Start your new year with a new challenge...

Rope Climbing, Santa Monica flickr photo by Boss Tweed shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

A new year brings an educator fresh opportunities.

If you have a blog that's been gathering dust, or you feel intrigued by the idea of starting one, this post is for you.  Join over twenty teachers across seven countries who have signed on for the five month portfolio challenge.  If you join this August, you will be joining us for the fourth round (but don't worry, we will have new challenges coming soon).

Why should you consider this challenge?

George Couros has written about the why extensively, check out his blog here. For a snapshot of his rationale keep reading:

 Sometimes, for my own clarification, I go back and read my own blog to look at what I have done and how I can continuously work on it to improve. This transparent way of learning is something that I believe can not only improve the teaching profession as a whole (for example, take a look at the conversation on this Pernille Ripp post from today), but is something that could really improve learning for our students.

Each month we use a different set of 'thought-bait'

The prompts for your post are all included (but please, rebels are welcome too-go ahead and blog to the beat of your own drummer.) Here are our seven prompts for August:

Once your post is ready...

You are asked to kindly drop it off here by August 27th.  The posts are then bundled into reading and commenting teams (see here for an example from June).

If you have any questions about joining, please leave a comment below. If you aren't ready to compose your own post, but you'd like to join as a reader, we'd welcome that with open arms--please leave a comment and I'll be sure to get you the bundle of posts at the end of the month.

Development week: Round up

Interested in what else was happening during Development Week?

Middle leaders spent 90 minutes exploring portfolios.  

We imagined what our portfolios could be four years from now.

As a provocation, we listened to one current university student reflect on her High School blogging experience:

This student has continued to use a portfolio as a tool for learning in university:

“Ultimately, it is my vision that this blog will facilitate and document my journey – and possibly yours, too – in striving to become a better global citizen, life enthusiast, and lifelong learner: stumble, learn, repeat.”

We also listened to Louie, Georgina and Uzay reflect on their portfolio process so far:

We also hosted an optional 90 minute session on Learning Spaces.  

We looked at a few key provocations here, here and here to spark conversation, toured recently revamped spaces, and then worked on two classrooms in small teams.

Here's what we managed to accomplish:

Lastly, a group of teachers also learned about the basics of iBooks Author

We explored the possible applications to integrate into that amazing resource and had a wee bit of fun playing with the built in trailer feature on iMovie and the capabilities of PicMonkey.

To discuss any of those sessions further, see your friendly DLC!

The Networked Teacher-Learner

What could your portfolio do for your learning?

Starting this May, join a cohort of teachers on campus looking to complete a five-month challenge.

The challenge will ask you to launch and share a portfolio (with the support of your DLCs), and to compose and share one post per month from May until September.

In small teams, you will receive feedback from your peers, and you will be asked to respond to others. What can we learn from one another? Can networking our inquiry build connections across our community and assist in better research curation?

You will have a great deal of choice from a month menu of post provocations. Preview the menu for May here.

Wondering why educators have found portfolio curation a useful endeavor?

Check out this post from George Couros.

What I did not expect though, was how much my own learning would grow.  Writing a blog for me is now something that I feel is necessary for an educator, as it gives me the opportunity to not only reflect on my practice, but also collaborate with others in a more in depth way then sites like Twitter can provide.  I also have had a major shift in my own thinking as I am less focused on the technical aspects of a blog, but the learning implications this type of writing can have on educators and students.-George Couros

If you'd like help getting set up with your portfolio, please ask a DLC.

Sign up for our five-month challenge here.
Anticipate a time requirement of 50-60 minutes per month (includes posting, reading, and commenting).

Digital Bytes 4th May 2015

Happy Star Wars Day! For this week's Digital Bytes, we feature Essentials for ePortfolios, an article from Scholastic on Twitter for Teachers, and 10 Techie Things to Try for those looking for a bit of inspiration. Enjoy!

 

Digital Portfolios - Organising your Google Drive Folders

At UWCSEA East, we are using Digital Portfolios for Grades 3-5. These take the form of Google Sites.

One technique we are using is embedding Google Drive folders in their sites, so content can be populated automatically.

Students already have folders set up in their Google Drive (via Hapara, or Teacher Dashboard), so the following tutorial shows how students set up their folders ready for embedding in their sites.

Folder Structure in Google Drive for Digital Portfolios from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Digital Portfolios using Google Sites

Grade 3, 4 and 5 students in our school are using Google Sites for their digital portfolios this year. One of the ways we can support them is through short video tutorials that break down some of the aspects involved in creating a site.

The tutorials have been uploaded to Vimeo and put into an album. We will continue to update the album with more and more videos over time.