ETC-Final Project

Wow! What a month it has been! I have learned so much this month, and am really excited about sharing my learning with my students, and my peers at work!

My final project for this class was originally designed to be used with my English I honors class; however because of circumstances beyond my control I had to make some adjustments at the last minute to get the project done.  Initially I was going to have my students create binders on www.livebinders.com that they would be able to use over the course of the semester as a portfolio.  But, I was unable to do this.  So, I decided to try Livebinders with my sons who are in 7th and 8th grade.  I did not get the response I was hoping for from them, but at least they volunteered to help me get the project done.

First, I would like to share with you a copy of my original RILS plan.  I will then share the video my boys and I made, and then I will tell how I modified things to work with my sons.

The Original Plan:

1.     Target Audience – The target audience for my RILS project will be junior high school and high school language arts students. 

2.   

  Materials:  computers with internet access, presentation software (Presi, Power Point, or the open office version of Power Point), podcasting software (Audacity, Garage Band), copies of original student work, DVD’s and or flash drives for students, digital cameras, video cameras, ear phones with microphones for creating pod cast, computers with some kind of word processing software, student email accounts, student’s set up on Live Binders, student access to Wordle or Tagxedo, Adobe acrobat (PDF’s), and multimedia slideshow software.

3.     

Objectives –

a.     To enhance computer and technology skills.

b.     For students to gain experience in creating, selecting, organizing, editing, and evaluating portfolios.

c.      For students to collect evidence of classroom work.

d.     To display, share, and present an electronic portfolio.

e.     Students will understand what it means to manage and maintain a digital portfolio.

f.      Use web based publishing tools to build a digital portfolio.

4.     

Procedure –

a.     Students should collect a sampling of their work for the duration of a semester.

b.     Students will set up an account with Live Binders.  This is where they will create their portfolio.

c.      Students will create a podcast detailing their journey through their language arts class and how using Web 2.0 tools has enhanced the course, or detracted from it.

d.     Students will populate their live binders with artifacts from the course. 

e.     The live binders will serve as a digital portfolio for their language arts class.

f.      Students will share a link to their portfolio with their teacher and at least 3 other students in the class.

5.     Web 2.0 Tools – As a part of this project I will have students explore a variety of web 2.0 tools over the course of the semester.  As heir final product they will use Live Binders to create a digital portfolio to share with their teacher and other students in the class.

6.     

Social Participation/Social Learning – The social participation and social learning portion of this assignment will be partially fulfilled as students share their binders (portfolios) with the teacher and other students in the class.  The teacher and other students will have the opportunity to discuss and critique the contents of each portfolio.

7.     

Making Connections – The lesson or scenario must allow the learner to connect with previous knowledge and to create new knowledge.  The learning situation needs to be relevant for the target audience.  These connections can be within your environment or on a global scale.

8.    

Create/Produce – The end product for this lesson or scenario will be the digital portfolios and the student presentations of the portfolios.

9.    

Reflection – Portfolio’s are a perfect tool for student and teacher reflection.  Students will be able to reflect on their growth and progress over the course of a semester in a course.  I will be able to reflect on the growth of my students.

Follow this link to my video:

 www.viddler.com/explore/eforte/videos/10

As I stated before, I was unable to implement the project according to my original plan, so I asked my boys to test out Livebinders and tell me what they thought.  I got mixed reviews from the two of them.  My 8th grader, who likes things to be very simple, did not rave about it.  He quickly stated that he would rather have a binder with real notebook paper and dividers.  He did point out that Livebinders could be beneficial if teachers created a binder and pack it full of documents and links that could be beneficial to their students.  He created tags within in his binder and after doing so he found that his teacher already had a Livebinder created for his class.


My 7th grader was a little more receptive to the idea of having a binder online.  He quickly began to add links to cites he uses on a regular basis for his science class.  I asked him to send me a link to his binder via email, so that we could test this feature.  Once I received the email I was surprised to find links to The New York Times, an online calculate, Study Island, and Science Daily.  When asked how he felt about Livebinders, he said he thought it was a novel idea, and he would return to his binder regularly. He also asked me if he would have to shut his binder down once he was finished helping me my assignment.


So, all in all, my project was not a failure, but I would like to try my original plan to see if it could actually work. I think that Livebinders is a great resource and I think my students will see the benefits of it.