In a March we are hosting a numeracy showcase for parents to come and experience some of the ways their children are taught maths. One of my colleagues suggested that we gave the parents a handout with a list of websites the children could use at home to help reinforce their learning. However being handed a sheet full of very long URL’s to type in, is not very inspiring or practical. So I suggested that I could create a website that would contain all these links which would mean that the parents would only need 1 URL. So over the last week I have created a Homework Help website using wix (please note this is a flash website and so will not work on IPhones or IPads). What was great was that I was able to make the folders I had already created with weblinks in Edmodo public. So all I had to do with this website was create links to these, simple! What’s even better is that I have a couple of pupils in my class that have issues remembering their passwords to our VLE so I can tell them just to use this website and it means they don’t need to waste any time logging in.
Please feel free to share the website URL with your friends and colleagues and if you have any suggestions for improvements to the site or websites I should include then please let me know on the feedback page.
I’ve decided to write this post about Eportfolios because even though I’ve been using them with my class for quite a while, I am constantly asked for advice on how to set them up. This post will hopefully help those people with any questions they have. If you think I’ve missed any important information out or have addition questions please feel free to comment at the bottom of this post.
What are Eportfolios?
Basically an eportfolio is an online digital space that pupils can use to reflect on learning, record wider achievement and teachers can use as an assessment tool.
Why did I start using Eportfolios?
Currently the school I work in uses a Learning Log as a way for the children to share their targets and reflect on their learning. This learning log is a folder which contains sheets of paper which the children fill in. I’d been finding that completing these logs was becoming very time consuming and very uninspiring for the pupils. At that point I had just not long completed my Glow (Scottish Schools VLE) training and decided to use this as a place to house our eportfolios.
How do you create an Eportfolio in Glow?
There is a National Eportfolio Glow group which can be found here. There you will find help sheets and videos which will take you through the set up process. However three things you will need to do before setting up eportfolios are
1. Ensure all pupils have Glow Light enabled (this can be done by clicking on pupil or staff home, scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking on Change Glow Light Settings. You must then ensure that Use Glow Light as my default home page when I next log in has been ticked)
2. Ensure that all pupils have permission to use Glow blogs (this can be done by your school ASM or by your Glow key contact)
3. Create a class or year Glow group which can be accessed by all the pupils. Either use the weblink part that already exists or create a new one for the pupils to put the URL’s of their eportfolios.
Once you have completed these 3 steps you are now ready to create your eportfolios with your pupils using the How to create an eporfolio help sheet.
What if I don’t have Glow?
The main part of the eportfolio that is created in Glow is a blog which uses wordpress. You can create your own free blog at wordpress.com. There are lots of other sites where free blogs can be created e.g. blogger, edublogs, primary blogger, etc.
How can I use eportfolios with my class?
1. Each pupil’s eportfolio has a static front page; this allows them to create an All about me page. They can create an avatar and write some text to introduce themselves.
2. All posts the pupils write must be categorised. This makes it easy for readers to find posts on a similar subject; this is especially useful for interdisciplinary learning. Our eportfolios have categories for all areas of the curriculum, achievement, attainment, targets and review of the week.
3. Pupils can use the eportfolios as a place to record any targets they set for themselves and review their learning.
4. Pupils can report about and reflect on any learning undertaken. This becomes a very useful assessment tool for the teacher as it is easy to determine the level of understanding each pupil has of the activity they have participated in.
5. Eportfolios can be used as storage for evidence of work i.e. pieces of writing can be typed up and posted. Using a site called Slideboom PowerPoint presentations can be embedded into the blog. Websites that have been used for digital literacy activities e.g. voki, animoto and GoAnimate can also be embedded.
6. Feedback – All posts that are written can receive comments. This allows teachers to give instant feedback and also allows for peer to peer assessment.
7. Eportfolios can be shared extremely easily with parents who can also comment on their child’s posts.
Using the eportfolios with my class has been very successful. The pupils really enjoy creating posts and sharing their work. I’ve noticed a marked improvement in their enthusiasm to write and in their writing skills. Often pupils will post stories that they have been writing at home.
I have been involved in providing training other teachers in my cluster in how to set up eportfolios. Our next step is to decide what information an eportfolio contains so there will be continuity when P7’s move to S1.
Below is the animoto I created using the slides of my presentation I gave on Eportfolios at the Scottish Learning Festival 2011.
Last week I discovered Pearltrees, a place to collect, organise, discover and share everything you like on the web. I haven’t used any of the other websites that are available to bookmark websites. I usually favourite a link someone has posted on twitter or email myself the link. This is not great because I quite often do not get a chance to check back and use the resource I found.
Pearltrees is very simple and easy to use, you need to use chrome as your web browser (and install the pearler) or there is an app available for ipads. From your root Pearltree you create other pearltrees (these are the categories that you want to sort your weblinks into). Whenever you find a great weblink, all you need to do is click the pearler and choose which pearltree you want it to be associated with.
So far I’ve been through all my favourites on twitter dating back to 2009 and found some really amazing resources. You can view my Pearltree below feel free to share, join and add to.
Our work with talk partners has been very successful so far, the children were able to come up with some very good success criteria which we’ve typed up and put on the wall so they are an easy visual reminder (see photo below).
Using the lollysticks to choose children to share their answers is also proving very productive. It has allowed me to observe very quickly the children who either need to put more effort into their discussions or require some support. All the partnerships are proving to be very successful.
The next task for the talk partners was to revisit work we’d done previously on fixed and growth mindset. Each pair was given a pile of statements which they had to discuss then sort into the headings fixed and growth mindsets. Once this was done each pair had to get a different coloured pencil and tick the statements that related to how they tackled learning situations. They then discussed with their partners why they had ticked each statement and ways they could overcome having a fixed mindset. Since introducing fixed and growth mindsets in my classroom the results have been very rewarding. Most of the children have a very positive attitude towards tackling new problems and don’t feel so embarrassed or negative when they get things wrong.
The final task was to establish the requirements for learning.
“In order to ensure effective engagement, reflection, dialogue and appropriate guidance, we need to create, with pupils, the best environment for those elements and therefore for effective learning to take place” Clarke (2008)
First the children discussed what helps them learn then what stops them from learning. From these discussions the children produced a set of success criteria for “What does a successful learner do?”. These have been typed up and displayed prominently in the classroom so they can be easily referred back to during any task or activity. These criteria also make a good behaviour management tool as children can be reminded quickly how they can be successful.
In part three of Formative Assessment I will be looking at asking worthwhile questions.
Reading / Video that helped me
DVD – The Power of Formative Assessment – Shirley Clarke
Clarke, S (2008) Active Learning through Formative Assessment, Hodder Education
Although I have been using some aspects of formative assessment in my class for a number for years, with the removal of national tests and assessment being key to our SDP (school development plan) I am planning to review my practice and focus on several areas over the next months to make improvements.
My first step was to watch the Shirley Clarke DVD, The Power of Formative Assessment. Although all of the examples in the DVD are at primary level I thoroughly recommend that all educators would benefit from watching it as a lot of the techniques could be adapted for older learners. What I really like about it is that it shows in practice lots of the ideas and techniques Clarke recommends using in her book Active Learning through Formative Assessment. One of the key techniques demonstrated in the DVD is the use of Talk Partners. I frequently used the Aifl (Assessment is for learning) strategy “Think Pair Share” and a lot of the activities I plan in class involve working in groups or with a partner. However Talk Partners is a much more structured method where the same partners are kept for a week or a fortnight with the pupils both self and peer assessing their effectiveness as a talk partner.
Clarke (2008) recommends randomly paired talk partners as
“Pupils appreciate the fairness factor and get to appreciate the rich variety of social and learning experiences”
I plan to do this using the lollypop stick method as used in the DVD which has also been used by Dylan Williams, I will continue to use the lollypop sticks during all discussions or question and answer sessions. This will hopefully ensure that all my pupils will engage with learning activities and will give those more hesitant to join in the ability to have a voice.
The first “discussion” the talk partners will have, will be to discuss the success criteria for being a good talk partner i.e. what is good talk and good listening. These success criteria will then be used at the end of a fortnight for the pupils to self and peer assess if they had been good talk partners and what they need to improve on when working with their next partners. The partners will then be swopped and at the end of the next fortnight they will evaluate if improvements have been made.
Reading / Video that helped me
DVD – The Power of Formative Assessment – Shirley Clarke
Clarke, S (2008) Active Learning through Formative Assessment, Hodder Education
Part of my New Year’s resolution is to revamp both my own and my pupils blogs. We’ve been blogging for nearly 2 years now and seem to go through peaks and troughs. I was delighted therefore when Colin Maxwell decided to launch the Educational Technology Creative Collection as it is the prefect vehicle for me to discover new ideas which I can then share with my class. In fact one of the first tasks I will be setting my pupils when we start back on Tuesday is to revamp their blogs especially their about me sections. I also plan to talk to my class about taking part in this challenge and sharing the activities and knowledge I gain – I think there can be no better model for learning than demonstrating it yourself.
To find out more about me click on the about page at the top or any of the Blogroll links. I am really looking forward to sharing and seeing the ideas that everyone comes up with throughout this project.
Those of you who know me or have followed my work will know that I have always been a strong advocator of Glow and have used it extensively to help embed ICT throughout learning in my classroom. So it is with great surprise that I find myself writing this post.
A few weeks ago I discovered the video below about Eportfolio’s on YouTube. I posted the link on twitter stating that I wished there was something out there like this.
Last week I suddenly realised that a website that did this did exist and that I had created an account about a month ago. This website was Edmodo, as usual someone on twitter had recommended it’s use, I had created an account but then hadn’t had time to look at it properly.
My class have been using Glow for a year and half and although they initially loved it and were using it all the time both at home and at school, I found that they were using it less and less at home. They were also finding it quite time consuming to find the resources I wanted them to use. I therefore decided that I wanted to use something that would help reengage my learners and would be easy and fun to use.
So how do you get started on Edmodo? Well first you need to create a teacher’s account which is simple and easy to do. Then you need to send home a letter of permission and a copy of the privacy policy as the company terms and conditions require that parental consent is received before allowing children to use it. This may seem time consuming but because my pupils were so keen to start using the site they all returned their slips very quickly. Once this is done you can then create a class group and a code is generated which you give to the pupils to enter when they sign up.
Why do my class really like it? Well for a start it strongly resembles facebook and allows them to easily posts comments to the class group which they can all respond to. The children are therefore able to start their own conversations rather than having to wait until I create a discussion webpart (which I would have had to do in glow). The children can also send me direct messages which other children cannot see. For me this is a great benefit as our pupils do not have access to Glow mail and so have only been able to ask me questions in a public forum which some are very reluctant to do.
I have spent hours creating learning spaces within Glow. Each time I created an area for a new curricular area or sub-topic I had to create a new web-part for each weblink part or document store which is very time consuming and fiddly. Every user in Edomdo has a library where you can create folders that store both web links and documents together. These are extremely easy to create and also automatically generate a thumbnail, name and description which save lots of valuable time.
Once these folders are created you can then share them with the class group/s as required. When the pupils click on these folders the weblinks and files are all displayed with their thumbnails and descriptions which makes it much easier for the pupils to find the resource you’ve asked them to use. The pupils are also able to click a button called play view which then displays one website with the others as a thumbnail at the bottom of the screen. This allows the children to quickly flick through the websites to find the one they want to use.
About a year ago I received training on how to use Glow learn, unfortunately when I attempted to use it with my class they found it extremely complicated and difficult to use. Edmodo has the ability to set either whole class or individual assignments which are extremely easy to create, add weblinks or any file type. You can also easily create polls, quizzes and award pupils badges, a feature that my pupils expressed a wish for during the #EduScotICT discussions.
What makes it so easy is that everything is in the one place and it is very simple to set up. It’s taken me a fraction of the time to set up a class group and put in the same resources that I had in my class glow group. We’ve only been using it a week but already my pupils have been extremely responsive, finding it much easier and quicker to get to the resources they need.
We won’t be abandoning Glow as there is still a lot of content we use eg Glow TV and Glow Blogs but wouldn’t be great if I could they could be integrated. Dear Santa ………..
Update: 7th March 2012.
It seems you don’t need to send home Edmodo’s privacy policy to parents any more, just a letter to inform them of it’s use. You can find sample letters here.
Also yesterday it was announced that Edmodo would be opening it’s doors to 3rd party Apps, exciting times! Read about it here.
This morning I decided that I would check what information was available for everyone to view on the Facebook profiles of the pupils in my class. I did it back in February when we had a Safer Internet Day and a lot of them reset their privacy settings and changed their profile pictures so they couldn’t be identified. Unfortunately when I checked this morning only 2 out of the 12 who have facebook accounts still had this. I therefore decided to look on the CEOP run thinkuknow website to see if they had any resources I could use that would demonstrate the dangers of sharing too much personal information online. If you haven’t already, it is really worthwhile registering with the site so that you can download the resources. They have resources available for all ages and the one I decided to use was the film Jigsaw for Key Stage 2. At the beginning the film shows the main character posting the same kinds of information that a lot of children post online without thinking about it, in the real world. The children are then shown the dangers that this can pose and who they can ask for help. The film had a real impact with all of the children in my class as they realised with shock just how much of this information they themselves had allowed to become public. As a result they are all now resetting their privacy settings and changing their profile pictures. Objective achieved.
Caroline Breyley and I have been asked to host a Glow Meet for CPD Stepin on an Introduction to Glow. CPD Stepin is a support group for supply teachers which offers them access to CPD, help and advice. Caroline and I decided that the best way to introduce new users to Glow was to let them know about all the amazing resources they could access through it. I have created a presentation of Screen shots which demonstrates a large number these resources.
This has actually been a very valuable activity for me to do as it has reminded me just what is there and helped me discover some new resources. This presentation is also going to help me as I am visiting the first ever school I taught in next week to tell them all about Glow, plus I have arranged a series of ICTworkshops for the staff in my cluster group the first of which is Glow Basics.
You can view my presentation below please feel free to download and share.
This year to help support the outdoor learning I do with my pupils I’ve signed up to do Season training with Fife’s Ranger Service. This involves attending 4 sessions throughout the year with a focus on tree and plant identification.
The Autumn session was held a couple of weeks ago at Loch Ore Meadows. When we arrived Karen the ranger had 3 kelly kettles on the go and we all had tea or coffee, nothing quite beats drinking coffee outside.
Karen then took us on a treck through the woods where she helped us identify different woodland areas. For example in mixed woodland there is a lot of undergrowth and a wide variety of plant life but in a beech wood the tree canopy blocks out most of the light so there is very little undergrowth. As well as helping us identifying which tree was which by their leaves, Karen also gave us other really interesting information about each tree. Did you know that the base of the trunk on a beech tree looks like an elephant foot or that you can make whistles from elder trees?
Through out the session Karen gave us copies of sheets she had printed from the nature detectives which is site run by the Woodland Trust. I’ve used some of their resources with my class before and I can highly recommend them if your outdoor learning focus is all about discover about nature. They have resources that are suitable for all ages, one of my favourite for early years is their Welly walk. A lot of the resources are editable which means you can adapt them so the children are only looking for things that are available in your area.
We spotted several different types of mushrooms when we were out but my favourite was this purple one below (you can tell by the colours in this blog why that is).
I really enjoyed this session and came away with a lot more knowledge about tree identification than I could have read in a book, I am looking forward to sharing this with my class. Next session is in January hopefully any snow will have gone by then.
