ePortfolios in the Secondary Classroom
This year, I have made a choice to tackle a new method of documented learning with my students: ePortfolios. So far, I have to say, the results I am seeing and feedback from the students has all been positive. Not to mention, student engagement has been at an all-time high. They seem to be enjoying creating their own personalized learning spaces, and I love not having a stack of papers to grade. So far, they have selected themes, pictures, and created their ‘about me’ pages. As we move into writing papers and creating projects, the students will be adding those artifacts to their sites. I have even had one or two students ask me if they can work on their portfolios at home. As shocking as that question was, I knew I had stumbled on something great.
The first and most important thing I took into consideration when searching for a platform for my students’ sites was: how can I make sure they are protected from the outside world? I wanted to make sure no one would be able to find my students online. After doing some research, I discovered that Weebly has an educational interface, and it protects all student accounts created under a teacher account. Bingo!
Since I already had a Weebly account for my teacher site, the thought of creating a new educational account to gain the attached student accounts seemed like a pain. Much to my surprise, Weebly has made it extremely easy as they have a feature which allows you to convert your Weebly site to an educational site with one click. Upon converting my teacher site to an educational account, I had 40 student licenses at my disposal. Hallelujah! Since I teach high school and have 120 students, I had to purchase a few additional licenses, but I really wanted to start this initiative in my classroom, so I sprung for the extra cost.
After purchasing the extra licenses and creating accounts for each of my students, my next thought was, “how am I going to step them through the setup process?” Setting up new technology accounts in your classroom can be a daunting task unless you have some sort of visual display and/or handout for them to follow. Fortunately, I located a great PowerPoint on Teachers Pay Teachers which was created by Gavin Middleton. His visuals and step-by-step directions are very easy to follow and can be shown on your white board while you are stepping your students through the process. Once my students learned the basics from the PowerPoint, I created a new Weebly Account and modeled some of the steps for them on the whiteboard. This worked out well since I had a few students who needed me to back up a bit and show them some things again.
At this point, I’m not sure what our results will look like at the end of the school year, but I feel confident in knowing I have provided my students with an engaging new challenge which will provide them will multiple opportunities to acquire 21st Century Skills. They may forget the stories or books we read in my class or the essays they wrote during the 2016-17 school year, but the technology skills will be ones that will never leave them, and those skills will be invaluable as they move into careers in our digital age.
