Using Google Sites as ePortfolios with Middle School Students

It's been awhile since I've blogged. I have excuses, but mainly, I just haven't made time for it. After starting a new job and a new country, I am beginning to settle, and there have been many motivations for me start again. My colleagues are blogging and asking for advice. I attended an educational technology workshop last Saturday and met many other teachers interested in tech integration. I've been connecting with them and my new colleagues on Twitter again.

And then @lfrehlich asked me:

I realized it was time to get back to it!

First I'll start with the why. Why are we using ePortfolios with middle school students? The effort at our school has been teacher led. Teachers want to replace traditional portfolios used for student led conferences with digital portfolios. They want to help students collect their best work over the course of the year. They want to prepare students for a world in which they will send college admission committees a link to their work and who they are as a student. They want to teach good digital citizenship and how to have a positive digital footprint. Yes, I work with great teachers; I am fortunate!

So, what are we going to use for eportfolios? We recently adopted Google Apps for Education. We wanted to stick with Google as much as we could to simplify things. So, we decided to go with Google Sites. We've created a fairly simple template as a starting point. We're thinking about long term and we'd like the portfolio to go with them to high school.

I created the following step by step guide to help our students and teachers go through the process of setting up their eportfolios. Still, it has been time consuming to get to every class and help set this up. It has been taking about 45 minutes of class time to get everyone going. Some of that time is lost to slow internet. When we're up and going, though, we should only have to set this up with our new 6th graders at the beginning of the year. Also, we are looking at a product called Google Teacher Dashboard which we think has the ability to automate some of this. We are going to start a trial of it soon.



We are at the very beginning of this process. We started with a few classrooms wanting to do eportfolios. Through discussion among teachers, it has expanded to every language and science class in 8th grade. It will be a good test to support a whole grade, and students will see some connections between classes. Teachers seem genuinely excited to have students start posting major projects into their eportfolios. I think it's great that teachers will see what students are doing in other classes as they look at the portfolios. This is sharing at its best.

Future questions for discussion include: What do we have students put in the eportfolio? How can we use it as an authentic assessment of student learning? How should our school approach the privacy issues so we can open our student eportfolios and blogs to the world and gain a global audience?

How about you? Is your school doing eportfolios? What tools are you using? What have been your successes and challenges?

Travels in Africa

I have not been a good travel blogger. I had big plans to post
updates every few days, but that is much harder than I thought.
First, it's hard to find time to put pictures online and write an
update. And second, the internet connection is slow and unreliable as
I travel around. Connecting can be a pain. So, those are my excuses.
But, I will post better updates with photos after I get home. It will
be delayed news.

The short update is that we have been spending time exploring
Swaziland which is a beautiful country with rolling hills, mountains,
forests, river areas, etc. Stephanie took us to some great shops
where women create beautiful handmade things like baskets, jewelry
and weavings. The income helps them stay at home and care for their
household and make money at the same time.

We've also been taking trips into South Africa to Sodwana Bay
(Beach), Kruger National Park (game reserve), and the Drakensberg
Mountains (mountain hikes and more). I'll post more pictures later,
but here are a few snippets of my trip so far.

Tonight we are headed to the Confederation Cup Finals (soccer), USA
vs. Brazil, in Johannesburg, South Africa. I fly out tomorrow for
London.

the beach at Sodwana Bay, South Africa

relaxing after a day of diving/snorkeling in Sodwana Bay with our South African friends

crafts at the market

handmade glass at the Ngwenya Glass Factory in Swaziland

the streets of Mbabane, Swaziland

Phophoyane Falls Lodge in Swaziland

Phophoyane Falls Lodge

Tintsaba, handmade baskets, jewerly and weavings that provide income for rural families

children learning outside a school in Swaziland

a zebra at Kruger National Park

a Kruger sunset

the Drakensberg mountains, South Africa

First full day in Mbabane

Thursday, June 11, 2009

We arrived yesterday in Mbabane yesterday after a morning at the
Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. I learned a lot. To enter the
museum, you could only enter through the door marked with your
'category', white or black. In reality, Apartheid had four
categories, white, black (Bantu), colored and Asian. Everything was
segregated. One of the ultimate goals was to move all non-white
categories outside the cities and build high speed rails to transport
them in to work each day. There is so much more to it, but I will
save it for another time.

Today was our first full day in Mbabane. This photo is us having
lunch at Nando's, one of Stephanie's favorite lunch spots. In the
photo are Stephanie, me, and Amy. The three of us met in Japan when
we were all teaching English with the JET program. Stephanie is a
pediatrician who works here in Mbabane at an HIV clinic for children.
She gave us a tour of the clinic today. It has beautiful architecture
and is new and modern. It opened in 2006 with a grant from Bristol-
Myers. Stephanie also gave a presentation on malnutrition in children
to some of the student doctors who are visiting. She deals with many
patient problems that just don't exist or are very rare in the US.
Many of the resources here for children with HIV comes from foreign
aid. The HIV drugs typically come from the Global Fund or PEPFAR. The
Clinton Foundation donates PlumpyNut, a food source for children with
malnutrition. All HIV/AIDS care in Swaziland is free. Depending on
the statistics you use, between 25 and 40 percent of the population
has HIV. This trip is already an eye-opening experience. It makes me
very thankful for the resources and comforts I have at home. As Amy
said, "Thank you universe for my life."

The Swaziland landscape is beautiful. It's hilly and green with
concrete buildings all around that remind me of Mexico. I'm still
waiting for the sun to come out and really show the beauty. Amy and
Stephanie think it looks a lot like Scotland. The grocery store in
Mbabane has pretty much everything you could want. Stephanie's life
here reminds me of my life in Monterrey in some ways.

Tomorrow we are leaving for Sodwana Bay in South Africa. The others
are going to dive. I'll hang out by the beach. After that, Amy and I
are going to try and head towards Durban, South Africa. One of the
former students from my school in Mexico (ASFM) is in Durban with a
college group from Yale, so hopefully we'll be able to meet up. It's
such a small world. So, I will probably be without internet for
awhile, but I'll post again when I can. (Speaking of internet, I've
realized how much I take high speed for granted...how frustrating to
wait for each page to load....ugh!) I've posted more pictures on my
flickr account, so click the see more photos link on the side to see
more.

Until next time....