Digital+portfolios

Experts: Ms Lauren Barge, Ms Emma Jay, Ms Teresa Stone, Ms Brea Terris, Ms Kate Wynack

As learners we are looking into the opportunities portfolios and working digitally can provide for our learners to be reflective, and in charge of their own learning. Rather than assesment being done to them, assessment as goal setting telling the story of the learning journey and then reflecting on the outcomes. We have explored many containers for our learning (powerpoint, ed-cube webpages etc), and many purposes (showcase,inquiry, habits of mind) but the one that fits most with our philosophy of children and adults being participant learners is the idea of digital storytelling.

See Gail Casey's site and examples of digital story telling [|http://digitalstories.globalteacher.org.au/]

It doesn’t matter what the container or program is for your communication or learning The idea is to ask questions, find out what you know, investigate, collect and organise data to answer your questions and develop understandings and present your findings. Take action in a rich or authentic task and then reflect and share your learning story.

**__Examples of digital portfolios or storytelling__**
In the beginning we were trying to find out how to do this with kids so we chose powerpoint becuase the kids were familiar with it, we could hyperlink and put vidio and sound in. We thought we needed templates, so we created them and then asked kids to add to them. Some staff tried web authoring, however we soon discovered we needed to really know what the purpose was. ie

were we going to capture all work and put it in (low student engagement)
__**elements of art**__ =Or=
 * __Immigration unit__** with numeracy as the reflective learning [[file:My Numeracy Portfolio.ppt]]
 * __Calista's Portfolio__** (SAEPS) [[file:Calista.ppt]]
 * __Peta the author__** [[file:Peta the author!.ppt]]

Were the kids going to be the authors of their learning journey?
Joanna Stanford and Teresa Stone used visual organisers to help kids make the experience concrete and to be able to develop their organisational skills. We developed the use of story maps, lotus diagrams in our planning with kids and the whole room became our map of what we needed to record and when.



The lotus diagram really helps learners visulaise the links and the 3-D nature of digital storytelling

The following are some of the resoureces we have used to investigate aspects of web pages and some reources to support your exploration of creating a digital story. Investigating web content and paper version then compare the two using a venn diagram. this should give kids a clear idea of the tools they need to communicate in either text type. Free songs http://music.download.com/

Animated gifs go to this free site http://www.free-animations.co.uk/ http://www.animationlibrary.com/

=__Teacher tips__= When we did the numeracy portfolio within the Immigration learning we found that: __You have to make the connections **relevant.**__ However the task was then to have no boundaries so the kids could direct their own investigation under the umbrella of global understandings. This meant pre planning for all possibilities. · It’s about knowing the possible types of math and literacy that would best support the understandings. The more integrated the unit became the need for more explicit teaching became necessary to scaffold from where children where at. EG see our work program We needed to be explicit These include Reading Book introductions Sorting out of vocabulary Being able to Reading a variety of genre, and text types diagrams and tables Read texts for meaning e.g. read and retell, bundle Writing Explicitly teaching the components of the genre sub headings Using visual tools for planning ie mindmap, story map Note taking Organizing, reading and interpreting data in data charts Writing interview questions Developing surveys · For the portfolio, start small; use a program that students are comfortable with. Even if you have a template make a visual of it on your display board with the types of things that could go in it and why. So if kids are working independently archiving they can jog their memories. · The most powerful way of developing the archive is the student teacher conference · Have criteria for kids to check their own progress against so that is more concrete for them to understand how they have gone where their gaps are and to reflect and set future goals · Jump in with both feet!!!!!! · Be excited about it!!!!!!
 * You need ‘hook ins’ for all kids to cater for direct experience, who are reluctant to buy in to the topic or have no ideas to start with. This means being hands on and using all five senses to cater for all learning styles. You need to develop understandings that connects to the real world and has personal significance to the students’ lives.
 * As teachers we had to have a clear understanding of what we wanted kids to explore. I.e. that is that they have social and world significance.
 * As a teacher you have to be prepared to run with where the kids questions take you and be confident to draw them back to developing the understandings. It changed the culture of the classroom to us all being participant learners in a journey of discovery and action together. We all had something to contribute and to learn.
 * You need to know and use data collected from the numeracy interviews or other assessment dta etc so that you can modify reading material and make sure that workshops explore and target children’s needs. Our task was then to scaffold from data collected in numeracy growth points and literacy data collection to assist children in moving towards real life authentic tasks and understandings. They then developed their higher order thinking skills and synthesis of learning to develop their creative thinking imbedded in content rich and student centered activities.
 * We needed to have structures and strategies on hand to assist students jumping the mathematical or conceptual boundaries.