Friday Friendly: Bloggers from Outer space...

If you've recently been thinking about ways to make use of ePortfolios next year..or next month: this post's for you.

Wait.  Back up a minute.  Why should we use online portfolios?

In addition to inherent components of reflection, which traditionally have been viewed as internal (thinking about one’s own learning and that thinking primarily benefiting ourselves), we need to take a closer look at amplifying reflection by sharing our reflection transparently (learning how to articulate and make our thinking visible to others and the learning benefiting ourselves AND others). By sharing our reflection beyond a teacher or a classmate, we acknowledge our voice as learners and the role that it can play in the learning process (our own process or the one of others).-Silvia Tolisano

(The full pitch on how to Amplify Reflection is here)


You mix it up. You think about the plethora of styles and approaches to building your portfolio.  Here are a few ways to go about doing just that:



But I don't want to be the only lone ranger using portfolios...

We don't want that either.  Here's what a few of your amazing colleagues have to say about experimenting with the approach:

Ok, then.  So how far can blogging/portfolio curation fly?

Outer space.  Seriously.

Meet three astronauts who blog from a long, long way from home.
(PS you can leave them comments and strike up a conversation too)

1. Alexander Gerst's Blue Dot Blog

You can follow him on Twitter as well, his profile is here.

2. The Great Outer Space with Joe Acaba

3. Daily updates from the NASA Space Station

The full guide to NASA's social media is available here.

Lastly, enjoy this 24/7 livestream from space looking down on you this weekend, let's give them something to blog about!

Using Quicktime Screen Recording to Reflect

Students are always asked to reflect on their work. But how do we do this? Most of the time we get them to write a reflection. In my experience, these written reflections take a lot of time and students may not express their thoughts completely for a number of reasons. Students can be oversaturated by the sheer number of written reflections they are asked to complete and therefore don't always say everything they want to in their writing.

A great way around this is to have students use Quicktime screen recording on a Mac to show their thinking and reflect on their learning in a quick and simple way.

When most people think of Quicktime, they think of an application that is used to watch movies. However, there are three very useful functions available: movie recording using the isight camera, audio recording and screen recording. Although we have students use the movie recording function to capture videos of themselves and the audio recording to capture them speaking, I want to focus on the screen recording aspect.

When you select screen recording, the computer will record what is happening on your screen. You can either choose to have the whole screen or part of the screen to record. There are also options for the audio to be on (I always have it on so we can hear the students talk) and for the mouse clicks to be captured. I often use screen recordings to create tutorials for teachers, but they are perfect for students to reflect on their work and to capture their thinking.

In the example below, a student has used Quicktime to create a screen recording to explain the choices that they made when creating a poster. The student originally used Pages to create the poster and made 5 duplicate versions of the poster to gradually improve with each version. It didn't take long for the student to reflect on the process and what they did. This type of screen recording can prove very valuable to teachers.


Screen recording can take many forms for student reflections. Students can have a document written in Pages or Google Docs open and explain what they felt they did well and what they need to work on. They can highlight passages that show what they learned or what they were particularly proud of. If they are working on a specific skill, they could highlight where they have demonstrated that in their work.

When teachers start to see the value and ease at which these reflections can be made with Quicktime, they will realize that there are so many possibilities for using Quicktime screen recording in their classrooms.

Letting Go of the Step by Step Tech Lesson

I admit it. I have a problem. It's not a bad problem to have. But sometimes it can be depressing. Sometimes my problem makes me feel like I wasn't a good teacher that day. Or that I didn't make a difference for a student when I was in their class.

What is my problem you ask? Well, I often reflect on what I did in the classroom. That might not sound like a problem, but sometimes I beat myself up over how the lesson went. Sometimes I think and think about what I could have done better because I saw what I was doing wasn't the best that I could do. This problem sometimes keeps me up at night, but it also makes me a better teacher.

A good example of my problem occurred this week when I was working with a grade 2 class. The class teacher and I were introducing Voicethread to the students and showing them some of the features. We had them all sit down on the carpet to show them what we were going to do and then sent them back to their computers to take them through the process step by step. We thought that we didn't want to give them too many instructions all at once so we thought we would take them through the process on bit at a time.

Normally there will be students who are quicker to pick up on what is happening and they will finish each step first. We asked them to help the students who had not yet completed that step of the process. Once everyone had caught up, the class went on to the next step in the process.

Although I thought using students who had completed the step as experts to help others would be a time saver, things were still really slow. I looked at those students who were always finishing first and I felt like I was holding them back. Sure, they were helping others, but they weren't really getting the chance to go further and explore. I have been in that situation before as an adult learner where I was forced to go at the pace of the slowest learner and it was frustrating. So we came up with a plan to change it.

The plan was the eliminate the step by step lesson where students all followed along at the same time but still provide enough scaffolding for the students to be able to follow along and understand what they needed to do.

I was able to work with another grade 2 class a couple of days later doing exactly the same lesson. This time, as we introduced the students to Voicethread, we quickly wrote the steps on the board. The plan was to then go through these steps with the students. Those students who needed that step by step instruction would follow along and those who could go ahead would have the opportunity to move at their own pace.

But then something amazing happened.

I started with the first step of the instructions and didn't get any further. They all went off on their own pace and it was fantastic. I still went around the classroom and supported all students and the students also supported each other.

My main takeaways from this were:

1. Students got more work done and did that work quicker than before. We ended up covering much more than I had with the previous class and we were finished 20 minutes earlier.

2. The kids can do it! I was so worried about giving too many instructions to the students and them not being able to handle it. I was so wrong. They were able to watch a demo and use the instructions on the board to guide them. Some needed support, but they probably got less support than when I was taking them through the lesson step by step. When I was showing them step by step, they often didn't do anything until I came over and helped them individually. Now they were off on their own and thriving.

3. This way the students become problem solvers. When I was going through the lesson step by step, they had very little room for error and the students didn't make many mistakes. We learn by exploring and making mistakes and we were taking the opportunity to make mistakes away from the students. Now the students were becoming problem solvers and exploring the application on their own with steps to guide them.

So in the end, we eliminated the step by step lesson while continuing to scaffold each step for the students. This resulted in them getting the work done quicker and helping them to solve their own problems. It looks like we are all learning. Step. By. Step.