In August, at one of our professional development days, we had the opportunity to sit down with our peers and work on a passion project. *Shout out to our D181 TOSAs* This is an opportunity where we had several times throughout the year where we get to work on something, of our choosing, to work with our colleagues on something we're passionate about. The big idea is that we wanted to integrate more technology into our math classrooms. After some discussion, we decided that each of our students was going to create a digital math portfolio where they would create something, anything, to demonstrate their knowledge of the content during that unit.
I think back to my days as a young student where I studied my butt off for a test. The content that I focused on during my studying, wasn't even covered on the test... but I still worked hard. And it was frustrating. We wanted to give students an opportunity to show us what they knew. However, they wanted to do it.
A couple of "modes" that we decided that would be acceptable would be to create an online game (Kahoot!, Quizizz, Quizlet Live, etc), create a quiz, write a lesson, make a poster, write a children's book, write a song/rap, etc. The kids were THRILLED that they got the freedom to do what they wanted. However, the catch was they could never repeat any mode they've used before.
I had one student write, and perform, a rap in class. ... it was awesome! We had a lot of online games and a couple of movies... I even had one student write a chapter book! Each chapter ended by giving the answer to the problem of the chapter.
This was the fun part; the creation and seeing my students have so much fun showing their knowledge. The hard part was organizing all of their "modes" for each chapter. We started by using Keynote and adding me as a collaborator. That didn't work. Then we tried Google Slides and sharing with me... which worked fine, but I still feel like there was a better way to make this work.
This past week in class we played with Google Sites and it is definitely the best way to create an online Digital Portfolio. It's a work in progress but I'm excited for my students to start using it and creating their own sites. Having it all organized on Google sites it allows them to add their creation, complete an entry form and even have me score the rubric all on one nice, neat little page!
I think back to my days as a young student where I studied my butt off for a test. The content that I focused on during my studying, wasn't even covered on the test... but I still worked hard. And it was frustrating. We wanted to give students an opportunity to show us what they knew. However, they wanted to do it.
A couple of "modes" that we decided that would be acceptable would be to create an online game (Kahoot!, Quizizz, Quizlet Live, etc), create a quiz, write a lesson, make a poster, write a children's book, write a song/rap, etc. The kids were THRILLED that they got the freedom to do what they wanted. However, the catch was they could never repeat any mode they've used before.
I had one student write, and perform, a rap in class. ... it was awesome! We had a lot of online games and a couple of movies... I even had one student write a chapter book! Each chapter ended by giving the answer to the problem of the chapter.
This past week in class we played with Google Sites and it is definitely the best way to create an online Digital Portfolio. It's a work in progress but I'm excited for my students to start using it and creating their own sites. Having it all organized on Google sites it allows them to add their creation, complete an entry form and even have me score the rubric all on one nice, neat little page!
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