1. Why would a portfolio benefit students?
2. What would a good portfolio to show?
3. How can the core values be reflected in the portfolio? What school experiences could be included in the portfolio?
4. What type of work would you include from your class?
5. How could the portfolio be used as a tool for learning in your classroom?
6. How will we ensure that all stakeholders value portfolios as the central ongoing assessment piece?

So now I can say that the next new peice to my Earth-Sun System unit will include sending students on virtual field trips to watch the change in sunlight at their three locations.

From Teacher Provided Data to Online Data Gathering

Before

As a class we all studied temperature, sun altitude and the hours of daylight for three different locations on Earth.  There was one arctic and one equatorial location.  We also collected data for our own town.  All students worked with the same three locations.

I provided pre-made tables with the relevant data for three locations on Earth.

Students were provided with: latitude; longitude; relevant sun altitude, hours of daylight and temperature data.  Students were required to graph the data on graph paper, discuss the graphs and answer some questions.  I used an overhead transparency to display example graphs for our discussions.

Assessment involved students turning in graphs and questions.  I would go through these providing feedback then hand back as soon as I finished.

Present

Students are given a lists of equatorial and polar locations (cities or towns) and asked to choose location from  each.   They are then to find the latitude and longitude for each place.  I suggest a variety of resources they may use.

Students are then told to get the data for themselves.   I give some specific instructions on how to do this and provide a link to the database, but they are sent to the form to mine the database.  They also need to figure out the time zone for each location.  This requires them to know where the location is on the globe.  Again I suggest some tools for that.

All the data is stored on their Google Docs accounts.  Usually they graph with Google Docs, but the hours of daylight data is too sophisticated for Google Spreadsheets so they have to export that data and deal with it using a desktop spreadsheet (either Excel of Open Office).

Discussions take place in small groups with occasional regrouping and larger collective class discussions.  The latter are very short and focused, sharing student observations, routing out remaining misconceptions and dealing with the key learning outcomes.

Assessment involves me looking at their work with them at their computers.  All errors and omissions must be addressed.  Through conversation I can help students clarify their written ideas on the spot.  I can bring other students into the conversation and regroup based on immediate needs (technical problems, misconceptions, skill development…)

Science Lab Activities

We do a variety of hands-on science lab activities with this unit  some were originally middle school science labs while others I modified from some high school science lab activities.  These hands-on activities are pre-designed and meant to address key learning outcomes by demonstrating science content.  I did this before and I do it now.  These learning activities work.  The only significant change I have made over time is to use sensor technology.  Currently I am using the Vernier LabQuest as a platform.

Student Led Science Inquiry

One of the key science learning outcomes of my course is that students can ask a good question.  At every step of this unit, students are asked to write a research question.  While we do not have to time to address all of these, students are required to choose two questions of interest and find an answer.  One choice must involve an experiment, the other can involve online data gathering.  The results of these investigations need to be shared in some way.

Today my students still address the same science content they did when I began teaching this, back when I had only one computer in my classroom.  With more classroom access to technology, my students can now address this learning using 21st century skills.  Over the years I have been able to add in these new ways of learning or new learning outcomes, adjusting a bit more each year. As I have made changes I have observed an increase in student engagement.  More importantly, I have witnessed an increase in student independence.  They are becoming learners, becoming more capable of finding their own answers to their own questions.

“Everyone in government should be able to use modern technology… we should be able to figure out the policy to work with the technology.”

Everyone in education should be able to use modern technology.  This is students, teachers, administrators and support staff.  Too often policies are in place that limit the ability of members of each of these groups from utilizing technology to the fullest.

“The biggest potential threat is that we don’t try to figure out how to do this [use technology in government] at this time.”

And so too in the classroom.  Putting technology into place effectively involves taking risks, changing practice and moving towards a new vision of learning in our classrooms.  Along the way there will be lost days, extra hours, new managment challenges.  But there will also be new opportunities for students and teachers, new learning for everyone in the classroom.  Without the risk to find and adapt to new ways of learning where will we leave our students and ourselves?

Related Posts

1. One more Feed for the Aggregator
2. Can Computer Labs Support Technology Integration?

Management has been relatively easy. A couple of us are pretty good at going through all the pages, members, and discussions to keep an eye on things. This is definitely a group effort though, as of this writing there are currently 957 discussions on over 300 projects. Here are some of the things I did to make things more manageable.

1. Create a projects page containing a tag cloud and menus with automatic links to pages with pre-defined tags. This way each teacher has a predefined tag. Each student for that teacher is asked to use that tag on his/her page. The result is easy to find pages! The tag cloud will allow students to find similar projects or projects of interest after students have tagged their pages.
2. Use a template for new student pages. I made the template follow the outline of the steps of the science fair. This kept the students on track as they moved forward.
3. Delete, Delete, Delete. When there were few kids I would conference with students before deleting something. Now I mail them a message stating what was being deleted and why. The purpose of my message is to inform but also to instruct.
4. Image Policies
   • Link to external URLs whenever possible
   • When uploading files, always start the file name with your username. This prevents overwriting of files (how many kids do you think will name a graph, graph.gif?) and makes it easier to find files later.
   • Keep images less than 400px x 400px. This saves layout and disk space.

Related posts:

Science Fair Wiki and Science Standards

Reflection on Students’ First Wiki Experience

Related Posts:
The MWV Science Fair Online
Reflection on Students’ First Wiki Experience

Teach Communication

IM’s and text messages are just as much a way of life for my students as they are for most eighth graders. They know how to use different tools to send these short quick messages. Both IM’s and text messages share some characteristic qualities. Most importantly, both types of messages are direct, user-to-user. They are also very short and can work conversationally in that manner, more so with IM.

Allowed to choose their own communication technique on a wiki, all students chose to use the wiki mail feature. Many of them would send messages to the entire group even when responding to single individuals. Most initial messages were sent without a subject line (as one would for IM and texting). The result was full inboxes that took lots of time to sort through. Many kids just gave up on the inbox. I can’t say I blame them, although I have never done this to my inbox, I know an extended vacation from my reader will have me clearing out that mess quickly just so I can get back on track. Students did not intuitively use the discussion tab. If you spend some time going through one of our Amistad wikis you will see this to be the case. If students are to learn to communicate effectively in online communities they need to be versed in a variety of means of communicating. For a scholarly subject the wiki discussion is an excellent tool. However, the expectation of its’ use must be set.

Take time to see the big picture

As students began to produce the wikis, some students naturally accepted the role of organizer. While from a project perspective, having a few people checking the “big picture” is a good idea. When it comes to learning, all the students should have that view at some point during a project. The art of asking questions is often the art of noticing the missing. Unless one steps back to see the big picture it is hard to notice what is not there. This is a case where stepping in and guiding the students to not add content for some time was a useful task. Students were directed to not look at their inbox, not work on their pages, but to just read, look at the pages, follow links, notice words they wish they could click on. On the surface this may seem to be just an activity in publishing, but the learning was about getting the big picture stepping back, noticing what is not there.

The first time through its ok to drop a few of the traditional benchmarks

For teachers and students the first time working with a new tool and encourage new types of learning presents challenges. Unless you are fortunate enough to have a tech integrator working with you in your classroom for this first project, and unless you have unlimited time it is ok to miss a few things you would otherwise catch. For us it was the missing references. We just had to get over it and move forward. The next time through this type of experience we will get that worked out. You can’t learn everything in one project so don’t try.

We are not changing the world

In fact we are just adapting to it. Watching students take more control over their learning and over the end product was immensly satisfying. While what we did has been done many times before, this approach has not been used in our district yet.

Incorporate self-reflection and assessment into the product

What I like about wikis is that they can capture the learning process. If you get caught up in a content-driven end product you might be tempted to leave out the reflection and self-assessment, perhaps completing this in class through other means. Take the time to provide a light for the development of these metacognitive skills. Our aim as teachers is to lead learning, not the development of content products, so let the learning show through in every way possible.

So what was the learning?

I suppose I could drop in a list of state standards here. Clearly there was learning around the content topic areas. But that occurred before, when this was not a technology integrated unit.

• Students practiced communicating online for a learning purpose. I say practiced because we still need to get better at this.
• Students had an opportunity to take greater charge of their own learning, following specific subject areas of most interest to them individually.
• Students were introduced to one method of online publication, giving them access to tools that can give voice to their ideas.
• Reflection. Students learned to step back, and seek questions.

I really like the last one best, asking questions.

It seems this falls’ theme was the wiki. Starting with our team’s Amistad project, students and teachers alike began to discover how to leverage the features of a wiki to enhance, inspire, and document learning. While most students and teachers had used a wiki to retrieve information, only a couple of students had contributed to a wiki previously. Four classes embarked on creating separate wikis around the Amistad incident and the Industrial Revolution in general. Students and teachers practiced key skills in online content creation and collaboration. The one thing that struck me most was when the students moved into the content management role. They assessed their wikipages for gaps, self-assigned tasks for finding information, and spent time double checking each others’ work. This was exciting to watch.

Launch of the Science Fair Wiki

Inspired by the first annual Mount Washington Valley Science Fair and the many student scientists who participated (including two from my class), all the middle school teachers in our district agreed to jump on board with a science fair this year. A wiki was a perfect solution to allow students to showcase their developing work to each other. You can view the wiki here.

Implementation of Online Grading

This move just seems to make so much sense to me. Honestly I feel that having just made the move to online grading, our school was way behind and it really felt that way. Maybe its just our close proximity to the the often progressive state of Maine that made me feel this way so I was surprised to see how infrequently schools use this type of tool. In the end the transition was smooth.

Lessons learned:

• Commit and move forward

This worked for us because of what we did next

• One step at a time

In moving online, we were able to stay with our previous gradebook software. This meant there was no real change at first. Grades were simply stored in a different place, which has no effect on teachers or students. Only after we offered training (we have a few new teachers this year and a few that still used paper gradebooks) and confirmed everyone was using the software we opened up access to students. We allowed this to run for a few weeks. We offered more training and individualized help. The final step was to send home parent accounts.

• Set clear expectations

1. Use the gradebook
2. Update your gradebook weekly

• Differentiate Instruction

How often do we see this rule violated? Our whole-group training lasted less than 10 minutes. Afterward there we a few follow up sessions for those who needed extra help or wanted to learn more. Following that individualized assistance was offered through our team structure and via our tech committee.

I see this as a structural change in our building and likely why it has been so easy to implement. While this isn’t an example of an integration of technology into classroom practice, it does create a more technological environment in the building. It also offers a confidence booster to individuals who are good teachers, who have always been good at communicating about student progress, but who may lack technology skills. In the end there is more communication with families and families have more ready access to information. This can only be good for students.

Digital Tools and Technology Leader Grant Awards

These grants are providing for increased technology access and case studies on the use of technology in science classes across four schools in our district. The opportunity for case study comparisons will provide us with needed data to inform our decisions regarding further technology implementations in our district.

All in all, a great way to end 2008!