e-Portfolios in the classroom

The purpose of an e-portfolio is to give, like, our parents and the students’ access anywhere that they are to their work.

To use the blogger system that we use every child has to have a Google account, which at the time seemed like a really big barrier because we had to develop the account for that then the Blogger account. But then actually having the kids have a Google account has led to really great opportunities as well because that feeds into Picasa with the photos. It lets them work collaboratively on Google docs and they can email each other as well.

So once we had all the kids set up with their blogger accounts we then had to explore how easily we could get work samples onto the blogs for the kids and really work out how we could teach the kids how to do that for themselves so that they had that ownership.

I’ve gained a lot of ICT skills because, like, we’re having to use it constantly.

We got really good feedback from parents because they could see, it was like taking them into the classroom because normally they’d just see pen on paper sort of work samples inside a portfolio but with a video they could actually feel like they were part of the experience.

My dad, when I do a new piece of work he always comments on it.

Most of our families are quite happy for them to be public which is, which is good because it means that family all over the world can view them easily but we do have one or two in the school that prefer that its just their family that has that information shared with them. Likewise with the comments that come through from family the classroom teacher controls the comments so they get sent to us first and we sort of analyse whether they’re appropriate and make the decision whether they go on and be included on the blogs.

Yeah there’s a lot of like constructive criticism so people will give me good points and bad points and things that I need to work on.

Most of the time what we get through in, is really constructive, and we keep.

I’ve logged into my blog and I’ve been searching other people’s blogs and seen what they’ve done well and like posted feedback and feedforward like little stuff that needs to improve and like what they’ve done well.

The nice part about the kids using the Google Applications part of our portfolios is that any assessment data is only shared with the child and their direct parents. So anything, anything on the blog is a work sample that the kids are happy to share with the world, anything that involves a level or a comment about the progress of a child that gets kept private.

Because the community are seeing things go onto the blogs everyday and seeing items go into their portfolios all the time it’s making them more involved with what’s going on.

Now it’s just on the Internet and like Miss Sweeny’ll send an email to our parents or a notice will be sent out to say please check your child’s blog for like work that they’ve done recently.

So whānau is continually being shown what’s happening in the classroom.