaline rush gets all the anger and stress out of me. If I am REALLY stressed then I sometimes go up to my room and jump on my bed to loud music that I sing all the words to than I scream into a pillow. Getting active helps me deal with my stress. "


What helped them learn about stress : Most students either said that that working on their movie helped them learn the most about stress or watching all of the imovies helped them learn the most. Often students said that both of these activities combined helped them learn the most about stress. Furthermore, many cited the group work that went into making the movie as helpful to learning.

"What helped me learn this the most is creating the project and listening to other presentations."

"I learned most about stress when doing my video. My group taught me a lot and I won't forget what I learned for a long time. "

"I learned soooo much from this stress project because I had a great teacher and friends who can help me with it."

"We all had to work together and contribute ideas to the video; we all had to take part. What helped me learn about stress the most was actually making the movie. "

"Watching the videos helped me learn about stress the most because every video had a different problem and a different solution."

"Making the movie about stress made me really think about stress. To really grasp the project my group and I had to think about all the ways stress can come in our life. I'm glad I did this movie about stress, since I understand the topic a lot more now. "

"I think that the diversity of the ideas of the videos is what taught me the most. Also the ideas that my group came up also taught me the different ways stressed is caused and dealt with. "

Additionally, some students offered :

"While working on this project I learned that stress can be handled and solved in many different ways."

"The aspect of the project I found particularly interesting was that WE needed to think of the problems and the solutions by ourselves, because usually teachers give you everything already ready ..."

"This project has made me realize that I am fully capable of tackling stress with very simple strategies but very effective results; there are many people out there that I can talk to, and sports and friends are a very good way to keep my mind off of unpleasant things."

Photo from Flickr Littlesilver

Going Paperless

There is lots of discussion about going paperless and using technology to help facilitate that process (Teachpaperless and Divalatte to name a few sources). As I was reading my fellow COETAIL student's blogs, I noticed that Martin, discusses using Google docs as a way to reduce paper use and to provide valuable feedback to students.

In my opinion, we can and should do a lot more to utilize technology to replace the need to use paper, whenever possible. Every day I see the waste as I walk by our school’s printer, filled with unclaimed work or multiple copies of student work, when one copy or an electronic version would suffice. Here are some observations:

Going paperless means NOT printing. It does not mean requiring the students and/or parents to print what the teacher did not print. For example, at the beginning of the first semester, my high school son told me that the teacher’s had posted the class syllabus online and did not print copies to hand out to the students (yeah). However, they were requiring him to print them at home and then return them with a parent signature (boo). That it NOT paperless! That same semester, I sent a tiny form (one-eighth of a page of paper) for parent signature confirming the parent and student viewed the online class syllabus. Next year, I’ll create Google doc for parents to utilize confirming their viewing of the syllabus.

Going paperless means teaching students NOT to print unless it’s absolutely necessary. If the directions are online or in a document they can use, then they don’t need to be printed. However, this means working with the students and telling them NOT to print and ensuring they can see the directions from wherever they are. I have one student in particular who wants to print EVERYTHING and often tries to print multiple copies of EVERYTHING. I’ve been working with him to break him of this wasteful habit.

Going paperless means changing the way YOU as the teacher do everything. I admit I am a paper lover. I like to grade hard copies of essays, I like to read actual printed copies of articles. I am working very hard to change the way I grade and read. I am learning how use the editing mode of Word more efficiently. (And it really makes sense for me to do this…I have terrible handwriting…so comments made via Word can actually be read by the students!) After reading Martin’s blog, I’ll be exploring Google docs as well.

Going paperless means using technology more INSTEAD of paper. Teachers should examine the projects and activities they assign and decide which can be changed from paper to technology based. For example, my health colleague Susan had the great idea of switching the “ME Project Folders” to “ME Project Voice Threads” , thus eliminating the need to print and cut up question, question answers, and photos. Now these projects are electronic and have the added benefit of being shared with family members living far away.

Going paperless means making smart choices regarding when to use paper. Sometimes it is fun to have students us giant pieces of paper for group projects or use paper and other materials to create old fashioned games.

Going paperless means doing things the make SENSE! Ever have a teacher who made you print a copy of your PowerPoint project…one slide per page?

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sashdc/3572998080/

What I Did Over My Winter Break and How Technology Saved the Day

This past winter break, my family and I were privileged to host a very special guest from El Paso, Texas. Gingie, the Gingerbread Man, is a special friend of my friend’s son, Zophie. Zophie asked if Gingie could visit us and come with us on our family vacation. Our job was to keep Gingie safe, take pictures of his experience, and send Gingie home to El Paso with some great memories. By the beginning of the New Year, we accomplished all of our tasks, except sending Gingie back with the pictures…and school was about to begin. Knowing that I almost never visit a post office, I quickly put my tech skills to use and created a Powerpoint story of Gingie’s adventures, using Slide Share to share the story with Zophie and his first grade class. It’s a good thing I did’t wait, Gingie didn’t make it back to El Paso until the middle of March, traveling back in the suite case of a mutual friend!

Gingie's Adventures in Asia

View more presentations from pollo2mom.

Adding More Stress

This year, I’m teaching three different subjects for the first time and I love every minute! While loving three new preps might sound strange to some people, it's not to me since one of my favorite parts of teaching is developing the lessons. Consequently, this year, I am able to do that…a lot. So I spent tons of time thinking about all of the possible options for my course project, which is planned during this class and will be taught next semester. Given the time constraints, personal as well as the limitation of one quarter classes, and the choice of working alone or collaborating with a wonderful colleague, I opted to work with Susan Chubb to perfect and improve our stress unit.

During the last class, both Susan and I blogged about our stress project. Most of the student stress videos were interesting and effective. All of the student feedback about the project was very positive. In their reflections the students thought they learned a lot from the project by “creating the project and listening to other presentations”. Students said they learned from the “examples” in the films “rather than people sitting in front of the camera talking.” Most students liked the “comedy” in the videos and when they were “funny and creative”. As one student stated, the “…funny part which made me laugh and made me watch the video seriously until the end.” When they reflected about any difficulties they encountered, most thought they needed more time, in particular more time to film and edit. Though one student stated that the difficulties his group encountered “were having so much fun we couldn’t focus.”

Therefore, Susan and I decided we want to allow a little more time for their stress videos. In addition, we want them to blog about their experiences and post their videos on their blogs with their blog entry categorized as “health”. We think that expanding our current project, thereby adding more days of stress, makes more sense than trying to add something else to our already full units, especially given the time constraints of a one quarter class.

Here is one of the videos from this quarter: