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Lisa Lariscy - How to demonstrate learning with a PBL portfolio of current events?

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Lisa Lariscy - How to demonstrate learning with a PBL portfolio of current events?

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Looking into having students develop project artifacts that showcase learning and analysis. This could include:

Written Reports

Infographics

Interactive Maps

Solutions Proposal

Reflect and Present: Conclude portfolio with a reflective piece that discusses your learning journey, challenges faced, and personal insights gained. Present your project artifacts in a clear and engaging manner, showcasing your understanding of the environmental issue and the potential solutions.

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I often use student portfolios (I provide a Google Sites template) as a course capstone assignment, as a means to encourage students to curate images and narratives of their work in the course, and reflect on their learning. After reading the articles, I plan to experiment with more in-depth prompts for these reflections, both to encourage students to tell a more compelling story about what they created and what (technical, tool, and conceptual) skills they honed, but also to build discernment around how best to showcase the evolution of their work and thinking about their learning.

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I have used this before, and it isn't bad. I think the key is students' bookmarking and returning to it. I've only used it for a mod or two at a time.
https://www.educatorstechnology.com/2018/01/here-is-easy-way-for-students-to-create.html

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I know this has been around a while, but I've never used it. I'm curious how robust and user-friendly the free version might be. I'd love to talk to anyone who has experience.
https://www.foliospaces.org/

The fear is that I would put the time in and then get a notice that I need premium to do what I need it to do. Ya know?!

-Fancher

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Free ePortfolios since 2008

FolioSpaces is the world's most popular free ePortfolio platform.* Use it to create your own Personal Learning Space. Students, teachers, career professionals and others find electronic portfolios are the best way to:

showcase achievement

provide proof of learning and experience

give and receive feedback (in private or public)

reflect on learning and critical incidents

help get jobs, project funding, promotion, and much more...

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You can import your existing ePortfolio into FolioSpaces from other ePortfolio systems. For example, you may have created an ePortfolio at your college that now needs a new home. And here it is...

See the Import ePortfolio LEAP2A page for more info.

*based on count of active users and geographic dispersal.

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Mahara is an open source ePortfolio and social networking web application. It provides users with tools to create and maintain a digital portfolio of their learning and social networking features to allow users to interact with each other.

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The article and video both advocate for personalized learning that is tailored to individual students' needs, interests, and paces. This aligns with my evaluation of myself as a self-directed learner who takes initiative and responsibility for my own learning path. The flexibility and student empowerment promoted in personalized learning resonate with my need/want to pursue subjects I'm genuinely curious about. While I acknowledged time management as an area for growth, the self-paced nature of personalized learning could help support me in developing those skills. Connections I see are emphasis on student centered approach, amplifying student voice, and fostering engagement and agency/ownership over the learning process. The core principles and benefits outlined could help enrich and deepen my own experience as a learner focused on growth and achievement.

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How do we help others identify their purpose?

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How do we help others identify their purpose?

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I have been fascinated by the concept of Purpose-Driven Learning because I think it is something that would make school and education more meaningful for our students.  As told by Wehner, when students know what their purpose is, they have fun and are willing to work hard, and they manage stress better because those moments of stress are assuaged by the fact that they are working with purpose in the first place.  This also reminds me of Ken Robinson when he discusses people who are in their "element" often lose track of time because they are working on something they are passionate about. I think we, as educators, have the lofty goal of helping students not only identify their purpose but also create conditions for them to fulfill it. From the teaching perspective, how equipped do all teachers feel to do this? Especially for the 80% of students that Wehner talks about that are categorized as the Dabblers, the Dreamers, and the Disengaged? I think we all know how to engage (and actually really enjoy!) that student that knows their purpose, but I think we can all think of more students that we have taught that fall into the three categories mentioned above. What happens in the classroom can help this, but what about clubs? Advisory? How are we getting adults to do this work so that they can do it with students? We should not assume that every adult knows what their purpose is, but the journey to find out can start now, be very meaningful, and can have a huge impact on students.

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 Connection - finding a rubric to help guide the implementation of portfolios

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 Connection - finding a rubric to help guide the implementation of portfolios

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xJ_RAQNgK1Lcvps3Txqt6UvS8TJonHynxjUrAlE0xNc/edit

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SCPS Defense of Learning for Graduation Rubric 

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I think understanding the concept of portfolios can allow professionals and students to utilize the practice effectively and purposefully. Portfolio work is centered in reflection and creates space for a growth perspective when visualizing personal thinking processes and patterns. As an educator, I find it beneficial to reflect on classroom practices and instructional strategy roll out after a lesson. This quick pulse check allows me to refine the experience for future students, adjust instruction based on perceived student understanding or research various practices to utilize a method that might stick. I think the concept of a professional portfolio allows a teacher to continuously develop their strengths while also exploring and improving weaknesses. Similarly, as an advocate of their own academic progress, students can compile portfolio work to demonstrate their learning within a given unit of study through various content mediums. Portfolios allow students to showcase their content understanding and skill application in a variety of ways while also providing a platform for students to practice peer feedback.

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To me, the biggest value in creating a portfolio is the self reflection piece. Knowing ourselves...our values, our goals and aspirations, and what gives us real fulfillment is paramount to building relationships. We must know ourselves to be authentic, and we must be authentic if we are to build meaningful relationships. The more I know about myself, the easier it is to share with others.

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I keep a digital/paper coaching portfolio. For me, its primary purpose is one of self reflection and improvement. At the end of each season, I read, reflect and revise. This helps me maintain personal accountability for performance and growth.

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Getting Started with Student Portfolio Projects

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When I was a senior in high school, our AP Government teacher chose not to give us a final exam for the end of the first semester. Instead, we would create our own portfolios. Our

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Connections as a learner: I find myself revisiting my "raison d'etre" every few years, even as an adult learner. Why am I teaching ceramics? We all know "teachers make a difference in the lives of kids". I am passionate about art making and teens are my favorite people to be in a learning environment with, so there is plenty of purpose in that. But it has to be more for me to feel really purpose driven in my work, which I have to feel in order to enjoy my life. In recent years my shift has gone from teaching students how to make beautiful art so that they can be great artists and know how to express themselves in a visual language, to a framework of well being in an inclusive setting. Knowing most of my students will not become professional artists, I have always strived to create a positive experience so they have the confidence to try, and will one day encourage their children and support professional artists. But working as the training and curriculum consultant of my husband's mental health organization has helped me to reinterpret my purpose as a teaching artist. Now my classroom serves to be a place of refuge from stress. I teach a coping strategy that hopefully students will continue throughout their time with us and beyond. Pottery is incredibly therapeutic and fun. In a lottery funded scholarship state, goals are always going to be a huge reason for learning to our students. It is my joy to hear students say to each other that they feel themselves relax when they walk into my classroom and all their stress melts away. My own journey of purpose seeking has led me to shift my classroom's emphasis and fills my bucket so fully.
Ideas to challenge: I feel that a good bit of purpose driven learning work assumes students have lots of ideas about what purposeful work actually is and looks like. If we will just ask students what they want to learn about, rather than give them our ideas for assignments, they will come up with rigorous, real world connected, mind blowing work. The words purpose driven and passion project are too big for students to break down. Particularly after COVID, I have also seen a disturbing lack of curiosity in learning. There is a bent towards phone scrolling being chosen over all other learning opportunities. It is my theory that in order to produce students who understand how to select and pursue purpose driven work, we have to practice a lot with assignments that have the goal of connecting with their interests in a purpose driven framework. I saw this challenge all the time with iProject. They know they like obvious things, like sports, or they feel a conviction about the environment, but they have a hard time knowing what to "do". Purpose driven work is incredibly personalized as well, so in a class like iProject, where that's the essential goal of the course, I was feeding ideas and information to as many as 20 students at a time on 20 different topics and possible directions for them to take. This is not sustainable in most schools. I believe having teachers lead experiences with their own passion and purpose and inviting students to come along is the best approach to this type of work for students, until they are mature enough to pursue it on their own. Giving the time and space to experiment and develop these ideas is also important if we are committed to it. That is why iProject has so much potential.
Meg Brook's Harlem Renaissance class is such a great example of allowing students a peek into her purpose driven learning. The class taught history, literature, and art from a position of anti-racism, about an explosively creative time in history, with an invitation to an immersive experience through the expedition(s). Students need this type of immersion to foster curiosity and have experiences that change them, in order to give them a taste for more.

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The TED Talk said we need to let design principles guide the learning to help make learning vibrant for all children, and it made me appreciate the design principles I’ve learned (and continue to learn) at MV. I wonder if more PD time should be modeling for faculty how to use design principles in our classrooms for various disciplines. In my own statistics classes, I hope to get students gathering and researching more of their own data or data THEY are interested in. It’s also been a goal of mine to have students partner with a local business, analyzing recent data and helping the business tell a story with their data.

The TED Talk also said children shouldn’t have to learn the same thing on the same day because of being the same age. I wonder how MV can continue to shift towards more personalized learning in our classes. I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all approach, but I hope to try different ways of reaching my learners where they are, possibly through flipped lessons, more inquiry, more 1:1 conferences, more small group learning, and more lessons that start with questions, allowing my students to be co-pilots in what we dive into each mod. For 1:1 conferences, I like what the article said: “To make conferencing successful, come up with a structure that includes three components: discuss strengths, identify an obstacle, and provide the child with an action step. This creates a culture of self-reflection and goal setting…”

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I thought that Wehner offered some compelling ideas regarding the develop of a student's "purpose" in the NAIS article that were also echoed in his TEDtalk. Primarily though, I have been reflecting on the historical evolution of PDL, tracing the lineage from Pestalozzi, to Steiner, Montessori, and Dewey, to "factory model education," and back again once more to PDL. Like so many institutions, k-12 is deeply influenced by sociopolitical landscapes, and the post WWII "factory model" adjustments to education has become commonplace.
My reflection on this timeline is tethered to what I see as the center of this particular PDL conversation: Robinson's two great human journeys (man+self and man+society). In turn, some changes I am considering are linked to the problems of practice outlined by Wehner: "For starters, we have to be careful about how we talk about purpose, which can seem heavy and abstract, even to adults . . . The conversation is more interesting when it’s focused on the process, not the goal." As Wehner points out, initiating conversations around "purpose" can bring on anxiety and stress for students and adults alike. Of course, the immediate solution presented in the article was one of language: repackage the idea in a more approachable wrapper like " “What is most important to you in your life?” and “Why do you care about those things?” and “Do you have any long-term goals?” Rather than think about purpose head-on, it seems helpful to explore the different dimensions of purpose (gifts, passions, and impact)." However, like Wehner, I think students see through this verbal veneer. They know whats on the other side of these questions: college applications and common app questions. Which, leads to "a reductionist box to check off at the end of high school, a sort of arms race for parents and students rather than a meaningful journey that begins in kindergarten." The solution offered at the end of the piece was one of "private school with public purpose," that combining Robinson's two great human journeys of "who am I" with "how do I connect" ultimately foster successful PDL. I wonder how we might begin to help students lean into these questions more authentically when college readiness is central to the MV ethos. Much of my reflection on this subject also intersects with my position as an AP teacher. This fall, I would like to work toward helping students find more purpose in their learning in my class beyond the placement of "AP Language" on their transcript. Truthfully, I do not have specific, actionable plans yet, but I know this question will be at the front of my mind during the pre-planning weeks and first milepost period of Mod One.

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Great article about portfolios and defense of learning 

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Great article about portfolios and defense of learning 

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I love this article on how teens feel about learning and what motivates them: 

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I love this article on how teens feel about learning and what motivates them: 

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What Students Are Saying About What Motivates Them to Learn

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Teenagers share what drives them in school: inspiring teachers, interesting classes, the feeling of accomplishment and more.

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I was initially drawn to the idea of Purpose-Driven Learning for a number of reasons and perhaps not exactly for the reasons that the developers of PDL intended. When I first think of PDL I really resonate with the idea of doing or thinking about something that really matters. I am sure that we all have our moments of existential crises about what actually matters in the things that we do and no doubt that our students do too. I suppose that I can always "imagine Sisyphus smiling" but I would like to bring something more concrete into my classroom. One thing that really connected with me was the "ambiguity" of PDL. Here I think that ambiguity is good because I honestly have no idea what the future will look like. I feel that when students ask "why are we learning this?" I don't always have a great answer for a future that I can't predict. However, with PDL I think we can find an amazing middle ground! Crafting empathy and student well being into projects that focus on students' passions and purposes is really something I want to get better at. For example, I have been trying to implement more environmental lenses into my classes because I feel that the students are often passionate about these projects but they also clearly understand the purpose. I don't know what the future holds but continuing to think in extractive frameworks that don't bring in the impacts from the environment, economic systems, and political structures is probably doing the students a disservice.  I think many of my students are really concerned about what the future holds and brining them into the problem solving is very much a part of what drives me as an educator.

I suppose my only real "challenge" to the ideas of the article and video is just the idea of structure. I often let my students choose what their final work will be on and the honors contracts have helped me to really find their passions and what they want to do additional learning on but that obviously impact all of the students. I would really like to be able to bring all students into this as well but I am not sure if time always permits this. I think a final type of "research seminar" class for all students in the senior year might make room for more authentic PDL!

I must admit that one thing that always gives me pause when it comes to these types of projects and ideas of striking passions is that they are framed in such a "business" mindset. Obviously nothing wrong with this and many students find it really helpful to think in terms of clients and needs but I would really like to incorporate some strategies that would focus more on community needs and impact than just efficiency and dollars. If we really want students to imagine a different, better, and more just future, I am not sure that keeping the same economic lenses is the best way to go about this. Just a thought!

I am not sure which "C" I am on but I really did like the video section when the speaker spoke about badges that you can see linked on this padlet. I think this could be a really useful tool in advisory and help the students to understand the questions they might want to ask themselves moving forward. I also like the idea that they can spend time reflecting on the things that really matter, to them and the community. I think I might really try to bring in parts of this into my advisory and perhaps even my classes this year.

This was shared several years ago but I think that it does a really nice job of finding projects that I associate with PDL. Again, perhaps I broaden this definition but isn't that what it's all about!? These are the final projects for GOA courses but I think they offer some good examples of implementing PDL in final projects.

https://vimeo.com/showcase/8942485

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I resonated with the author's description of some of the myths of personalized learning, particularly with myth #2, that the curriculum must be "interesting," above all else. The author instead suggests an emphasis on "engagement." One example from my own learning experience comes to mind that connects with the prioritization of engagement over interest. Before college I would have said that I had no interest at all in jazz music. A roommate my junior year, however, loved jazz music and introduced me to some of his favorite artists, pointing out the parts of certain songs that he liked, highlighting what the musicians were doing individually, and explaining how each part contributed to the whole of the song. His excitement combined with his "lessons," for lack of a better term, were so engaging that I began listening to more jazz on my own until it eventually became one of my own favorite musical genres. I suspect that a lot of students claim to be uninterested in certain subjects or topics not because they are uninteresting, but because they've never engaged long enough with the material to find what interests them.

As far as changes to the act of teaching goes, I wonder if using a similar approach with students would yield positive results. If I can identify some of the characteristics or details of a particular content area that fascinate me and then find a way to engage students at that level, perhaps that would open the door enough for them to continue engaging with the material until it becomes interesting to them as well. I'm rarely interested in things that I don't understand. But if someone can introduce it to me at the level of their own excitement, a barrier comes down that lets me step a little further into the content or concept until I get enough momentum to keep learning.