Three Ring

There are a number of blogs that I subscribe to that have a focus on iPad use in the classroom.  I'm really interested at looking at in depth ways that iPads/iPods can be used to support the classroom curriculum in developing, supporting and sharing learning processes.  I just have to look at myself and how quickly I will google, translate, photograph or record classroom processes each day since I've gotten an iPhone.

Today when looking through my RSS feed I came across a really interesting and timely post (for me) from Apps in Education around Student ePortfolio options for the iPad.  Several of these e.g. Evernote and Coolibah I already have for a range of uses, but one that struck me for its simple but powerful set up was 'Three Rings' - a free app.

Basically, all you need to do is to set up an account with Three Rings.  From here you can add your students' names quickly via typing them or by adding them through an xls spreadsheet.  I went through this process on the laptop via the Three Ring website, as it was much easier to copy and paste my students across!  Next, you can set up separate classes and subject tags to make it more specific and accessible to Primary and Secondary teachers.  Once you have completed the easy 3 steps of setting these up you are ready to go!

Once you download the app and login you are presented with a simple screen that allows you to choose tags, students and classes before you add a piece of work to your stream.  Once you have selected these options you can choose to take a picture, video, voice recording or select something from your photo roll.  If you are operating from the website you are able to also upload files such as PDFs into your stream.  I'm also hoping that this will include movies etc that students have created in other apps e.g. Sock Puppets or music from Garageband etc.  Once you've finished photographing or recording you click the 'use!' button and it uploads to your account. 

In App - easily tag a student then choose the content to add

The app/website allows you to record a piece of learning, tag it to an individual student, class or subject then be able to view the process via the three ring website once you have logged in.  You are able to click on a student's name or subject and it will give you an individual page just for that student's work.  It works similar to a blog where the latest post is positioned at the top of the page.

The Three Ring website stream

Students can also add a note next to the item they are uploading to talk about why they have selected it, the process they went through etc

The biggest thing that challenges me at the moment about it is that it seems to be very teacher driven as the teacher owns and operates the account.  I'm going to give it a trial with my students and see what they think of it.  I can see potential in the app/website.  

What I think I will do is leave our class iPod set up with the account details and teach a few tomorrow how they can share their best work and the work that they want to share.  I'm sure from that few they will quickly teach each other how to add their work and view it.  It also seems like it would be quite easy to have a class wide password that would allow the students to access and add work via the class laptops/website.

On further reading it seems like there is a good group of educators behind the app looking at making strong improvements to the app.  They seem to be listening to feedback that has been presented to them so far - which is always great from developers.  They liken their app to a digital filing cabinet which will allow for conversation between students, teachers and parents.  Can definitely see the potential for this through it's ease of use.

ePortfolio - Ministry Guidelines

The Ministry of Education NZ have just released an ePortfolio Guidelines document. The document is aimed at schools looking to implement ePortfolios in their schools.

The document covers a range of concepts from what to consider about ePortfolios, the system you may use and key elements that will help make the implementation of ePortfolios manageable in your own school environment.

One of the key things that I like about this document is that it brings together ePortfolio pathways from 11 different schools. All of who are using different ePortfolio portals. It shares their challenges, decision and highlights from their ePortfolio implementations.

It's worth a look whether you are new to ePortfolio's and considering them or whether you have been using them for a while. Check them out here.

e-Portfolio Reflection

Over the last 6 months there has been a vast number of aha! moments and questions that have been raised for me in regards to e-portfolios. In the last post on our Learning Links I skimmed across a few of these concepts. After having a few discussions with people at EduCamp it gave me a chance to think through these concepts a bit more. In this post I want to reflect on these concepts and look at a few of the big questions I have floating around.

Tech vs Reflect When we put the technical needs in front the of the student needs are we then creating barriers for the students to overcome? From moving away from a Learning Management System for student e-Portfolios to a free relatively low-tech portfolio system has allowed me to see students completing tasks in a range of situations.

Transference Across Sectors One of the key concepts for me that make an e-Portfolio powerful throughout a learners life is the ability for it to be transferred across all age levels. The MOE acknowledges that the lack of interoperability between systems and schools is a major barrier to the use and advancement of Managed Learning Environments (MLE).

At EduCamp I had the opportunity to talk again to one of the ex-teachers from Manaia Kindergarten about what they have been doing with their Blogger based e-portfolios. Their system seems like a powerful way of allowing the learning to be owned by the family and then transferred on throughout that child's learning. NaketaNZ talks more about this in her post on EduCamp. A few years ago I had the chance to present at an Early Childhood Conference and then talking to some of the same EC educators at EduCamp, it reinforced that there needs to be an eye kept on what is happening for our students that enter our schools from ECE through to where our kids go at the end of their primary schooling. When we are talking about e-portfolios it's all that learning that comes and goes with them and how is it going to go with them?

Continuuing on the path of moving on with the e-Portfolios (Learning Links) that we are developing within our classes I am becoming more interested in the pathway of creating individual blogs for each student to track their learning through. At the moment there are a few ways of creating and maintaining them that would work effectively and safely for the students and families. This will be part of the ongoing development.

Whanau/Family Knowledge
Through a range of conversations we have already identified that a large portion of time needs to be placed to upskill and develop our parents knowledge and understanding of e-learning. The change from paper portfolios to digital portfolios was received well by the majority of my parents - who were really keen to see the variety of learning their children were involved in. But this opened the door for more questions and new knowledge that parents realised they need to keep up with what their students are doing in class. A next step is to run a series of workshops along with another teacher to develop our parents understanding. I can see that if we move to blogs as a primary way of sharing learning that for them to be highly successful we will need to run a series of workshops/sessions in varying formats for parents. I would be interested to know how those utilising e-portfolios to share student learning are informing and upskilling their parents to use and respond within them also?

Learning Link Reflections Term 2

This term another teacher and myself undertook the e-portfolio journey with our classes. It was a great chance to work alongside a teacher with amazing ideas who wants to challenge where we were going with them and how they are working. Through many conversations and sharing sessions we worked on creating e-portfolios via keynote. Within this there has been some challenges and changes but mainly it has been 2 terms of hard work that paid off hugely with the student learning, collaboration and sharing.

The tech
For our e-port's we utilised a resource that the students had a basic understanding of - Keynote. Keynote is the mac version of Microsoft Powerpoint - but much more simple to use. The great thing about this was that the students weren't having to spend a lot of time on learning the technology so thus could focus more simply of the content of their Learning Links and sharing of the learning.

It was amazing to watch the students as they conversed and collaborated on their Learning Links. Often sessions would involve little direct teaching from me but rather facilitation of students helping each other. This allowed the students to build more and more confidence in the skills they had by being teachers. Students were able to hook their computers up to the projector and run small group workshops where they could share their knowledge. By the tech not being so heavy to learn and navigate it allowed the students to focus on the sharing of their learning.

Benefits
Learning styles is a key area that we started the year learning about. It interested me to see groups of students who showed that they were very 'people smart' preferring to work in pairs or small groups while my 'self smart' students preferred to sit together but often didn't speak. For 2 students in particular they shared with me that their Learning Link was the best way to share their learning - they tended to be working on it in all opportunities, including their own time. All students thought that they were much better than sharing their learning via paper.

Problems
The biggest problem that we came across were the 2 following:

Movies
The crossing over of movie's from photo booth into keynote. Initially we were utilising the bonus of mac's drag and drop features but unfortunately we found that movies didn't transfer properly into keynote this way. By using the media button in Keynote to find and select movies we overcame that problem.

Storing:
Because the Keynote is not an online system it meant that students had to take the keynote on and off the server to work and update their Learning Link. In the early days, as the students were learning the systems needed it meant that a lot of work was lost. As students became more confident with this we have had fewer problems with this. Ideally we both agree that an online system would be a good way to move forward and we have been investigating a range of systems.

Looking Forward...
In retrospect I can see that the students need a lot of focussed teaching on reflecting on their learning and work. The students are highly capable at choosing work that shows their learning journey and movement in core areas. In fact several of the students thought of better ways of showing their learning than I had originally allowed them. The teacher I am working alongside utilised the 6 thinking hats to help her students reflect. In adopting this idea I found that my students became more confident as they were using the hats to guide their reflections.

One thing that I worry about is that by putting hurdles up that make students explain their learning in a written format that it may mean some students aren't always selecting work they want to. Perhaps a good next step for this is trialling the students verbally reflecting via Garageband or Photo Booth to place into the Learning Links alongside the learning sample.


Overall I think that between the 2 of us we have given the students a lot of ownership over their Learning Links. They were keen to select and share the learning that they have completed over the last few terms and the parents seem to have enjoyed sitting down with the students and talking over these things at home. It will be interesting to read the feedback from the students and the parents about them too.

e-Portfolios & Collaborative Conferences

Tonight we had our collaborative conferences where the e-portfolios were shown to parents via students and the teachers. This year is our 2nd year of e-portfolios for some, but first year of schoolwide implementation - Year 1 through to Year 6 students.

It was really interesting to note the number of parents who already had a good idea of what was going on within the e-portfolios. A high percentage of the students had already talked with parents and discussed what was going on and what they were working towards. Parents were impressed because they had an eye into the classroom and an eye on what students were working towards in achieving their set goals.

The continuous question of "what can I be doing at home to support my child?" was greeted with the response of "support them with their e-portfolio goals." Many parents were keen to have a go at commenting and many of them liked the idea of e-portfolios because the transparency in learning that was present. They showed the hard data (reading levels) through to reflections and evidence of learning (classroom work, modelling books, tests etc). They could see what their child was doing and how they were working in class to achieve this. A big change from our previous 'red portfolio' format. It will be really interesting to see how many parents translate the positive gestures and nods into actual comments and feedback in the e-portfolio - but I am hopeful that this will happen.


While yesterday I was feeling somewhat disheartened with the e-portfolios, I can see that the hard work has had a starting point and is developing into something more positive. We have already discussed getting feedback from parents and teachers as we head towards developing the next steps in our e-portfolios.

Thanks to onemanuprising for the formatting tips! :)

Photo Used Under CC: Rob Hogeslag

e-Portfolios Reflection Term 1

Term 1 has been a very long and interesting term. Not only have I undertaken a new role this year (50% classroom teacher and 50% e-Learning specialist) but our whole school has undertaken a change from paper portfolios to e-portfolios which I have been helping to get underway. Alot of work (5 days a week, 2 hours a day + of e-Portfolios!!) - but the rewards are starting to show.

Last year we had 14 teachers trial e-Portfolios which has led to a schoolwide implementation in 2009.

It's been a hard term but also a term full of really awesome changes and movements in myself and other staff. I have seen many staff take on the challenge and continuously stun me with amazing ideas and their enthusiasm. Here are a few of my reflections and thoughts as I get back into swing with blogging.

How Do I Do This "The ICT Way?"
Often staff have the ideas but just need them transformed into an ICT way of doing it.
I guess it's the "you don't know, what you don't know" type philosophy.
1 example of this are hard copies of reading data graphs... One teacher came and asked about a way of updating this - as she is taking screenshots of the image and then uploading them into KNet. We then talked about the possibility of using google docs and it's automatic update/publish function so that the process would be easier to manage. We will play around with this some more this term - will share that once we have it up and running.

There have been some big tasks and tacklings that people have had to undertake and change with this shift.

Management of e-Portfolios:
"I have 18 - 27+ students in my class - how do I keep tabs on everything that is going on?"
We have run lots of workshops and meetings where we have shared ideas and tips for managing e-Portfolios. I also think that once a clear system is up and running it becomes alot easier to manage each students where-abouts. But there really is a shift in thinking for teachers that this is not a once a term thing - it's about making it manageable through daily/weekly working through e-Portfolios. Which is one of the hardest things with the ever-increasing workload of Teaching. I will post about some of the ways we have been managing e-Portfolios in the classrooms later on also. I also have some ideas which I will be trialling in Term 2 and 3 to more fully embed the whole process into the classroom and everyday workings.

Student Reflections
Our students really lack/lacked the ability and language to be able to reflect consistently and confidently. So this has meant that there has had to be alot of scaffolding and guiding of how to create a reflection. Already in my class I have started to see a more definite shift in some students from reflections such as "I am good at this." to reflections such which involve more critique and personal thought about the processes they are undertaking. In small steps this will continue.

The Conversations - Who's Involved?
The idea that the biggest aspect of the e-portfolios isn't the parents, but the students, has been an understanding that some are still working through. The whole conversation of learning is about all 3 areas being involved to make a difference to the learning of the student. But the most important aspect is that the students understand what is being said and where they are heading. A part of this is understanding that it's not about the quantity but rather the quality of the conversation that is important.

Image used under CC: Kris Hoet