Skip to main content

Blogs as Learning Portfolios

This week I had the privilege of attending the Mid-Atlantic Personalize Learning Conference. There were a lot of inspiring people doing great things for kids and adults in their learning environment one of which was the amazing George Couros, which performed Wednesday's Keynote and a breakout session. Below is one of George's TED talks for your enjoyment:


During his breakout session George talked about helping our kids (and ourselves) create a positive digital footprint. He noted that as the person in charge of hiring for his district that if an applicant didn't have a positive digital footprint they went in the piles of applications he would NOT consider for the job. This is a critical learning for all educators because if we aren't helping our kids create that positive digital footprint we are leaving it up to chance that all our and our learner's hard work will reach it's potential. I don't know about you, but I don't like to leave things up to chance or leave a shadow of a doubt. 

George proposes that every learner should maintain a Growth Portfolio through a student created blog that they maintain from K-12 grade. This kind of blog shows learning over time, is a great reflection tool, builds in a love for delayed gratification in learning, grit to tackle large projects and tasks, and builds a positive digital footprint. It really is the swiss army knife of projects! George has got lots of justifications and resources for blogging in education that you can find here. 

I know, I know you aren't a teacher of writing... you are a "Tech. teacher". We're all facilitators of learning opportunities for the whole child and taking care of the whole child, that's it. Humans aren't compartmentalized, learning isn't compartmentalized. We need to show kids how things apply to all areas of learning. As the saying goes, "Everything is everything." 

Let's fully embrace #growthmindset, going #1toWorld, and #DigCit inside our classrooms!

As always I welcome comments. Let me know if there are ways I can support you!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Use Drive to Share Video Playlists

 Google Drive is a great way to work, collaborate, and share with anyone across the table or across the world. Video is no exception to these rules! Richard Byrne recently posted that he recommends privately sharing videos through Google Drive on his FreeTech4Teachers blog . I would take what he says one step further. Frequent Drive users will already know that items within a shared folder, carry the same share settings as the folder, i.e. if the folder's share setting is "Anyone with the Link can View", then everything within the folder is automatically set "Anyone with the Link can View" unless you individually change the setting. This is great to be aware to because using this knowledge you can easily create a playlist within your Google Drive for students to access. Here's how: Create a folder in Drive, giving it a relevant name to the topic.  Set the share setting to "Anyone with the Link can View".  Add relevant videos to the folder

Classroom Benefits to Screencasting

Screencasting is the effort of recording your device's screen while narrating the actions taking place on the screen, similar to a think aloud while reading a book. Screencasting is a great way for you to transform your learning environment regardless of subject! Benefits of Screencast:  Frees you as the facilitator to guide learners that may need additional support or enhance content for those that need pushed! Could be used to flip the learning environment . Screencast the lesson ahead of time, post the video to the LMS, and have learners watch it the night before to come to class prepared for a project or class discussion.  It can be used as a formative/summative assessment tool! It supports to the Rotational Model, mentioned in this post, as a portion of the Independent stations.  You could have your learners create screencasts demonstrating their learning of a process, making their learning visible to you and the other learners within the class! We can also reach tha