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Quizizz — The world’s most engaging learning platform

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Find and create gamified quizzes, lessons, presentations, and flashcards for students, employees, and everyone else. Get started for free!

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Quizizz — The world’s most engaging learning platform

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Find and create gamified quizzes, lessons, presentations, and flashcards for students, employees, and everyone else. Get started for free!

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Join an activity with your class and find or create your own quizzes and flashcards.

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Tales of the Unexpected - Roald Dahl - Ian Fleming - Lamb to the Slaughter - Susan George 1979

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by Roald Dahl (1916-1990)

Approximate Word Count: 3899

The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lamps alight-hers and the one by the empty chair opposite. On the sideboard behind her, two tall glasses, soda water, whiskey. Fresh ice cubes in the Thermos bucket.

Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home from work.

Now and again she would glance up at the clock, but without anxiety, merely to please herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer the time when he would come. There was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did. The drop of a head as she bent over her sewing was curiously tranquil. Her skin--for this was her sixth month with child--had acquired a wonderful translucent quality, the mouth was soft, and the eyes, with their new placid look, seemed larger darker than before. When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listen, and a few moments later, punctually as always, she heard the tires on the gravel outside, and the car door slamming, the footsteps passing the window, the key turning in the lock. She laid aside her sewing, stood up, and went forward to kiss him as he came in.

"Hullo darling," she said.

"Hullo darling," he answered.

She took his coat and hung it in the closet. Then she walked over and made the drinks, a strongish one for him, a weak one for herself; and soon she was back again in her chair with the sewing, and he in the other, opposite, holding the tall glass with both hands, rocking it so the ice cubes tinkled against the side.

For her, this was always a blissful time of day. She knew he didn't want to speak much until the first drink was finished, and she, on her side, was content to sit quietly, enjoying his company after the long hours alone in the house. She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to feel-almost as a sunbather feels the sun-that warm male glow that came out of him to her when they were alone together. She loved him for the way he sat loosely in a chair, for the way he came in a door, or moved slowly across the room with long strides. She loved intent, far look in his eyes when they rested in her, the funny shape of the mouth, and especially the way he remained silent about his tiredness, sitting still with himself until the whiskey had taken some of it away.

"Yes," he said. "I'm tired," And as he spoke, he did an unusual thing. He lifted his glass and drained it in one swallow although there was still half of it, at least half of it left.. She wasn't really watching him, but she knew what he had done because she heard the ice cubes falling back against the bottom of the empty glass when he lowered his arm. He paused a moment, leaning forward in the chair, then he got up and went slowly over to fetch himself another.

"I'll get it!" she cried, jumping up.

"Sit down," he said.

When he came back, she noticed that the new drink was dark amber with the quantity of whiskey in it.

"Darling, shall I get your slippers?"

She watched him as he began to sip the dark yellow drink, and she could see little oily swirls in the liquid because it was so strong.

"I think it's a shame," she said, "that when a policeman gets to be as senior as you, they keep him walking about on his feet all day long."

He didn't answer, so she bent her head again and went on with her sewing; but each time he lifted the drink to his lips, she heard the ice cubes clinking against the side of the glass.

"Darling," she said. "Would you like me to get you some cheese? I haven't made any supper because it's Thursday."

"If you're too tired to eat out," she went on, "it's still not too late. There's plenty of meat and stuff in the freezer, and you can have it right here and not even move out of the chair."

Her eyes waited on him for an answer, a smile, a little nod, but he made no sign.

"Anyway," she went on, "I'll get you some cheese and crackers first."

"I don't want it," he said.

She moved uneasily in her chair, the large eyes still watching his face. "But you must eat! I'll fix it anyway, and then you can have it or not, as you like."

She stood up and placed her sewing on the table by the lamp.

"Sit down," he said. "Just for a minute, sit down."

It wasn't till then that she began to get frightened.

"Go on," he said. "Sit down."

She lowered herself back slowly into the chair, watching him all the time with those large, bewildered eyes. He had finished the second drink and was staring down into the glass, frowning.

"Listen," he said. "I've got something to tell you."

"What is it, darling? What's the matter?"

He had now become absolutely motionless, and he kept his head down so that the light from the lamp beside him fell across the upper part of his face, leaving the chin and mouth in shadow. She noticed there was a little muscle moving near the corner of his left eye.

"This is going to be a bit of a shock to you, I'm afraid," he said. "But I've thought about it a good deal and I've decided the only thing to do is tell you right away. I hope you won't blame me too much."

And he told her. It didn't take long, four or five minutes at most, and she say very still through it all, watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from her with each word.

"So there it is," he added. "And I know it's kind of a bad time to be telling you, bet there simply wasn't any other way. Of course I'll give you money and see you're looked after. But there needn't really be any fuss. I hope not anyway. It wouldn't be very good for my job."

Her first instinct was not to believe any of it, to reject it all. It occurred to her that perhaps he hadn't even spoken, that she herself had imagined the whole thing. Maybe, if she went about her business and acted as though she hadn't been listening, then later, when she sort of woke up again, she might find none of it had ever happened.

"I'll get the supper," she managed to whisper, and this time he didn't stop her.

When she walked across the room she couldn't feel her feet touching the floor. She couldn't feel anything at all- except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit. Everything was automatic now-down the steps to the cellar, the light switch, the deep freeze, the hand inside the cabinet taking hold of the first object it met. She lifted it out, and looked at it. It was wrapped in paper, so she took off the paper and looked at it again.

A leg of lamb.

All right then, they would have lamb for supper. She carried it upstairs, holding the thin bone-end of it with both her hands, and as she went through the living-room, she saw him standing over by the window with his back to her, and she stopped.

"For God's sake," he said, hearing her, but not turning round. "Don't make supper for me. I'm going out."

At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.

She might just as well have hit him with a steel club.

She stepped back a pace, waiting, and the funny thing was that he remained standing there for at least four or five seconds, gently swaying. Then he crashed to the carpet.

The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of he shock. She came out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stood for a while blinking at the body, still holding the ridiculous piece of meat tight with both hands.

All right, she told herself. So I've killed him.

It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She began thinking very fast. As the wife of a detective, she knew quite well what the penalty would be. That was fine. It made no difference to her. In fact, it would be a relief. On the other hand, what about the child? What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill then both-mother and child? Or did they wait until the tenth month? What did they do?

Mary Maloney didn't know. And she certainly wasn't prepared to take a chance.

She carried the meat into the kitchen, placed it in a pan, turned the oven on high, and shoved t inside. Then she washed her hands and ran upstairs to the bedroom. She sat down before the mirror, tidied her hair, touched up her lops and face. She tried a smile. It came out rather peculiar. She tried again.

"Hullo Sam," she said brightly, aloud.

The voice sounded peculiar too.

"I want some potatoes please, Sam. Yes, and I think a can of peas."

That was better. Both the smile and the voice were coming out better now. She rehearsed it several times more. Then she ran downstairs, took her coat, went out the back door, down the garden, into the street.

It wasn't six o'clock yet and the lights were still on in the grocery shop.

"Hullo Sam," she said brightly, smiling at the man behind the counter.

"Why, good evening, Mrs. Maloney. How're you?"

"I want some potatoes please, Sam. Yes, and I think a can of peas."

The man turned and reached up behind him on the shelf for the peas.

"Patrick's decided he's tired and doesn't want to eat out tonight," she told him. "We usually go out Thursdays, you know, and now he's caught me without any vegetables in the house."

"Then how about meat, Mrs. Maloney?"

"No, I've got meat, thanks. I got a nice leg of lamb from the freezer."

"I don't know much like cooking it frozen, Sam, but I'm taking a chance on it this time. You think it'll be all right?"

"Personally," the grocer said, "I don't believe it makes any difference. You want these Idaho potatoes?"

"Oh yes, that'll be fine. Two of those."

"Anything else?" The grocer cocked his head on one side, looking at her pleasantly. "How about afterwards? What you going to give him for afterwards?"

"Well-what would you suggest, Sam?"

The man glanced around his shop. "How about a nice big slice of cheesecake? I know he likes that."

"Perfect," she said. "He loves it."

And when it was all wrapped and she had paid, she put on her brightest smile and said, "Thank you, Sam. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Mrs. Maloney. And thank you."

And now, she told herself as she hurried back, all she was doing now, she was returning home to her husband and he was waiting for his supper; and she must cook it good, and make it as tasty as possible because the poor man was tired; and if, when she entered the house, she happened to find anything unusual, or tragic, or terrible, then naturally it would be a shock and she'd become frantic with grief and horror. Mind you, she wasn't expecting to find anything. She was just going home with the vegetables. Mrs. Patrick Maloney going home with the vegetables on Thursday evening to cook supper for her husband.

That's the way, she told herself. Do everything right and natural. Keep things absolutely natural and there'll be no need for any acting at all.

Therefore, when she entered the kitchen by the back door, she was humming a little tune to herself and smiling.

"Patrick!" she called. "How are you, darling?"

She put the parcel down on the table and went through into the living room; and when she saw him lying there on the floor with his legs doubled up and one arm twisted back underneath his body, it really was rather a shock. All the old love and longing for him welled up inside her, and she ran over to him, knelt down beside him, and began to cry her heart out. It was easy. No acting was necessary.

A few minutes later she got up and went to the phone. She know the number of the police station, and when the man at the other end answered, she cried to him, "Quick! Come quick! Patrick's dead!"

"Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Patrick Maloney."

"You mean Patrick Maloney's dead?"

"I think so," she sobbed. "He's lying on the floor and I think he's dead."

"Be right over," the man said.

The car came very quickly, and when she opened the front door, two policeman walked in. She know them both-she know nearly all the man at that precinct-and she fell right into a chair, then went over to join the other one, who was called O'Malley, kneeling by the body.

"Is he dead?" she cried.

"I'm afraid he is. What happened?"

Briefly, she told her story about going out to the grocer and coming back to find him on the floor. While she was talking, crying and talking, Noonan discovered a small patch of congealed blood on the dead man's head. He showed it to O'Malley who got up at once and hurried to the phone.

Soon, other men began to come into the house. First a doctor, then two detectives, one of whom she know by name. Later, a police photographer arrived and took pictures, and a man who know about fingerprints. There was a great deal of whispering and muttering beside the corpse, and the detectives kept asking her a lot of questions. But they always treated her kindly. She told her story again, this time right from the beginning, when Patrick had come in, and she was sewing, and he was tired, so tired he hadn't wanted to go out for supper. She told how she'd put the meat in the oven-"it's there now, cooking"- and how she'd slopped out to the grocer for vegetables, and come back to find him lying on the floor.

Which grocer?" one of the detectives asked.

She told him, and he turned and whispered something to the other detective who immediately went outside into the street.

In fifteen minutes he was back with a page of notes, and there was more whispering, and through her sobbing she heard a few of the whispered phrases-"...acted quite normal...very cheerful...wanted to give him a good supper...peas...cheesecake...impossible that she..."

After a while, the photographer and the doctor departed and two other men came in and took the corpse away on a stretcher. Then the fingerprint man went away. The two detectives remained, and so did the two policeman. They were exceptionally nice to her, and Jack Noonan asked if she wouldn't rather go somewhere else, to her sister's house perhaps, or to his own wife who would take care of her and put her up for the night.

No, she said. She didn't feel she could move even a yard at the moment. Would they mind awfully of she stayed just where she was until she felt better. She didn't feel too good at the moment, she really didn't.

Then hadn't she better lie down on the bed? Jack Noonan asked.

No, she said. She'd like to stay right where she was, in this chair. A little later, perhaps, when she felt better, she would move.

So they left her there while they went about their business, searching the house. Occasionally on of the detectives asked her another question. Sometimes Jack Noonan spoke at her gently as he passed by. Her husband, he told her, had been killed by a blow on the back of the head administered with a heavy blunt instrument, almost certainly a large piece of metal. They were looking for the weapon. The murderer may have taken it with him, but on the other hand he may have thrown it away or hidden it somewhere on the premises.

"It's the old story," he said. "Get the weapon, and you've got the man."

Later, one of the detectives came up and sat beside her. Did she know, he asked, of anything in the house that could've been used as the weapon? Would she mind having a look around to see if anything was missing-a very big spanner, for example, or a heavy metal vase.

They didn't have any heavy metal vases, she said.

She didn't think they had a big spanner. But there might be some things like that in the garage.

The search went on. She knew that there were other policemen in the garden all around the house. She could hear their footsteps on the gravel outside, and sometimes she saw a flash of a torch through a chink in the curtains. It began to get late, nearly nine she noticed by the clock on the mantle. The four men searching the rooms seemed to be growing weary, a trifle exasperated.

"Jack," she said, the next tome Sergeant Noonan went by. "Would you mind giving me a drink?"

"Sure I'll give you a drink. You mean this whiskey?"

"Yes please. But just a small one. It might make me feel better."

He handed her the glass.

"Why don't you have one yourself," she said. "You must be awfully tired. Please do. You've been very good to me."

"Well," he answered. "It's not strictly allowed, but I might take just a drop to keep me going."

One by one the others came in and were persuaded to take a little nip of whiskey. They stood around rather awkwardly with the drinks in their hands, uncomfortable in her presence, trying to say consoling things to her. Sergeant Noonan wandered into the kitchen, come out quickly and said, "Look, Mrs. Maloney. You know that oven of yours is still on, and the meat still inside."

"Oh dear me!" she cried. "So it is!"

"I better turn it off for you, hadn't I?"

"Will you do that, Jack. Thank you so much."

When the sergeant returned the second time, she looked at him with her large, dark tearful eyes. "Jack Noonan," she said.

"Would you do me a small favor-you and these others?"

"We can try, Mrs. Maloney."

"Well," she said. "Here you all are, and good friends of dear Patrick's too, and helping to catch the man who killed him. You must be terrible hungry by now because it's long past your suppertime, and I know Patrick would never forgive me, God bless his soul, if I allowed you to remain in his house without offering you decent hospitality. Why don't you eat up that lamb that's in the oven. It'll be cooked just right by now."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Sergeant Noonan said.

"Please," she begged. "Please eat it. Personally I couldn't tough a thing, certainly not what's been in the house when he was here. But it's all right for you. It'd be a favor to me if you'd eat it up. Then you can go on with your work again afterwards."

There was a good deal of hesitating among the four policemen, but they were clearly hungry, and in the end they were persuaded to go into the kitchen and help themselves. The woman stayed where she was, listening to them speaking among themselves, their voices thick and sloppy because their mouths were full of meat.

"Have some more, Charlie?"

"No. Better not finish it."

"She wants us to finish it. She said so. Be doing her a favor."

"Okay then. Give me some more."

"That's the hell of a big club the gut must've used to hit poor Patrick," one of them was saying. "The doc says his skull was smashed all to pieces just like from a sledgehammer."

"That's why it ought to be easy to find."

"Whoever done it, they're not going to be carrying a thing like that around with them longer than they need."

One of them belched.

"Personally, I think it's right here on the premises."

"Probably right under our very noses. What you think, Jack?"

And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.

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Lamb to the Slaughter--Roald Dahl (1916-1990)

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This Web site is dedicated to the wonderful world of the short story and to all who enjoy reading shorts stories as I do. I will try to add a few short stories every month.

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Basics of Ceramic Handbuilding: Pinchpot, Coiling & Slab Building

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Scootle provides Australian teachers with access to quality-assured digital learning resources aligned to the Australian Curriculum.

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Teachers have one of the most challenging and under-appreciated jobs in the world.

And, while many teachers love their jobs and all of the positive aspects of being an educator-like molding young minds and collaborating with like-minded individuals every day-there are also, like any job, plenty of elements that can be irritating, bothersome, or even downright perplexing.

So, to celebrate the art of teaching-warts and all-today we are sharing some humor related to the more challenging and aggravating aspects of being a teacher by sharing some all too relatable funny teacher memes for teachers of all subjects and grade levels.

Whether it's boisterous students, delusional parents, out-of-touch administrators, meetings that could have been emails, unnecessary paperwork, inadequate financial compensation, or any other eccentric aspect of being an educator, there is a teacher meme on our list that will make you absolutely laugh out loud.

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51 Teacher Memes That Will Make You Laugh Out Loud - Mashup Math

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The Best Funny Teacher Memes that only teachers can relate to this. Every teacher meme on our funny memes teacher list will make you giggle about the silly and sometimes puzzling aspects of being a classroom teacher and working in a school.

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Click on this and you can view Peer Padlets in the Digital Cohort. A golden idea from colleague pre-service teacher Melissa Davey... she more than a pretty face that young lady! This idea of creating a padlet and posting links to everyones padlet is awesome! Thanks Mel

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This is simple but yet very cool idea to spice things up in the classroom. I snaveled this one from peer padlet

Charmaine Schou Thanks

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Enter names, spin wheel to pick a random winner. Customize look and feel, save and share wheels.

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Educator Materials | Media Arts Toolkit | PBS LearningMedia

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Media arts educational materials that include an overview, a glossary, project ideas, a how-to for video production, and resource list.

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Adobe Illustrator - Tracing Outlines without the Pen Tool (Illustrator Versions 26.4.1 and earlier)

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Wow! I went for a bit of a deep dive on this theory when I was researching more in to constructivism theory and Problem Based Learning theory. A little golden nugget here worth reading!

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Behaviorism: Your Complete Guide to Behavioral Learning Theory

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Behaviorism learning theory tells us that behavior is shaped by conditioning and reinforcement. How does this impact your training initiative?

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Another great digi tech resources for lessons and lessons plans.

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This platform is fantastic! I had so much fun. I will include this platform for my year 9 students, I feel they will benefit from this platform.

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Slotkuni : Situs Slot Gacor Gampang Menang, Resmi & Terpercaya

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Slotkuni adalah situs bermain slot online auto spin!, Permainan slot gacor terbaru 2025 yang Resmi & Terpercaya serta gampang jp maxwin setiap jam.

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This resource looks really interesting. Thanks michaelfaulkner66 for posting and sharing on his padlet wall. I have added to my padlet and will explore this further in the future.

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Pear Deck is on a mission to help teachers create powerful learning moments for every student, every day - using the tools you already know and love.

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Lesson Ideas from Digital Technologies Hub

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Lesson Ideas from Digital Technologies Hub

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This resource is brilliant for all things digital. It contains multiple lessons, that you can either use or adapt.

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These lesson ideas can be used to teach the key concepts of the Digital Technologies curriculum.

Elemental learning design

Many of the lessons are based on the Elemental learning design. Take a closer look at the learning design.

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These lesson ideas can be used to teach the key concepts of the Digital Technologies curriculum. Many of the lessons are based on the Elemental learning design. Take a closer look at the learning design.

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Publisher's synopsis
Full of unforgettable characters, a page-turning pace and outrageously good dialogue, this is a glorious novel - thoughtful, funny, heartbreaking and wise - about outsiders and secrets, and what it really means to be a hero.
Late on a hot summer night in the tail-end of 1965, Charlie Bucktin, a precocious and bookish boy of thirteen, is startled by an urgent knock on the window of his sleep-out. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in the regional mining town of Corrigan. Rebellious, mixed-race and solitary, Jasper is a distant figure of danger and intrigue for Charlie. So when Jasper begs for his help, Charlie eagerly steals into the night by his side, terribly afraid but desperate to impress.

Jasper takes him through town and to his secret glade in the bush, and it's here that Charlie bears witness to Jasper's horrible discovery. With his secret like a brick in his belly, Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and suspicion as he locks horns with his tempestuous mother, falls nervously in love and battles to keep a lid on his zealous best friend, Jeffrey Lu.

And in vainly attempting to restore the parts that have been shaken loose, Charlie learns to discern the truth from the myth, and why white lies creep like a curse. In the simmering summer where everything changes, Charlie learns why the truth of things is so hard to know, and even harder to hold in his heart.

Awards

Winner, National Year of Reading 2012, Western Australia

Overall Winner, Indie Book of the Year Award 2009

Winner, Indie Book of the Year 2009 - Fiction

Winner, ABIA (Australian Book Industry Awards) Book of the Year 2010

Winner, ABIA (Australian Book Industry Awards) Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2010

Winner (joint), 2009 Western Australia Premier's Literary Award - Fiction

Finalist, 2010 Sydney Morning Herald 2010 Best Young Novelist

Shortlisted, Miles Franklin Literary Award 2010

Shortlisted, 2010 NSW Premier's Literary Award - Christina Stead Prize for fiction

Shortlisted, 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards - The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction

Shortlisted, 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

Craig Silvey is an author and screenwriter from Fremantle, Western Australia. His critically acclaimed debut novel, Rhubarb, was published in 2004. His bestselling novel, Jasper Jones, was released in 2009 and is considered a modern Australian classic. Published in over a dozen territories, Jasper Jones has won plaudits in three continents, including an International Dublin Literary Award shortlisting, a Michael J. Printz Award Honor, and a Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlisting. Jasper Jones was the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year for 2010. Craig's third novel Honeybee was published in 2019 and won Best Fiction for the Indie Book Awards 2021 and Dymock's Book of the Year 2020.
Photo courtesy of Allen & Unwin

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This is a glorious novel - thoughtful, funny, heartbreaking and wise - about outsiders and secrets, and what it really means to be a hero.

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This looks interesting!

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Visualize: Manifest Anything - Apps on Google Play

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Visualize your desire with effective 68 second manifestation method.

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Hey Carolyn, I must have posted the wrong link! 

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Hey Carolyn, I must have posted the wrong link! 

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Here's my shelf, its a bit more engaging! Sorry for the mixup! -Ashley

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Literary Devices: How to Use Literary Elements to Improve Writing

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ENGLISH 8- FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE USED IN LITERARY TEXT READ

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This is a great platform. Anyone can be a designer using Canva. So easy to use and has so many templates to choose from.

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Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. Use it to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos and more.

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Fight Flight Freeze – Anxiety Explained For Teens

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Why the teenage brain has an evolutionary advantage

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The Neuroscience of the Teenage Brain - with Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

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Filmmaking - How to make a TV show | The Arts Unit

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We all love watching great TV shows with our family and friends when we unwind after a long day, but have you ever thought about making your own TV show? David Todd shows you how!

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Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership

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AITSL provides national leadership for the Australian State and Territories in promoting excellence in the profession of teaching and school leadership

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STOP MOTION PODCASTING DOCUMENTARY
AFTRS Media Lab provides accessible media arts resources to Australian primary and secondary teachers and students. Media Lab will help build core creativity and storytelling capabilities that will be required for the jobs of the future.

The Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) is the nation's leading screen and broadcast school that delivers future-focused, industry-relevant education, research and training.

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STOP MOTION PODCASTING DOCUMENTARY AFTRS Media Lab provides accessible media arts resources to Australian primary and secondary teachers and students. Media Lab will help build core creativity and storytelling capabilities that will be required for the jobs of the future.

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https://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm

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EduBlogs Building PLN Professional Learning Networks

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EduBlogs Building PLN Professional Learning Networks

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Welcome to the third step in our free professional learning series on building your PLN.

In the first two steps, we looked at what a PLN means and how to become a connected educator.

We're now getting into the specifics of how to use particular tools, beginning with Twitter.

The aim of this step is to:

1. Explain what Twitter is and how it's used.

2. Explain the benefits of using Twitter as part of your PLN.

3. Helps you set up your Twitter account and connect with others.

Introduction To Twitter

Most teachers who are using Twitter would probably agree that it is their number one way they build and connect with their PLN.

In fact, a 2016 study showed that the most popular tool K-12 teachers use to connect with others was Twitter.

What Is Twitter?

Twitter is a social networking, news, and microblogging service that allows you to send out short messages called tweets.

Along with text and links, tweets can also contain media (up to 4 photos, a video, or a GIF).

Tweets used to be limited to 140 characters but this increased to 280 characters by 2018.

Twitter is a place that you can just lurk, by reading others' tweets, or contribute, by sending out your own tweets. Obviously, the latter is what you work towards as the more you put in, the more you get out!

You can read tweets without having your own Twitter account (as long as the accounts you're following are public - and the majority are). To contribute, you will need an account which we will explain below.

One of the great things about Twitter is that it is accessible on your computer, laptop, tablet, or phone. You can use the native Twitter website or app, or there are many other popular third party apps that aim to improve functionality and accessibility.

Tweetdeck was once an independent app that has now been acquired by Twitter. Many users enjoy using it to organize their feed.

Twitter is used by people in nearly every country around the world. 83% of 193 UN member countries have Twitter a presence. For teachers, this means you have access to thousands of teachers with rich backgrounds and experiences that can contribute to your professional growth.

Anatomy Of A Tweet

Twitter is made up of tweets. We created this diagram to help you understand tweets better.

You're welcome to share it with others or display it on your blog.

Interacting With Tweets

When you see a tweet, there are certain things you can click on:

The person's name to see their profile page. You can look at their bio and see all their tweets.

Follow to have the tweeter's future tweets show up on your homepage.

A link (if there is one) to open a website in your browser.

A hashtag to see other tweets that are categorized with the same hashtag (regardless of whether you follow the people using that hashtag)

Like (the heart) - this shows your appreciation, agreement, or acknowledgment of the tweet. Simply, tap/click the heart to like the tweet (tap/click again to undo).

Retweet to share the tweet with your own followers. This demonstrates that you found the tweet interesting or shareworthy. You will also have the option to add a comment to the retweet.

Direct message - you can message someone privately or start a private group conversation. Depending on individual settings, you might only be able to direct message someone if you both follow each other.

Comments - this allows you to either read what other people have said in a public reply, or add your own reply.

Think You're Not Interested In Twitter? Think Again!

Twitter is more than just "another social networking tool".

It generally isn't about reconnecting with people you knew in high school or sharing what you're cooking for dinner. Of course, some people only use Twitter for fun, although for most educators Twitter is about connecting with like minded individuals for personalized and ongoing professional development.

There are millions of tweets flying around in the Twitterverse 24-7 but the good thing is you can use Twitter as your time and inclination permits!

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach has shared an analogy of Twitter being like a river. The river keeps flowing but sometimes you might just walk past and have a quick look, sometimes you might hang around and dip your toes in, other times you might spend hours swimming around.

The choice is yours.

In this three minute video, Alec Couros explains how Twitter is used effectively in education.

Benefits Of Using Twitter

Twitter is like a virtual staffroom where you can catch up with your PLN. It's a place where educators can find advice, give advice, find great links, share work, and engage in general musings about education.

Want examples?

In this post, Chris Betcher describes what he got out of tweeting for just 10 minutes.

Similarly, in this post Edna Sackson describes what she got out of 30 minutes on Twitter one morning.

In this post, New Zealand teacher Juliet Revell explains some fantastic professional and personal opportunities that she experienced thanks to building a PLN on Twitter.

This video by Matt Miller offers snapshot of some of the things you might see on Twitter in any given session.

While these examples aren't new and some minor functions of Twitter have changed, the basic premise remains; there are countless ways educators are using Twitter to benefit themselves and their students.

Here's a tweet from a high school history teacher who joined Twitter in 2019.

I was hesitant to join Twitter. I didn't quite understand what purpose it could serve me as a teacher. Now that I've followed just under 100 educators I GET IT. There is hope here. There is inspiration here. There is growth here.

- JessicaBellEducator (@BellEducator) April 7, 2019

Check out Why Teachers Are Turning To Twitter by Brendon Hyndman for more research and examples of how Twitter is used in the global education community.

Five Steps To Building Your PLN Via Twitter

The sign up process is easy. Just follow these steps:

Go to http://twitter.com and click on the sign up box, or go directly to https://twitter.com/signup.

You will be required to enter information such as your name and email address as you're guided through the sign up process.

Once you sign up for an account, you can select a unique username. Try not to make your username too long and make it something that identifies you, like your name, rather than a complex nickname.

Once you're signed up, you can customize your profile.

Complete your bio so people know who you are. You have 160 characters for your bio. Educators often share the age group or subject they teach, and particular interests.

Add a profile photo. Real photos can be a better choice than a cartoon avatar. It helps you to build your relationship with your PLN. Bios and photos can hold a lot of weight in virtual relationships.

You'll also be able to add a header photo. Popular header images for teachers include landscapes, a classroom photo, or a quote. Tip: You can make a personalized Twitter header image with Canva.

Refer to the Educator's Ultimate Guide to Twitter for more detailed step-by-step instructions on how to set up and use Twitter.

2. Follow People

Following someone on Twitter means:

You are subscribing to their tweets and their updates will appear in your home timeline

That person is able to send you a private direct message if you're following each other

Following isn't necessarily a reciprocal relationship, like Facebook friendships. Someone can follow you without you following them back and vice versa. You don't need to wait for approval to follow someone either, as long as their account is public.

There are thousands of teachers around the world on Twitter, you just have to know where to find them!

No ideas?

Start with our Edublogs team like @edublogs @suewaters @ronnieburt @Edublogs_Eugene and me, @kathleen_morris

There are many educational thought leaders who thousands of people enjoy following such as:

Additionally, there are many popular sources for keeping up to date with the latest news, trends, and research in education, such as:

The examples listed above are only the tip of the iceberg and far from an exhaustive list!

Once you have a few people to follow, look at who they are following and you will start to build up your PLN.

You can also adopt some Twitter regulars as your mentors and ask them to put a tweet out to encourage their followers to connect with you.

Twitter also regularly shows you suggestions of people you could follow.

Watch this video to learn how to follow and connect with people on Twitter.

You'll need to spend some time checking out the stream of tweets and getting the hang of tweeting, retweeting, direct messaging, and hashtags.

Some people say Twitter isn't as intuitive as other web tools but it doesn't take long for it to make sense. Give yourself a few weeks to try it. Whenever you have a few spare minutes, open Twitter, scroll through your feed, click on some links, watch how people are interacting with each other.

If the people you're following don't interest you, it's fine to unfollow them. Remember, you're in charge of building your own personal PLN.

4. Contribute

When you've lurked for a while, jump and contribute! Like or retweet a few tweets, reply to tweets that resonated with you, and send tweets of your own. You could try contacting a few people via direct message too - ask them a question or introduce yourself.

It may take some time to get the hang of how Twitter works. We've made this cheat sheet to help. Feel free to share it with others or use it on your own blog.

Remember, the more you put in, the more you get out.

Don't be afraid to start replying to people, retweeting tweets, asking questions, and striking up conversations.

Many teachers on Twitter are very friendly and always happy to help newbies find their feet!

What To Tweet About

Still not sure what you could be tweeting about? How about:

A photo from a lesson

A link to something interesting you've read

A question about a topic you're interested in

A request for a resource

A link to something from your own blog or someone else's blog

A favorite online tool you like to use with students

5. Stick With It!

Many regular Twitter users have commented that it took them a few attempts to get going with Twitter. Sticking with it is so important. Make yourself check into Twitter daily for a month before you make any decisions about whether it is for you.

It takes time to build rapport with people. When you do, you'll find your professional world will be so enlightened and your students will be better for it!

Remember, you definitely won't be seeing everything that's tweeted, so don't feel like you have to. You'll receive notifications when someone replies to you, mentions you, tags you, or direct messages you. Otherwise, Twitter works fairly serendipitously and you'll just see what you see!

Useful Video

To walk you through getting started with Twitter and to demonstrate some of the tips mentioned in this post, check out Starting a PLN on Twitter: A Quick Guide For Teachers by Common Sense Education.

Conclusion

Effective teaching and learning doesn't occur in a vacuum. To be the best teacher you can be, you need a diverse and innovative network.

As we outlined in Step Two, traditionally, the staff at your school was your main network of teachers to collaborate with. This network may be fantastic but can become an echo chamber for the same ideas, values, and perspectives.

With Twitter, the barriers of distance and access are broken down and the world is at your fingertips!

In our next step, we explore Twitter further by looking at hashtags and Twitter chats.

PLNs are about sharing, collaborating, and learning from and with others. Here's your chance to ask a question, comment, and get involved!

We'd like you to add your voice and ideas to our ongoing conversation on building your own PLN by undertaking one or more of the following challenges:

1. Video Reflections: Watch How To Use Twitter Effectively In Education with Alec Couros or the Common Sense Education video on Getting Started With Twitter. Leave a comment on this post to share your ideas on how you might use Twitter to build your PLN.

2. Join: If you haven't joined Twitter yet, head over to twitter.com and sign up. Leave a comment on this post with your Twitter username so others can follow you. If you've joined in the past, now could be a good time to review your account. Do you need to update your images or bio perhaps?

3. Find Someone: After browsing Twitter, find someone who you think you'd be interested in following. Leave their Twitter username in a comment and tell us what they're tweeting about that you find interesting.

4. Go Deeper: Write a blog post about your initial impressions of Twitter. You could include - what you see as obstacles to taking part in Twitter, what you have learned from being on Twitter, or who you have connected with via Twitter. Don't forget to leave a comment here with the link to your post. You might even like to document your own journey as a new Twitter user to inspire others to do the same!

Also, feel free to leave a comment to ask any questions or share your tips.
How to leave a comment: Scroll down to find the comment box. Write your comment, then enter your name and email address (email addresses are not published). Enter the anti-spam word. Press submit and we will moderate your comment ASAP.

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Welcome to the third step in our free professional learning series on building your PLN. In the first two steps, we looked at what a PLN means and how to become a connected educator. We're now getting into the specifics of how to use particular tools, beginning with Twitter.

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What are learning skills?
From Thoughtful Learning

The 21st century learning skills are often called the 4 C's: critical thinking, creative thinking, communicating, and collaborating. These skills help students learn, and so they are vital to success in school and beyond.

See videos of each main area below at the website - https://k12.thoughtfullearning.com/FAQ/what-are-learning-skills

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is focused, careful analysis of something to better understand it. When people speak of "left brain" activity, they are usually referring to critical thinking. Here are some of the main critical-thinking abilities:
* Analyzing is breaking something down into its parts, examining each part, and noting how the parts fit together.
* Arguing is using a series of statements connected logically together, backed by evidence, to reach a conclusion.
* Classifying is identifying the types or groups of something, showing how each category is distinct from the others.
* Comparing and contrasting is pointing out the similarities and differences between two or more subjects.
* Defining is explaining the meaning of a term using denotation, connotation, example, etymology, synonyms, and antonyms.
* Describing is explaining the traits of something, such as size, shape, weight, color, use, origin, value, condition, location, and so on.
* Evaluating is deciding on the worth of something by comparing it against an accepted standard of value.
* Explaining is telling what something is or how it works so that others can understand it.
* Problem solving is analyzing the causes and effects of a problem and finding a way to stop the causes or the effects.
* Tracking cause and effect is determining why something is happening and what results from it.

Creative Thinking

Creative thinking is expansive, open-ended invention and discovery of possibilities. When people speak of "right brain" activity, they most often mean creative thinking. Here are some of the more common creative thinking abilities:
* Brainstorming ideas involves asking a question and rapidly listing all answers, even those that are far-fetched, impractical, or impossible.
* Creating something requires forming it by combining materials, perhaps according to a plan or perhaps based on the impulse of the moment.
* Designing something means finding the conjunction between form and function and shaping materials for a specific purpose.
* Entertaining others involves telling stories, making jokes, singing songs, playing games, acting out parts, and making conversation.
* Imagining ideas involves reaching into the unknown and impossible, perhaps idly or with great focus, as Einstein did with his thought experiments.
* Improvising a solution involves using something in a novel way to solve a problem.
* Innovating is creating something that hasn't existed before, whether an object, a procedure, or an idea.
* Overturning something means flipping it to get a new perspective, perhaps by redefining givens, reversing cause and effect, or looking at something in a brand new way.
* Problem solving requires using many of the creative abilities listed here to figure out possible solutions and putting one or more of them into action.
* Questioning actively reaches into what is unknown to make it known, seeking information or a new way to do something.

Communicating

* Analyzing the situation means thinking about the subject, purpose, sender, receiver, medium, and context of a message.
* Choosing a medium involves deciding the most appropriate way to deliver a message, ranging from a face-to-face chat to a 400-page report.
* Evaluating messages means deciding whether they are correct, complete, reliable, authoritative, and up-to-date.
* Following conventions means communicating using the expected norms for the medium chosen.
* Listening actively requires carefully paying attention, taking notes, asking questions, and otherwise engaging in the ideas being communicated.
* Reading is decoding written words and images in order to understand what their originator is trying to communicate.
* Speaking involves using spoken words, tone of voice, body language, gestures, facial expressions, and visual aids in order to convey ideas.
* Turn taking means effectively switching from receiving ideas to providing ideas, back and forth between those in the communication situation.
* Using technology requires understanding the abilities and limitations of any technological communication, from phone calls to e-mails to instant messages.
* Writing involves encoding messages into words, sentences, and paragraphs for the purpose of communicating to a person who is removed by distance, time, or both.

Collaborating

* Allocating resources and responsibilities ensures that all members of a team can work optimally.
* Brainstorming ideas in a group involves rapidly suggesting and writing down ideas without pausing to critique them.
* Decision-making requires sorting through the many options provided to the group and arriving at a single option to move forward.
* Delegating means assigning duties to members of the group and expecting them to fulfill their parts of the task.
* Evaluating the products, processes, and members of the group provides a clear sense of what is working well and what improvements could be made.
* Goal setting requires the group to analyze the situation, decide what outcome is desired, and clearly state an achievable objective.
* Leading a group means creating an environment in which all members can contribute according to their abilities.
* Managing time involves matching up a list of tasks to a schedule and tracking the progress toward goals.
* Resolving conflicts occurs from using one of the following strategies: asserting, cooperating, compromising, competing, or deferring.
* Team building means cooperatively working over time to achieve a common goal.

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Thoughful Learning: What are the 4 C's of learning skills?

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What are learning skills? From Thoughtful Learning The 21st century learning skills are often called the 4 C's: critical thinking, creative thinking, communicating, and collaborating. These skills help students learn, and so they are vital to success in school and beyond.

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Hey I have added Melissa Davey's Padlet to the list of awesome Pre-Service and PTT Teachers. All have juicy content that I am working my way through.

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Good technology integration isn't about using the fanciest tool, it's about being aware of the range of options and picking the right strategy-or strategies-for the lesson at hand.

The biggest obstacle to teaching online probably isn't the technology. Teachers seek out educational technology, in fact, because it "can have considerable positive impacts on student performance," according to a 2016 study -improving test scores and allowing teachers to assess student achievement more efficiently. The big problem is how to integrate it: Beyond the sheer number of tech tools available, the same researchers identified "inadequate professional development and training" as the primary obstacle to using technology productively in classrooms.

Understandably, the emergence of the coronavirus has dramatically accelerated the process of integrating edtech, as educators around the country race to get online as fast as they can. But as many of our teachers have noted, the current state of K-12 online learning is more like triage-a form of crisis management-and not at all like skillfully managed distance education.

What's missing from the conversation right now, which makes sense given the immediacy of the need, is a focus on the bigger question of what the highest quality technology integration actually looks like. That's an important conversation to have, because in a post-coronavirus world there's likely to be a greater emphasis on digital learning, even as we return to physical schools and take advantage of face-to-face opportunities.

A Hierarchy of Tech Uses

A powerful conceptual tool to think about technology integration-and edtech's best uses-is the SAMR model, developed in 2010 by education researcher Ruben Puentedura, who was the 1991 recipient of a Phi Beta Kappa teaching award.

The SAMR model lays out four tiers of online learning, presented roughly in order of their sophistication and transformative power: substitution, augmentation, modification, and r edefinition. When switching to an online format, teachers often focus on the first two levels, which involve replacing traditional materials with digital ones: converting lessons and worksheets into PDFs and posting them online, or recording lectures on video and making them available for asynchronous learning, for example.
Creative Commons
Those are important steps, especially when teaching online for the first time, but in classrooms where tech integration has moved to the mastery level, the last two levels of the SAMR model-modification and redefinition-should also be in the mix. Students in classes where this kind of mastery is embedded find more novel and immersive uses for technology. They are creators and publishers of their own work across multiple forms of media, for example, or they are inviting professionals to provide feedback on their work products, or participating in digital forums with other peers around the world.

It's tempting to think of SAMR as a mountain to be summited. But good technology integration isn't about living at the top of the SAMR model; it's about being aware of the range of options and picking the right strategy-or strategies-for the lesson at hand.

Here's a closer look at good classroom practices at each level in the model:

Substitution

"Substitution" means replacing traditional activities and materials-like in-class lectures or paper worksheets-with digital versions. There is no substantial change to the content, just the way that it is delivered.

The goal here is to keep things simple: there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Scan your lessons and worksheets, convert them into PDFs, and post them online using Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, or a similar file-sharing service. Think about the information you have on your walls, such as the classroom norms, the daily schedule, or vocabulary lists, and convert them into digital formats that students can easily reference.

It may also help to provide synchronous as well as asynchronous versions of your lectures. If you're holding class meetings over a videoconferencing service like Zoom or Skype, provide a recording for students who can't attend. You can also create your own instructional videos for students to view at their own pace.

Augmentation

This level involves incorporating interactive digital enhancements and elements like comments, hyperlinks, or multimedia. The content remains unchanged, but students can now take advantage of digital features to enhance the lesson.

For example, students can create digital portfolios to create multimedia presentations, giving them more options to demonstrate their understanding of a topic. And instead of handing out paper quizzes, you can gamify your quizzes with tools like Socrative and Kahoot.

Teachers can also create virtual bulletin boards-using an app like Padlet -where students can post questions, links, and pictures.

Modification

At this level, teachers can think about using a learning management system like Google Classroom, Moodle, Schoology, or Canvas to handle the logistical aspects of running a classroom, like tracking grades, messaging students, creating a calendar, and posting assignments.

Teaching online opens up new channels of communication, many of which can help students who have traditionally been marginalized. Research shows that girls may be less likely to speak up in class, for example, so they may benefit from backchannels -alternative conversations that can run alongside instruction-that encourage participation.

Zoom's text chat feature, meanwhile, gives students an opportunity to write their questions out, which can feel less intrusive if there are dozens of students participating in the call. Also, students who prefer to collect their thoughts may benefit from slower-paced, asynchronous discussions in an online forum or email threads.

Redefinition

Learning is fundamentally transformed at the "redefinition" level, enabling activities that were previously impossible in the classroom.

For example, virtual pen pals can connect students to other parts of the world, whether it's with other students or experts in a field. Virtual field trips enable students to visit locations like the Amazon rainforest, the Louvre, or the Egyptian pyramids. After reading a book in class, you can invite the author to chat about their work and answer questions.

Technology also provides an opportunity to bring authentic audiences into your virtual classroom, and can make publishers out of your students. Kids can write their own wikis or blogs for public consumption and feedback-and platforms like Quadblogging can connect distant classrooms together so students both write and respond. Students can tackle local problems-like investigating the water quality of a nearby river-and invite members of the community to assess their digital proposals.

Going Beyond SAMR

Finally, consider how technology can be used not just as a way to deliver content, but also to strengthen relationships with your students. For elementary school teacher John Thomas, Seesaw and Flipgrid allow him to share a daily greeting, which his students then respond to-or to each other-with a typed or voiced comment. It's a good way to provide some stability while they're isolated.

How can my lesson be improved using technology?

How can I engage and empower students through technology?

How can online learning more closely resemble authentic, real-world learning?

Remember, again, that SAMR is sometimes thought of as a mountain to summit, but it's really more like a toolbox. The goal isn't to use the most sophisticated tool, but to find the right one for the job. More importantly, however, it's a way to reflect on your technology integration by thinking about a few key questions:

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A Powerful Model for Understanding Good Tech Integration

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Good technology integration isn't about using the fanciest tool, it's about being aware of the range of options and picking the right strategy-or strategies-for the lesson at hand.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2AOzgp-SIk&t=58s

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7 Algorithm Hacks To EXPLODE Your Linkedin in 2024

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https://edtechbooks.org/onlinetools

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Absolutely loved deep diving into this platform for AT1. I will be using it in Term 2 for my year 9 and 10 Digital Tech students with formative assessments.

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Join an activity with your class and find or create your own quizzes and flashcards.

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I added this resources, as I would like to explore this platform more. I did see a few pre-service teachers also research this platform.

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Login or sign up for free on Socrative - your assessment partner for real-time assessments and instant insights.

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What's In This Guide?

Like any program or initiative, it's best to always start with your goals. To that end, let's begin by covering some of the benefits that implementing an ePortfolio program can offer all members of a school community.

A short summary of the benefits looks like this:

Let's break this down in a bit more detail...

Student Benefits of ePortfolios

We know all students have individual strengths and weaknesses but in a system often driven by pre-set curriculum and assessments, it can be difficult to cater to each student and celebrate their uniqueness.

An ePortfolio can be used to capture each student in a way that standardized tests or end-of-course summative exams simply cannot. Some students may have difficulties showing their true strengths in traditional assessments but may be marvelous at expressing themselves through video, music, art, spoken word, design, coding, or creative writing - mediums that are easy to embed into a digital portfolio. You might also find that some students who are more reluctant to speak up in a busy classroom really find their voice and shine in a digital space.

Educator Matt Renwick stresses the value of a digital portfolio as a wholistic method of assessment,

Students are more than a score. They are unique individuals, each possessing different motivations and talents. To distill an understanding of their current status and future potential down only to a symbol, such as grades or levels, is at best a misrepresentation of their abilities and at worst educational negligence. We can do better.

An ePortfolio can also help students develop independence as they're given the responsibility of shaping and maintaining their own space on the web. Students can be granted the autonomy to capture, curate, document, and share their learning. There's a lot to be said for the power of choice and ownership to motivate students to improve.

The overarching purpose of portfolios is to create a sense of personal ownership over one's accomplishments, because ownership engenders feelings of pride, responsibility, and dedication.
Paris and Ayres (1994)

With traditional assignments and assessments, students make note of their grades in the moment. By keeping track of their successes, failures, and everything in between over time, students are able to understand where they need to improve and celebrate how far they've come. Combined with ownership of their digital space and autonomy of expression, student results can soar.

A lot has been said about the essential skills our students need to prepare them to thrive in a rapidly changing world and job market. Perhaps a digital portfolio program could play a part in your school community in helping students develop these essential skills.

You might be familiar with The Future of Jobs report from the World Economic Forum (2018) that ranked as the top 5 skills for the 2020 workforce. The report demonstrates that skills growing in prominence include analytical thinking, active learning, and technology design, along with "human skills" like creativity, critical thinking, and complex problem-solving.

Similarly, a national survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (2015), revealed that 93% of employers believe that "a candidate's demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than his or her undergraduate major".

Critical thinking, communication, and problem solving are precisely the sorts of skills that students can develop as they work on their digital portfolios throughout their education. What an added bonus!

Digital portfolios help to shape students' digital footprints. While we naturally may want to shield and guide students, we know that having no digital footprint at all is no longer an ideal option. It's no secret that potential employers and higher education institutions increasingly consider individuals' online profiles and search results when making selections.

Students who use a digital portfolio may be at an advantage as they embark on life outside of school or university. Maintaining a polished record of their work can help students accomplish a variety of goals as they near the completion of their studies such as scholarships, internships, or even jobs. As an added bonus, helping your students succeed can reflect well on your school or institution.

Overall, an ePortfolio can put options and opportunities into the hands of each student.

"How can you make sure that every student who walks on graduation day is WELL GOOGLED by his or her full name?"
Will Richardson (2012)

Educator Benefits of ePortfolios

We all seem to be busier than ever. The planning, assessing, and reporting cycle is never ending, amongst all the other responsibilities. A well established ePortfolio program can help with this and make life easier for faculty and administrators.

It can be challenging to organize and track students' work while assessing their progress over time. As we mentioned earlier, students themselves may not even be able to gauge their own development without a system for monitoring their academic growth. A digital portfolio enables both the student and their instructors to measure progress over time - both academically and in other ways.

Just as important, digital portfolios give instructors insight into students' educational journeys so they can deliver targeted feedback seamlessly.

Educators work hard; sometimes much harder than outsiders realize. Digital portfolios can help make the efforts of both educators and students more visible to everyone. In a culture of transparency, everyone can thrive.

A School-Wide Approach

When thinking about implementing an ePortfolio program, some schools or institutions feel most comfortable starting small - perhaps having ePortfolios in pilot courses or classes. While starting small and then rolling out to everyone can be a great place to begin, we see the greatest benefits when portfolios are implemented school-wide, department-wide, or in more than one course at a time.

The important thing here is that the same portfolio or website is used across classes and even from year-to-year. Why? There are a number of reasons:
1) The Focus Can Move From the Technology to the Content and Learning
When students spend more than one year working with digital portfolios, they learn and know the tool. This means students aren't bogged down with learning the technical stuff. They will become fluent with the technology and be able to concentrate on creation, curation, reflection, connections, and all the things that will really drive their learning.
2) Progress Can be Documented From Year to Year and Class to Class
How often do students make great strides in a particular class only to then have to start from scratch in their next class with a brand new teacher? A lot of time can be wasted as teachers scramble to find out where their new students are at and where they need to go next. An ongoing ePortfolio program solves this dilemma.

Through browsing a student's digital portfolio, educators can get a snapshot of a student's strengths, weaknesses, and learning journey. The transition to a new class or new school year can become seamless with limited interruption to learning.
3) More Meaningful and More Impactful How many times have you seen a school with each teacher alone in their classroom using different technology tools and teaching approaches? While some autonomy and creativity is fantastic, educators can end up working harder than they need to on their own "islands" while students can end up confused as they constantly switch tools. A school-wide approach to digital portfolios means teachers and students can work together to navigate and perfect their program. Some educators and students may become natural leaders of the program and enjoy sharing their skills and assisting others.
Given the regional and unique differences of school systems, many words can be used to describe the same concept. Different subject areas and disciplines have their own vernacular too.

To help us through the rest of this post, we'll define terms here so we all start with the same frame of reference going forward.

A digital portfolio is simply a collection of artifacts of learning. These artifacts can demonstrate the acquisition of skills, knowledge, or capabilities over time. Reflection is typically an integral part of an ePortfolio as is feedback. Digital portfolios can document achievements or processes for accountability, personal development, employment, or opportunities beyond the school gates. Portfolios can be shared with a small audience (teacher, peers, family) or a broad audience (employers, admissions officers, professional learning networks, the public).

Irish National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (via EUfolio, 2015)adopts the following description in their implementation guide (PDF),

ePortfolios are student-owned dynamic digital workspaces wherein students can capture their learning and their ideas, access their collections of work, reflect on their learning, share it, set goals, seek feedback and showcase their learning and achievements.

You'll notice that we use the terms digital portfolios and ePortfolios (electronic portfolios) interchangeably. In fact, we could really just be using the term "portfolio" because here in the 20s, is the modifier "digital" truly necessary?

While academics and thought leaders may debate the correct terminology, ultimately, the terminology you choose to adopt in your school or university is up to you, however, consistency across your campus is definitely a good idea!

A useful alternative term to ePortfolio or digital portfolio might be " blogfolio". That is, a digital portfolio/ePortfolio that's built on a blogging platform. And while we're talking semantics, a blog is simply a type of website that often has some static pages and is regularly updated with posts. Blogs also allow for feedback and interaction through comments.

Silvia Tolisano describes a blogfolio using the analogy of glue,

Blogfolios are the glue that can hold all curricular content, goals and objectives as well as support school initiatives, observations, assessment and accountability requirements or personal passions, interest and projects together.

There are clear benefits to using a blog for a portfolio and we'll explore more of these in chapter 4.

Most crucially, blogging can provide an environment in which to explore the relationship between theoretical knowledge acquired in lectures and other life and learning experiences. It is through the power of such dialogues that learners gain a clearer vision, not only of the immediate demands of the curriculum, but even potentially of their future career paths.
Effective Practice with e-Portfolios. Supporting 21st century learning (PDF). JISC. 2008.
Vocab At A Glance:
Chapter References and Resources

Getting us back to discussing the goals of your portfolio implementation, it can be helpful to think through the different types of portfolios your students could create.

There are four main types or functions of ePortfolios in schools and higher education:

Showcase or presentation

Process or learning

Assessment

Hybrid

Let's take a look at these four types of portfolios so you can decide what might work best in your school or university.

1) Showcase or Presentation Portfolio: A Collection of Best Work

These types of portfolios focus on the portfolio as a product and are also typically called professional portfolios, formal portfolios, or career portfolio.

The content that's added to showcase portfolios is written after the learning takes place, often with reflection from the student. Some schools like LaGuardia Community College adopt the mantra of, "collect, select, reflect, connect" ( PDF Hughes, 2008). The connect element is an interesting and perhaps overlooked part of ePortfolio programs. It involves sharing student work with others (probably beyond the teacher) and actively seeking an audience and feedback.

The showcase portfolio is often used to share a student's best achievements or evidence of learning. Students are generally given the choice to decide what is published.

These sorts of portfolios can assist with self-marketing, online branding, or building a positive digital footprint. In higher education, we see commonly see showcase portfolios that highlight a student's CV or resume to suit a particular purpose such as attracting potential employers or college admissions officers.

2) Process or Learning Portfolio: A Work in Progress

The second type of portfolio that we commonly see is more of a running record of learning. The purpose is to capture the learning process. It's also called a development portfolio, a reflection portfolio, or a formative portfolio.

Entries and artifacts are added during the learning process. A process portfolio is not always a collection of a student's best work; it can include a variety of learning attempts or unpolished documentation along with reflections on struggles and challenges.

These types of portfolios demonstrate a work in progress and allow for self-assessment and reflection.

One trap you might want to try to actively avoid if you're using process portfolios is the "digital dump". That is, over time, students can end up adding a lot of artifacts to their portfolio without much organization, reflection, or purpose. A process portfolio is a fabulous way to demonstrate learning as it happens but you may want to consider how to keep the portfolio well-organized and meaningful.

3) Assessment Portfolio: Used For Accountability

The assessment portfolio is used to document what a student has learned, or demonstrate that they have mastered elements of the curriculum.

These types of portfolios may not be the most popular choice for schools as they are not student-centered; artifacts are chosen based on the curriculum. Likewise, reflective comments will focus on how artifacts align with curriculum objectives.

These types of portfolios may be more formal than a showcase or process portfolio. While they may be very useful within the school environment to provide evidence of learning to teachers and administrators, an assessment portfolio may be less useful for overall student development.

Assessment portfolios are commonly part of certification programs or even part of requirements for earning a degree.

4) A Hybrid Approach

The 4th type of portfolio you'll commonly come across is a combination of the showcase, process, and/or assessment portfolio.

Canadian EdTech leader George Couros explains how two types of portfolios can come together with some examples,

Learning [process] portfolio: If a student were to take a video of them reading in four consecutive months, you would see all readings over time to see development and growth.

Showcase portfolio: If a student were to take a video of them reading in four consecutive months, they would pick the best one from the four samples.

What is beautiful in using a blog as a portfolio is that you do not have to choose; you can do both.

George advises looking in to the different types of portfolios before implementing a program, and suggests the hybrid approach may be best.

Does this show the student's progression over time (learning), or just the best stuff (showcase)? There are considerable benefits to both over time and a combination, from my experience, is the best path to pursue.

Some educators find it's easiest to start out with a showcase portfolio, or a collection of best work. From there, they can evolve into the process or hybrid approach. You might also find your portfolios are fluid in nature, for example, students may move pieces from a process portfolio into either an assessment or showcase portfolio.

This movement might be through having multiple blogs, or through using blog posts for process entries and blog pages for documenting assessment or showcasing artifacts. Alternatively, tags and categories can be used to identify assessment pieces or "final work" within a student's portfolio.

Making choices about which process artifacts to move to a more "final" product involves a great deal of deep consideration and reflection: a rich experience in itself for students.

Knowing which type(s) of portfolio you will be focusing on will help inform decisions around choosing a platform and building a template portfolio.

There are many tools and platforms available that allow students to publish online. Naturally, these options come with pros and cons.

No matter what you choose, the most important items to consider include:

Data exportability - can students easily download and take their content with them after graduation or leaving?

Authentic experience - will the skills learned to use the tool transfer and be able to be used outside of the portfolio program?

Room for self-expression - do all portfolios look the same? Can students personalize and make the space their own?

Integration - does the platform make it easy to login and does it play nice with your Learning Management System?

Cost - will implementing the platform leave room in your budget for other needs?

Resources and training - can you easily find docs, videos, and other useful information to help with rolling the platform out?

Management tools - what's available? This includes on-boarding new users, creating new sites, monitoring portfolios, and providing feedback.

We'll cut to the chase - given the above requirements, we believe that WordPress should be at the top of your list when considering a portfolio platform.

Why WordPress? It comes down to 4 key areas:

Let's break down these 4 reasons for choosing WordPress in more detail.

Popularity

Just because something is popular, doesn't mean it's a good choice for your school or university, that's for sure. However, it's hard to ignore the fact that WordPress powers 37% of all websites in the world. Not just school websites, but ALL websites. Full stop.

Think about that for a moment: out of all the websites you and I browse every day, more than a third run on WordPress. This includes big brands like Walt Disney, Sony, and TechCrunch. In the world of education, WordPress dominates too with institutions small and large building websites with it.

So what came first, the chicken or the egg? Is WordPress a good choice because it's popular or is WordPress popular because it's a good choice?

We think it's the latter. Since WordPress was established back in 2003, it's grown from a simple blogging platform to a dynamic and highly customizable piece of software that allows you to claim your space on the web in a way that's just right for you. It's a robust and flexible tool. That's why it's popular.

The one size fits all approach just doesn't cut it in the classroom anymore and with WordPress, you can customize your digital portfolios to meet your unique needs.

Data Exportability

When you're considering a web service for your school or university, choosing an export friendly platform should be a high priority.

We strongly believe that digital portfolios should always be set up on a platform that allows the student to archive their work or take it with them. You want students to know from day one that what they write is theirs to keep and use as they wish. A platform like WordPress gives you the means to easily archive or transfer a student's library of work.

Sadly, students often don't have the chance to export their portfolios for two reasons - either the school doesn't realize this function isn't available on their service's plan until the end of the school year rolls around or the online service closes unexpectedly. These scenarios can ignite a panic if teachers and students have built up a lot of content that they won't be able to export or transfer.

For the record, WordPress is not going anywhere. It is open-source software that's freely available and is developed by communities all around the world. When you put your trust into web services that are not open source, you run the risk of losing access and ownership of your content if the company collapses or chooses to close down their service. Someday, WordPress will evolve into something else, but whoever that is, it's a safe bet that it will make it easy to import content from WordPress too.

It only takes minutes to export your WordPress blog as a XML (WXR) file. You can then import this content to another site, or locally to your computer. If you were to use a closed proprietary platform, you would probably be very restricted in your choice of where to host your content if you decided to move on.

One student who took his high school WordPress portfolio with him and turned it into a thriving website still heavily used today is Myles Zhang.

Back in 2013, Myles' high school English teacher asked him to set up a digital portfolio. Myles told us more about his experience on a post on The Edublogger,

Over the following years, the website organically outgrew its initial use for high school and became an art portfolio, a place to publish my academic research in college, and a platform to spread awareness of issues like gentrification and traffic affecting my community.

I don't know what to describe the site as now. I suppose it's a "digital portfolio". However, it's more than just that ... For me, it's a creative opportunity to ask myself: " What work am I proudest of? And how can I best showcase this work online? "

Building and curating a website helps me answer these questions, and gain self-knowledge too.

There's something powerful about establishing an online space that is yours. Perhaps even with your own domain name. The domain name part can come later on in a student's education, or even upon graduation.

Education writer Audrey Watters has written about the benefits of students having their own domain,

The importance of giving students responsibility for their own domain cannot be overstated. This can be a way to track growth and demonstrate new learning over the course of a student's school career - something that they themselves can reflect upon, not simply grades and assignments that are locked away in a proprietary system controlled by the school.

It would no doubt give teachers great joy to see how their students can flourish when a seed is planted in school. An ePortfolio program can really help to launch students into amazing opportunities.

Flexibility

WordPress used to be solely for blogs, however, that has changed. It's now a highly customizable content management system that allows you to precisely meet the needs of your students, school, and community. After all, your learning goals and intentions come first. The technology comes second.

Some educators may gravitate towards a platform that's built for education with almost no learning curve. These can be useful starting places, however, let's not forget that easy doesn't necessarily mean better.

Once you get started, you might be sacrificing features, customization, flexibility, authenticity, and growth, for simplicity.

As Seymour Papert (1998) famously said, perhaps we should consider if "easy" is what we're really striving for.

Every maker of video games knows something that the makers of curriculum don't seem to understand. You'll never see a video game being advertised as being easy. Kids who do not like school will tell you it's not because it's too hard. It's because it's - boring.
Seymour Papert

Let's not underestimate what educators and students can do with a highly flexible and highly customizable tool like WordPress.

Authenticity

There are a lot of tools out there that are built for education but from the day students step outside into the "real world" these tools become irrelevant.

Canadian EdTech leader George Couros makes no secret of the fact that he is a fan of WordPress for student portfolios.

Many of the technologies that I have seen used for portfolios do not transfer easily to any other site and are meant for just doing "school stuff" and are usually discarded after a student's time in school. If we are spending a bunch of time in schools using technologies that are never used outside of school for anything other school purposes, we shouldn't be surprised that students (and often staff) are asking the question, "What's the point?"

New York administrator Ross Cooper echoes these thoughts in his article "Digital Portfolios and Blogs: Use Authentic Technology, Not Technology Made for School". He promotes WordPress as the best tool to use for student portfolios as it enables authentic learning about digital citizenship and online safety, it allows students to learn about entrepreneurship and marketing their work, and it permits students to build their online presence and show up in a Google search.

In education, authentic learning is everything. It's no longer enough to prepare students for the real world, they should be thriving in the real world as they learn and develop. Authentic learning allows students to feel engaged while having the chance to be change agents and opportunity seekers. In a modern digitalized classroom, authentic learning begins with choosing an authentic tool. For digital portfolios, the best choice is WordPress.

About CampusPress

And here is our only real advert in this guide. Promise.

CampusPress has built tools on top of WordPress to make it even easier to use for portfolios. These include:

Single sign on integration to manage usernames and passwords

Canvas and LTI integration (with Google Classroom to come shortly)

Class management tools to moderate and follow students

Network tag and category search and feeds

Private comments between teachers/faculty and students

Support for dozens of plugins and tools most commonly used in education

With all security, hosting, and support fully managed by our team of experts - most of which have previously worked in schools or higher education (or both!).

We are happy to setup demos or pilots, and be a resource to help with getting a new portfolio program up and running.

If you are interested in WordPress or CampusPress, please get in touch.

One of the best ways to really get into a new portfolio program is for instructors to create their own model portfolios. Use the chosen tool to create at least one example of a completed site, with any specific artifacts and other requirements included.

By creating a sample template site, you will discover possible decision points not otherwise considered and navigate potential technological hurdles.

Let's go through some questions and tips that you'll want to consider when building a template site.

The Look and Feel

Your options may be limited depending on the tool you're using, but you will want to think through the look and feel for the portfolio.

Some questions to answer:

Will all portfolios basically look the same?

If using WordPress, will they all use the same theme, or will you allow for choice?

Will you require or need branding of your school like logos or colors?

Common Requirements

You'll need to think through if there are any common pages or set information that you want all portfolios to have. For example, we see portfolios that require an "About" page where students include biographical information. You might also have requirements for pages about different learning objectives and outcomes.

It's much easier to go ahead and create pages for students as part of the template that they can then edit and make their own. We also recommend providing choice whenever possible, as this can increase engagement and ownership by the student.

Some questions to answer:

Are there common pages that all portfolios should start with?

What items should be in the main menu navigation?

Will you let students change the navigation menus or add additional items?

Artifact Organization

To know what should be in the template header and menu navigation, it helps to know how artifacts should be managed or archived. For example, in WordPress, we recommend using categories or tags, which you can link to in the navigation menus. You can have a category for each subject/course and then a tag for each learning outcome or objective.

When students create artifacts (or publish posts in a blogfolio), they can add the appropriate category and tag so that it can easily be found later.

Some questions to answer:

Are there set learning objectives that students should demonstrate?

Should you pre-set specific tags or categories, or allow the students to add their own?

Are there other items that need to be considered to organize artifacts?

Settings and Other Features

Many tools, including WordPress, will allow you to create a template site (or multiple templates) that then get applied to all portfolios as they get created for students. This helps set the students up for success and pre-populates everything they need to get started. This means you will also want to consider more than just the content and look of the template.

Some areas to explore:

Are there default privacy settings that can be configured in the template?

Are there advanced features (or plugins in WordPress) that should be enabled or disabled in the template?

How will sites be created from the template?

Can you pre-populate any content based on the student information, such as name, year, program, etc.?

We've already mentioned that WordPress offers you a great deal of flexibility and the issue of privacy is another area where you have choices. You can have your whole network of portfolios protected by passwords, or alternatively individual portfolios or even particular posts can be password protected.

When you're setting up your portfolio program, you will no doubt find yourself weighing up the importance of visibility against the necessity of security.

There are pros and cons to having public or private spaces. Let's take a look:

Pros Of Public Digital Portfolios

Students may be interested in using their work to attract potential employers or college admission officers. This is more difficult if a student's portfolio is private, however, as a compromise, students can provide login credentials to particular individuals. The downside to this is not having the student's name show up in an organic Google search.

Will Richardson and Bruce Dixon sum up the benefits neatly in their whitepaper 10 Principles For Schools Of Modern Learning,

Increasingly, there is an expectation from employers and others that students have built an online portfolio of work that shows creativity, curiosity, collaboration, and persistence.

Students can learn how to build a positive digital footprint every time they hit publish. Traditionally, educators may have spent a lot of time advising students on what they should not include in their digital footprint, but not what they should include.

Students of all ages need to learn how to be happy, safe, and productive digital citizens. Public blogfolios offer an authentic opportunity to learn about digital citizenship in a supported and structured environment. Learning about digital citizenship on a closed platform just doesn't have the same impact. The same could be said for learning about copyright and Creative Commons - it's hard to learn about the importance of these topics without publishing publicly.

If you hide student work behind passwords, you're losing out on connections, extended dialogues, and the motivating factor of working for an authentic purpose.

Edtech leader Wesley Fryer stresses the importance of making it as easy as possible for families and other visitors to read and comment on blogfolios,

I've found that the more barriers (like logins requiring userIDs and passwords) we put up for online student content, the FEWER parents will visit and comment. It's VERY hard to get parents to not only look at student digital work online amidst our busy lives today, it's even harder to get them to comment. If you make your classroom blog private, you'll likely rob your students of the opportunity to receive feedback from outside your classroom walls. Feedback is what makes interactive writing powerful and even feel magical at times.

Have you ever thought about the transformative effect simply writing down your thoughts has on clarifying your thinking?

In his book, Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better, Clive Thompson tells us,

Professional writers have long described the way that the act of writing forces them to distill their vague notions into clear ideas. By putting half-formed thoughts on the page, we externalize them and are able to evaluate them much more objectively. This is why writers often find that it's only when they start writing that they figure out what they want to say.

This transformative experience can happen with a public or private portfolio, however, Alan Levine takes this idea one step further when he says,

Writing in public ... makes you accountable for your ideas. Stating your ideas in public is fearful if you think of it being a means for people to criticize, but it also makes your writing and thinking stronger if you take a public stand.

Cons Of Public Digital Portfolios

Schools have a duty of care to protect their students from harm and a public digital presence does open up questions about revealing identifying information, interacting with strangers, and even copyright concerns.

Do students want their artifacts public forever? There's no denying that if you and I look back at some of our work from high school or college, we might cringe. What might have seemed okay at the time may now embarrass us and the last thing we'd want is for that work to be out on the web for anyone to see.

When students are publishing for a public audience, educators may need to spend more time monitoring or moderating to make sure their students are publishing appropriate content and being safe and responsible.

Some students may feel more comfortable expressing their thinking and revealing their true thoughts if they know they don't have a public audience.

Allowing Students To Make Choices About Privacy

It's important for students to realize that there are times when our work should be private. Maybe we don't want to share every inner most thought,"failed" attempt, or evidence of messy learning. While there are benefits to documenting the process of learning, weighing this up with the goal of constructing a positive digital footprint is crucial.

George Couros put it well in his post on (nearly) invisible portfolios when he said,

The learner should have the option of what they want the world to see, not the teacher. The conversations that can come from this are so crucial. Asking the learner why they chose the piece of work that they did to share with the world, is a critical conversation that we are not having enough with our students, because frankly, we aren't giving them this opportunity enough.

If you're hosting your site with CampusPress, you can easily apply passwords to student portfolios in a variety of ways. A few quick setting adjustments will enable you to require registration, restrict visibility to administration, or password protect sites within your network.
Here are some practical ways you can offer choice and flexibility with privacy:

Let students choose: At The Geelong College, students are encouraged to decide for themselves (along with parents) whether their portfolios will be public or password protected.

Block search engines: Blocking search engines is easy and reduces the chance of random visitors landing on your blog. In WordPress, you'll find this option in Settings > Reading. You can also go to Settings > Discussion and choose "Users must be registered and logged in to comment". This way, not just anyone can leave a comment.

Make moderation easier: If you're teaching children or adolescents and they have portfolios that are open on the web, some moderation of posts and/or comments is generally a good idea.

Protect your students' identities: Having a public blogfolio doesn't mean you have to post personal information such as surnames, photos, location and so on. Some students even publish publicly with a fictional pen name and no identifying photos or information. We've shared some best practices for posting images of students online in this post on The Edublogger.

Remember, not every post has to be public: You can always create a public blogfolio but password protect certain posts or pages. Or, some educators and students use a blogfolio publicly and use other avenues for private work such as a learning management system, or more traditional tools (e.g. word processors, or pen and paper!).

An ePortfolio program that uses WordPress offers you a great deal of choice about privacy. It's worth considering the best way to set up your blogfolios so your students can reap some advantages of having an audience while feeling comfortable and safe.

One of the great advantages of using a blog for a digital portfolio is the ability to embed a wide range of artifacts. In the past, students may have only been able to share their learning through written content or hand-drawn illustrations. Now there's a multitude of ways that students can share what they've created, what they're working on, and what they're inspired by.

Let's take a look at some of the things that can be included in a student's digital portfolio.

Text including hyperlinked writing

Images, photography, and artwork

Video

Audio

Social media

Other embeddable content

Text

When students are publishing in their digital portfolio, there's probably going to be a lot of text including students' own written content as well as quotes from others.

One of the key benefits of writing on the web is the ability to hyperlink writing. That is, link to other sources to cite studies, backup opinions, provide background information, explain a train of thought, or provide examples.

Instead of merely substituting analog writing for digital (e.g. publishing in a blog post what would have once been handwritten or typed in a word processor), the use of hyperlinks can help students to engage in higher-order thinking and reflection.

Silvia Tolisano has been advocating for hyperlinked writing to feature in the classroom for many years. She explains that hyperlinked writing is an important genre that can be overlooked.

As learners create digital writing artifacts, it is important to require them to embed relevent links to individual words or phrases to extend readers' experience. Doing so adds a depth to the digital writing that aids readers in making stronger connections with the writer's message, and not just satisfying the teacher or completing a task.
A Guide to Documenting Learning (Tolisano and Hale, 2018)

You can read more about the topic of hyperlinked writing on Silvia Tolisano's blog or in her book, A Guide to Documenting Learning (2018).

Images, Graphics, and Artwork

Images really are an essential part of sharing and consuming information. With a digital portfolio, there are many possibilities for creating images.

Apart from creating drawings by hand or taking photographs, students can:

Use images from a Creative Commons site (a fantastic way to learn about copyright).

Take screenshots of work completed in other programs, perhaps with annotation.

Create mindmaps using a tool like Bubbl.us (or even hand-drawn and photographed).

Create digital artwork using a wide range of web tools. Some examples are Google Drawings, emoji.ink, Toy Theatre Art Tools, Bomomo abstract art, Tate Kids street art, Draw Island, and Auto Draw.

Make infographics, posters, or illustrations using a tool like Adobe Spark or Canva. Both of these tools offer free education accounts.

Demonstrate data with graphs, charts, and spreadsheets using tools like Google Sheets, BEAM, or Canva.

Evelyn is a student in the Performance Learning Program at Seycove Secondary in Canada. She has created a signature style for the feature images for her posts on her blogfolio: customized bitmojis. Here's an example for her entry about maximum surface area.

Video

Video is transforming education and students can be both video consumers and creators.

Videos can bring learning to life and engage students while helping them understand key curriculum concepts. Students can watch videos from sites like YouTube or Ted ED and then embed these directly into their digital portfolio with an accompanying reflection.

It's now easier than ever to create videos as well. Students can make screencasts, stop motion, explanatory videos, animations, dramatizations, interviews, photo montages, and many other types of videos. You could even consider the recording of a video conference to be a worthwhile artifact.

According to Hani Morgan ( 2013), assigning students the task of creating videos can lead to many positive outcomes such as improved writing, research, and communication skills, along with higher-order skills like problem-solving and critical thinking. At the same time, students can benefit from being creative and collaborating with others.

Student created videos can be excellent artifacts for digital portfolios as they allow pupils to demonstrate their learning and understandings in truly unique ways.

Check out The Educator's Guide To Using Video In Teaching And Learning to learn more about popular tools that students can use to create their own videos.

Audio

You've probably heard of the theory of learning styles? That is, the idea that an individual learns better if they can receive information and produce work according to their preferred learning style, for example, auditory, visual, or kinaesthetic. While the evidence for learning styles may be mixed, many teachers still indicate a strong belief in the learning style theory (Newton and Miah, 2017).

Writing isn't for everyone but some students really shine when they can use audio instead of, or alongside, text. There's a lot students can do with audio when building their digital portfolio.

Podcasts: These are simply audio files that are published online. Students might like to make a series of podcasts to coincide with a subject they're studying or a project they're working on. Anchor.fm is a popular free service for recording, hosting, and distributing podcasts.

Audio interviews: Students could record interviews with others to create rich artifacts for their portfolios. Interviews can expand students' understandings, challenge beliefs, and reinforce learning.

Audio reflection: For some students, typing written reflections can be laborious. An audio recording may be a preferable option for some students or an essential accessibility tool for others, for example, those with vision impairment or learning difficulties.

Music: Audio doesn't have to just be speech of course. There are so many ways music can be embedded into an ePortfolio. Students can record themselves playing an instrument, or if they don't have instruments, they might try a program like GarageBand or a simpler web tool such as Chrome Music Lab.

Recording audio is now quite simple on any device. If students are using a tablet like an iPad there is a simple Voice Memo app. Richard Byrne from Free Technology for Teachers has shared three tools for making short audio recordings on the web without an account. The files can be downloaded as MP3s and then uploaded to the portfolio. Some other tools like Anchor.fm allow you to embed audio files into a blog post.

Check out The Edublogger's Guide to Podcasting to learn more about tools that can be used for creating audio.

Social Media

You might not have considered using social media as artifacts in digital portfolios, but if you teach older teens or adults, there is a lot of scope for using this type of content. Of course, if your students are younger, particularly under 13, then social media artifacts aren't an option.

Most social media platforms now provide an embed code to display a post within a website. You might want to embed tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram posts, Pinterest pins or boards, or even a TikTok post.

Why would you want to embed social media? Well, social media is now the way a lot of us learn and connect. It can influence our thoughts and expand our thinking. Embedded social media content can serve as interesting artifacts to demonstrate what students are thinking, learning, or creating.

Social media is expanding learning beyond the school day with content and meaningful interactions on specific topics. When combined with meaningful engagement, social media technology can be a powerful tool to reinforce learning, establish effective communication abilities, and provide the career and necessary life skills for students in the 21st century.
Mark Stevens (2014)

Here's an example of what an embedded tweet looks like. As you can see, you can consume the content without leaving this site or click through to Twitter to engage on that platform.

We've been continuously updating our Complete Guide To WordPress #Accessibility. Look for more videos and info to be added to the guide soon, which is more like a mini-course than a typical blog post.

Take a look and please share! https://t.co/FnySGuXcQt#a11y #WordPress pic.twitter.com/qhi7QY9Khx
- CampusPress (@CampusPressWP) May 26, 2020

Other Embeddable Content

Digital portfolios really open up a world of possibilities for creating diverse artifacts that can easily be embedded. Some of these don't fit neatly into a category.

Here are some more examples of other content that students could create and screenshot or embed into their blogfolios:

Google Suite Creations: Google Sheets, Google Drawings, Google Docs, Google Forms, and Google Slides all allow you to embed your creations into a blog or website.

Comics: Students can demonstrate their learning or thoughts creatively using a comic creation tool like Make Beliefs Comix.

Maps: Students of subjects like geography or history could add fantastic content to the portfolios by embedding custom maps or directions using Google Maps.

Puzzles and Games: Embedding games or puzzles can make digital portfolios become interactive. In many cases, students can even code their own games, for example, games created with Scratch can be embedded. Other free options for creating custom content include puzzles from Jigsaw Planet, interactive games from Class Tools, or learning activities from Educandy.

Quizzes and Forms: Students can interact with their readers or collect data by publishing quizzes, forms, or surveys on their blog. Google Forms is a good way to create a quiz or survey, or you could use a tool like Crowd Signal.

Memes: As Sharon Serena explained in a post on the ISTE blog, "Memes are a great educational device for teachers and students alike to promote clarity, pedagogy and humor."

GIFS: Like memes, GIFs might provide another fun option to add humor and creativity to a student's portfolio. Warning: popular GIF sites generally contain content that is not appropriate for children. Gifs4Kids is an online resource with student-friendly animated GIFs. Check out this post by Julie Smith for more advice on tools for creating GIFs.

Learn More About Quality Artifacts

As educators and students progress through their ePortfolio learning journeys, you might come up with some tips or standards of what makes a quality post in a blogfolio. Your own standards will be personalized based on your style of portfolio, platform, and age of your students amongst other things.

Below is an example list of guidelines from a post on The Edublogger about quality student blog posts.

You might even put these sorts of ideas into an assessment rubric which we'll discuss in the next chapter.

The Reflection Process

If we don't create a process of reflecting and framing them, then we are leaving learning up to chance.
Jackie Gerstein, ISTE Panel discussion, 2016

A portfolio will normally comprise more than just the artifacts themselves and will include some form of reflection.

Students can reflect on what they've learned, their successes and "failures", their problem-solving processes, and their future plans or goals. Reflective entries can give educators an insight into how students are learning, rather than just what they have learned.

Sometimes students are given prompts or frameworks to drive their reflection. You might naturally think of the reflective part of a portfolio as being text entries but for some students, they find more success and enjoyment creating audio or video reflections.

Dr. John Spencer is an educator with a lot of experience using portfolios. Dr. Spencer suggests a dual layered approach to reflection.

Have students reflect on both the learning process and the final product. There's a common mantra in the education community that "it's about the journey and not the destination." I'm not sure I agree. Sometimes the product drives the process. So, have students reflect on both.

While most educators embed a culture of reflection into their portfolio program, there are other educators who feel that the push to reflect can be premature and students should be given some freedom on their online space initially.

Educator Jabiz Raisdana, has documented some compelling thoughts on student blogging. He advocates for freedom, stating that:

If you want your students to blog effectively, give them the freedom to experiment and write about what interests them.

Stay away from portfolios and forced reflections on their learning, at least until they get the hang of it.

Wait until they find a voice, find an audience... before you push your agenda of meta-cognition and reflective learning.

Perhaps on the other end of the spectrum is the argument from Matt Renwick in his article , Think You're Doing Digital Portfolios? Think again. Matt implies that reflection is a non-negotiable in an effective digital portfolio program,

Of course, all of the posted artifacts of student learning are accompanied with reflection, self-assessment, and goal setting for the future. Otherwise, it's only sharing content. Nice, but not necessary for students' education.

As with most topics, you might want to try a balanced approach to reap the benefits of reflection while ensuring students still have the freedom to express themselves naturally and be creative.

Assessment and feedback are integral parts of any teaching and learning process. When you're using ePortfolios, you have some choices in the way you'll approach assessment and the feedback process.

While assessment can take on a variety of forms, two of the main types are formative and summative assessment.

Formative assessment is designed to get feedback on student performance during instruction. The purpose is to guide the teacher in making changes to their planning and instruction to best meet student needs. Formative assessment is sometimes called assessment FOR learning as it focuses on student growth.

Summative assessment provides teachers, administrators, students, and families with an understanding of a student's overall learning. This sort of assessment generally happens at the end of instruction. Summative assessment is sometimes called assessment OF learning as it focusses on the learning product.

If you have trouble remembering the difference between these two types of assessment, you might enjoy this image from @bryanmathers.

The great thing about ePortfolios is they allow for both formative and summative assessment. Some educators prefer to focus on formative assessment for their portfolio program so students can redesign and improve their artifacts throughout their course.

Betsy Gilliland is an associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi Māno. She has written an interesting article where she reminds us that ePortfolios allow teachers to be more than just assessors but perhaps collaborators or coaches.

Though teachers can still assign grades to individual assignments, they may choose to make those grades placeholders, where students can revise texts and submit them for reevaluation through the portfolio.

Assessment of Transversal Skills 2020 ( ATS2020) is a European learning model that's based on formative assessment. The project which was co-funded by the European Commission focused on the implementation of ePortfolios with 10,000 students aged 10-15 years.

The ATS2020 learning model contains a cycle of 6 phases as illustrated in the diagram below. The model offers a student-centered approach. Teachers take on the role of coach and assessor while students actively work towards developing skills and competencies.

This interesting framework might provide some inspriation for your own approach to learning and assessment with ePortfolios.

Feedback

Ongoing meaningful feedback throughout a course can help students achieve their full potential so much more than if they wait until the end of semester to receive their grades. When using digital portfolios, educators can offer students feedback in the portfolio platform or via private communication such as in-person or email.

A useful model for feedback is presented by John Hattie and Helen Timperley (2007) as Feed Up, Feed Back, Feed Forward. In this model the learner considers three questions:

1. Feed Up: Where am I going (what are my learning intentions?)​

2. Feed Back​: How am I going (what does the evidence tell me?)​

3. Feed Forward: Where to next (what are the next steps or goals?)​

Educators aren't the only ones who can offer students feedback on their ePortfolios of course. Feedback from peers or even the wider community can be very valuable.

In terms of peer feedback, some educators find it helpful to come up with a system that doesn't leave feedback to chance. For example, high school ceramics teacher Heather Alexander set up a system to ensure all students would receive constructive peer feedback on their blogfolios.

I have students work in "peer blog mentor" groups. They self-select a group of 3 -5 peers and then I match their group with a group in another class. I moderate the comments so I can check for accuracy and completion before they are published.

Anecdotally, many teachers will tell you that peer feedback is powerful and this is backed up by research. Stefani et al. (2007) observe that "Peer-commenting on student work is an excellent incentive for improving the quality and effort that students invest in their work. Furthermore, those who comment learn as much from devising their comments as those who receive feedback on their work."

When a portfolio is made publically available on the web (or login credentials are provided), students can enjoy the benefits of feedback from family and wider networks as well. A 360 degree look at their work, may open students' eyes to their achievements and future directions.

In a WordPress site, or a blogfolio, comments can be used for feedback. Here is a simple example of how a private comment can be left on a portfolio hosted with CampusPress.

Understanding what quality feedback and quality comments look like is a skill that most of us would agree is really lacking around the web - just read comments on facebook or any news website. This is just one more example where experiences in a portfolio program transfer beyond traditional academic knowledge and skills.

Rubrics

Many educators find it's useful to use a rubric that ensures everyone is on the same page in terms of expectations. An article by the University of Waterloo reminds us that even though portfolio entries can be personal and subjective, a rubric ensures the ePortfolio is still assessable by objective standards.

This electronic portfolio rubric was created by Joan Vandervelde for the University of Wisconsin-Stout. It includes 7 categories with 4 levels of achievement. The university website has more rubric examples and tools to explore on their professional development page.

Auburn University in Alabama has published two useful rubrics - one is designed for formative assessment and one is summative (to assess "final" portfolios).

If you're looking for an example of technology skills that students can build over time while working on their blogfolio, check out this classic scope and sequence from Kim Cofino and Yokohama International School. The intention was to provide a scaffolded list of skills to help students understand "the kind of skills that a blogger would take for granted, but a non-blogger might not think about". Silvia Tolisano has also adapted this rubric to make a clearly presented framework that grades students from beginner to expert.

One of the great things about having a ePortfolio program is the opportunitiy for students to self-reflect. The use of a rubric such as the examples above provide structure to the self-assessment process. Other educators like Heather Alexander offer students reflective prompts to help guide their thinking.

For some educators, it might seem overwhelming to assess a portfolio at the end of a semester or class. Richard Byrne has used digital portfolios with his computer science students and explained his approach to assessment which breaks down projects throughout the course.

When it comes to my students' digital portfolios, I'm looking at them on the whole and not grading them other than pass/fail. That's because I'll be giving grades on the projects that are featured within the portfolios themselves throughout the year.

Beyond Traditional Assessment

It's exciting to think that ePortfolios can act as a form of sustainable assessment which researcher David Boud (2000) describes as assessment that "encompasses the knowledge, skills and predispositions required to support lifelong learning activities".

Sustainable assessment can meet student needs in real-time while also preparing them to meet future needs as lifelong learners. After all, learning is not a state you "achieve" and tick off, there is always something new to learn and always new challenges ahead. All educators want their students to develop the passion to learn without them.

Whatever approach to assessment and feedback you use, to get the most out of your program, schools should ensure their approach is planned, consistent, and ongoing. You want all educators and students to know what is expected so they can get the most out of the experience.
What's motivating your students?
As a final thought, it's interesting to think about what is truly motivating your students. A high quality and regularly updated portfolio offers a plethora of benefits but can take a lot of work. Some may question why students would put in so much effort. Is the quest for grades the only or best motivation?

In her TED X talk, "the grandmother of electronic portfolios", Dr. Helen Barrett, announced that she is on a campaign to make ePortfolios a more intrinsically motived process, rather than a process motivated by extrinsic grades.

Dr. Barrett suggests that students can become intrinsically motivated when the portfolio program includes choice, voice, sharing, feedback, and immediacy. She also describes these as the motivating characteristics found in social networks.

Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.
Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2009)

As we have seen, there are many different ways you can use and create ePortfolios. Regardless of the tools or types of portfolios you implement, an ePortfolio program has the power to transform your learning environment whether you're in the K-12 setting or in higher education.

The most exciting aspect of an ePortfolio program lies not in the technology itself but in the creation of a school culture where all learning is valued, visible, reflected on, improved, and celebrated.

To revise some of the key questions we've covered in this guide, please save or print a copy of this ePortfolio Planning Guide.

📌 Download a PDF copy of the ePortfolio Planning Guide.

What is your next step on your ePortfolio journey?

Want to talk more about WordPress, CampusPress, or school-wide ePortfolio programs?
Please reach out. Our team can help you go through your options in more detail.

Want to learn a bit more about the pedagogy and technology behind ePortfolios?
We recommend George Couros' Digital Portfolio Master Course.

Want to try out digital portfolios yourself or with students before implementing a school-wide program?
Our sister service, Edublogs, is perfect for that. You can get started today for free.

Have a question or something to add?
Let us know in the comments below or contact us directly. We're always happy to chat!

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The Complete Guide To Student Digital Portfolios | CampusPress

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The Complete Guide To Student Digital Portfolios by Ronnie Burt and Kathleen Morris Last updated on September 12, 2020 Digital portfolios can revolutionize the teaching and learning process. This complete guide to student ePortfolios answers many questions you may have, from the academic benefit ...

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twitter.com

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Jesse's Padlet contains great information and some great diagrams that have been great.

https://padlet.com/jesseglutz/edse20016-digital-resources-x5qtut67slwke45g

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Collaborating with fellow Pre-service teachers has been fantastic. Thanks Celeste Miller for Sharing your Padlet. I have added it to mine under PST Padlets. Some great info on your Padlet.

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•

Intro

Chris Emdin

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As a bestselling author, professional speaker, entrepreneur, and digital storyteller, I am passionate about helping you confidently take center stage in your own life. Life is your grand stage, and you hold the mic to share your unique story with the world. Imagine standing at that metaphorical microphone, surrounded by countless possibilities. Beyond helping you to optimise your days for maximum productivity and wellbeing, my mission is to help guide you in discovering and embracing your strengths, transcending mere skills, and aligning your goals with intention and purpose. Together, we'll break free from societal expectations, overcome obstacles like self-doubt, perfection and fear, and let go of limiting beliefs that hinder progress. With clarity, guidance, and confidence, let's navigate intentional living, embracing pivots and leaps of faith, shaping a narrative that not only resonates with you but inspires and uplifts others. Welcome to a place where success is defined by your unique path as you embark on a journey of growth, self-discovery and empowerment.

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Looking for study tips, ways to improve your productivity and find better work-life balance? Study With Jess is here to help you maximize your focus and concentration, get more done, and stress less! Discover my books, Work-Life Balance Survival Guide and The High School Survival Guide., along with my planners today!

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https://www.influencerintelligence.com/blog/Xw/10-education-influencers-you-should-follow

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One of our friendly team members will get in touch shortly to book a personalized tour of the platform at your convenience.

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HTML Crash Course For Absolute Beginners

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How to Create a Digital Escape Room Using Google Forms | Tutorial for Teachers

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There seems to be a podcast for everything and everyone. And a growing number of people are finding their audio niche: More than a quarter of Americans listen to podcasts weekly, according to The Infinite Dial 2021. The audience is more diverse than ever, spanning all age groups. As of August 2020, Ipsos reports that 1 in 4 children listen to podcasts - a 20% increase from six months prior. Educators are acting on these changes: TeachersPayTeachers.com reported a 650% increase in podcasting lesson plans after the launch of Serial in 2014. The shift from listening at home to using podcasts in the classroom is not without [...]

Growing up in the South Side of Chicago, Keisha Rembert recalls what it was like attending a Catholic school, where students of her background were not well-represented. Her parents are migrants from the Jim Crow South, and people who looked like her were never talked about in positive ways at school. "I shut down and I didn't engage because I wasn't equipped to challenge the power dynamic in that classroom with the truth," said Rembert, who grew up to become a U.S. history and English teacher in middle school for 17 years. Still based in Chicago, she now "teaches teachers" as an [...]

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Discover valuable resources. Access insightful articles, guides, and tools to enhance your teaching journey and educational expertise.

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This looks like so much fun. I would like to incorporate a digital escape room into my lessons for digi tech year 9 and 10. I'm hoping to be able to have students complete on at the end of Term 2.

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Google Slides Bitmoji Escape Room Tutorial

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easel.ly | create and share visual ideas using infographics

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Easel.ly is a simple web tool that empowers anyone to create and share powerful visuals (infographics, posters)... no design experience needed! We provide the canvas, you provide the creativity.

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This is a great diagram and info on combination of TPACK, SAMR and Bloom's Taxonomy. View for yourself and feel free to take a copy and add the link to your own padlet for future reference.

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The Wonder of Little Things Young Readers Edition

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Atomi provides students with activities to introduce topics and consolidate learning. The short videos are relevant to the curriculum and keep students engaged in their learning as they deliver complex topics in a well-explained manner.

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Online teaching & learning platform for Australian high schools | Atomi

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Atomi is the online platform that simplifies and enhances high school teaching and learning in Australia. Engage students with curriculum-aligned videos, quizzes & resources.

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F-10 Curriculum | V9 Australian Curriculum

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Edublogs is more than just WordPress

Edublogs enhances WordPress with education-specific features, themes, and plugins. We offer tailored tools for classroom management, student privacy, and collaborative learning.

Our platform is designed to meet the unique needs of educators and students, with dedicated support and an active educational community.

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Edublogs is more than just WordPress Edublogs enhances WordPress with education-specific features, themes, and plugins. We offer tailored tools for classroom management, student privacy, and collaborative learning. Our platform is designed to meet the unique needs of educators and students, with dedicated support and an active educational community.

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SAMR and TPACK: Two models to help with integrating technology into your courses

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Arantes, J. (2022). The SAMR model as a framework for scaffolding online chat": A theoretical discussion of the SAMR model as a research method during these "interesting" times. Qualitative Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-08-2021-0088 (ahead-of-print) Bates, A.W. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age - Second Edition. Vancouver, B.C: Tony Bates Associates Ltd.

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https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/samr-and-blooms-taxonomy-assembling-the-puzzle

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Blogger.com - Create a unique and beautiful blog easily.

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Publish your passions your way. Whether you'd like to share your knowledge, experiences or the latest news, create a unique and beautiful blog.

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Virtual Museum Templates

Below are links to several sample virtual museum rooms I developed based on an example I was provided by the generous educators at Keith Valley Middle School. The first sample is a full template to use in the development of a virtual museum. Use and share it freely. The room samples, with the exception of "Class Slides," were all developed by Keith Valley personnel and I modified them for use in new museums. Note that the "rooms," as opposed to the template, do not include active links.

Full Virtual Museum Templates

Warneka Design-4 rooms, 13 artifacts

Blue-Yellow Design-4 rooms, 16 artifacts

Grand Entry Design-5 rooms, 23 artifacts [Note: With the exception of the text and wall hangings, the graphic elements in the museum entrance are grouped. To make changes to this template, ungroup the project.]

Virtual Museum Rooms

During ISTE 2010, I had the privilege of learning about a new method of using non-linear PowerPoint. Michelle Lynn of Fox Creek Elementary in Highlands Ranch, Colorado along with Jessie Bertman, Kim Eikenberg, Lindsey Moore, Katie Patterson, Angel Wolf, and their students presented a poster titled "Interactive Primary Lesson or Non-linear Moon Phase PowerPoint." Their students combined a graphic of moon phases with the non-linear technique to create a project that demonstrated their understanding of their science content. You can see some examples of their student work at http://drop.io/nonlinearppt.

After viewing their presentation, I realized their were many other ways to use the platform to teach or reinforce cross-curricular content. Of course, many have seen the techniques used to make game boards in the past, but here are some other ideas I hadn't seen before.

Alternative Techniques [Note that the HTML versions linked below provide visual representations of the slideshows, but, in many cases, the internal links are inactive. You must download the PPT file to engage interactively.]

Booklist (PPT version/HTML version): Using a bookshelf concept, students place pictures of their recently read books on their home slide and provide synopses or personal recommendations about the books on the linked slides.

Book Report (PPT version/HTML version): Using simulated book tabs, students declare their knowledge of concepts such as plot, setting, characters, genre, and vocabulary as it relates to their selected books. See an example of aNevada Report using this technique (PPT version/HTML version).

Timelines (PPT version/HTML version): Using pre-existing timelines or based on self-created timelines, students create links to information about each node on their timeline.

Maps (PPT version/HTML version): Using an exiting map, students create and place buttons over different locations on the map.* These buttons, then, link to pages referencing each of those locations.

*If you wish to place an unseen button over another graphic, one option is to create a shape and place it directly over the graphic. This is particularly helpful when working with maps. To make it so you can use the button as well as see the graphic behind the button, make the fill color of the object transparent. Buttons will not work if you select "No Fill."

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Educational Virtual Museums Developed Using PowerPoint

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Below are links to several sample virtual museum rooms I developed based on an example I was provided by the generous educators at Keith Valley Middle School. The first sample is a full template to use in the development of a virtual museum. Use and share it freely.

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E. I. Sawin, The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 57, No. 6 (Mar., 1957), pp. 343-344

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0:00 / 0:33•Watch full video

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How to create interactive PowerPoint presentation tutorial

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Create videos that engage and impress. Animoto's drag-and-drop editing tools and visual effects make it easy. No training or experience necessary.

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Create, edit, and share videos with our free video maker. Combine your photos, video clips, and music to make quality videos in minutes. Get started free!

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Microsoft Forms is a web-based application that allows you to:

Create and share online surveys, quizzes, polls, and forms.

Collect feedback, measure satisfaction, test knowledge, and more.

Easily design your forms with various question types, themes, and branching logic.

Analyze your results with built-in charts and reports, or export them to Excel for further analysis.

Integrate Microsoft Forms with other Microsoft 365 apps, such as Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, so you can collaborate with others and access your forms from anywhere.

Explore templates

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Microsoft Forms - Free tool to create online surveys, forms, polls, and quizzes

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Use Microsoft Forms to easily create online surveys, forms, quizzes and questionnaires. AI powered, free survey tool from Microsoft.

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This is a good read with some tips on how to engage students with learning. You don't have to be elaborate and over the top. Tapping into students passions, is easy and just asking them how their weekend was, shows them that you care.

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Simple strategies to help you design instruction and implement classroom projects that inspire and challenge

The creative application of technology can help you engage digital learners in content, reinforce skills essential to life in today's world, and, most importantly, require them to actively create rather than passively consume.

There are plenty of conversations happening about how to engage today's digital learners, but it's important to remember that using technology is only one part of the solution. With the pressure of today's classrooms, student use of technology needs to help them progress toward specific learning goals and should require them to apply what they know to create something new or solve a problem. The liberal application of technology for technology's sake is no longer sufficient.

The following four ideas can help.

1. Tap into their passions

Digital learners are idealistic and passionate about issues that affect them. Climate change, privacy rights and freedoms, and health and safety, are just a few topics that engage today's students. Listen for the challenges and passions in your student population and see if they connect to content, ideas, or issues you want to address.

You might consider having students create public service announcements to explore content issues in depth while practicing writing and communication skills. A public service announcement, or PSA, is a type of advertising designed to inform viewers about an issue and get them act or to change their behavior. Ellen Phillips and Marielle Crespo hooked their students using a fictitious letter from a local politician. After learning a local playground wasn't clean or safe, students visited the site, documented problems they discovered, and worked in small groups to develop a series of PSAs to address the problem.

When developing a PSA, students have a chance to practice and apply persuasive writing skills in a real-world, authentic context. A short PSA targeted at a particular audience encourages students to focus on writing organization, as well as voice and word choice.

2. Connect to their world

With all of the pressures to "cover" curriculum, it often seems difficult to invest time in real-world projects. But if we only focus on delivering information, our students end up doing work that bears no resemblance to what they see people doing in the world beyond the classroom. While vocabulary building, math facts, and algebra problems may be important indicators of comprehension, these tasks are not necessarily motivating or interesting and certainly do not create a compelling hook for those students who always ask "why do we have to know/do this?"

While project-based learning and authentic tasks are designed to forge a strong connection between what is learned in the classroom and why it is valuable in the world outside of it, there are other ways to make these connections. What do your students talk about or do when they aren't in a classroom? How can outside interests be used to help them develop a deeper understanding of the curriculum or build important skills? For example, many science teachers have students explore the physics of sports when studying Newton's Laws of Motion.

When Tiffani D. Brown noticed that her middle school students were not engaged by daily journal writing, she made an effort to meet her students "where they already were - in the land of MP3s and YouTube - and [her] classroom was forever changed." She didn't abandon her curriculum or her learning goals. She simply took the time to find examples of popular music she could use for writing prompts that turned into discussions about symbolism, metaphor, and more.

Students spend a lot of time watching TV. While it's probably safe to assume that most students are not always watching high-quality educational programming, they have most likely seen great storytelling, watched news broadcasts that affected their mood, and watched a video biography on a person who interested them.

Using a computer to fill out a digital worksheet isn't any more compelling than using a pencil to fill out a paper version. Encourage students to show what they know, and capitalize on their interest in technology, by creating news broadcasts or video biographies on classroom topics using formats similar to those they see on screens outside of the classroom. Technology tools make it easy for students to create, rather than just consume, these types of media.

Students often decide which movie to go see by watching trailers online. Movie trailers are fast-paced and exciting, conveying in just a few moments the details of a story while making the viewer want to see more.

Instead of creating traditional book reports for Four ways to engage digital learnerss your students are reading, ask students to "sell" the books to other readers by creating movie-style trailers. Creating a book trailer helps students focus on key details, summarizing, character analysis, and writing, and the content of each trailer gives you an opportunity for you to assess reading comprehension. As they learn to think about and audience and how to change their behavior, they learn to write persuasively, a focus of the new Common Core State Standards for language arts.

3. Make students the experts

In the flipped classroom, students first explore a topic at home and then return to class to ask questions, address misunderstandings, and apply knowledge in a new project. To reinforce learning, especially for difficult topics, ask students to create learning resources like videos, animations, and tutorials for new topics and processes.

When you require students to teach something to someone else, they must take the information apart and think about how best to share it so that it results in understanding. This process of deconstructing and reorganizing information helps students cement concepts and provides an opportunity for you to pinpoint misconceptions.

Having students develop instructional materials also demonstrates that you value their expertise, time, and effort. When second-grade teacher Katy Hammack found that worksheets and reviews weren't helping her students master grammar, she began creating tutorials in Pixie that her students could refer to on their iPod Touch devices. She soon found that students internalized grammatical rules more quickly when she had them create the tutorials themselves. She shares, "When I notice someone having a grammar problem, I refer them to a student-created tutorial designed by one of their peers... and once-struggling students take pride in the fact that their work is being used by other students."

4. Give their voice a platform

Ask your students to tell a story. Digital storytelling is a great way to get them to delve deeper in the content you are studying. For example, have students create docudramas showing historic events or scientific processes through the eyes of a particular person or object. As they write the story, they not only show what they know about the content, they have a chance to apply everything they have learned about perspective, voice, organization, and audience.

Rather than merely retelling stories, ask students to adapt, extend, or create new versions of books they are reading. Students can modernize a fairy tale to make it more relevant, comparing similarities and differences along the way. This instructional strategy is mentioned in Classroom Instruction that Works as well as a Reading: Literature standards in the Common Core.

If we really want to give student voice a platform, we have to let them choose the story, the topic, and the characters. Adapting a book or story may be more engaging than just retelling it, but ultimately students need to tell their own stories. An autobiography is a great first step, but this should only be the beginning. If we want our learners to find their voice, we must give them less instruction and more well-crafted opportunities for learning. In the words of Gary Stager, " Good prompts do not burden a learner, but set them free."

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What can your students create?

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The creative application of technology can help you engage digital learners in content, reinforce skills essential to life in today's world, and, most importantly, require them to actively create rather than passively consume. There are plenty of conversations happening about how to engage today's digital learners, but it's important to remember that using technology is only one part of the solution.

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Authentic opportunities for reading, writing, speaking, and listening

Digital storytelling provides students with a powerful learning experience that capitalizes on their interest in technology and their skills with it. Because they are creating as well as consuming media as they develop stories, the process of researching and creating a digital story provides an authentic opportunity to practice essential literacy skills in areas of reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts state, "The need to conduct research and to produce and consume media is embedded into every aspect of today's curriculum" so students develop the ability to "analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new." Digital storytelling gives students these opportunities while making deep connections to content.

While the technical aspect of digital storytelling may be the "hook" for students, technology is secondary for student learning during the process of developing a digital story. Effective digital stories combine extensive research, ideation, critical thinking, organizing, writing, editing, and media literacy. Digital storytelling provides a compelling need to read and listen carefully and to write and edit effectively.

Reading

Science and Social Studies, with their wealth of information, data, and primary sources, are great places to implement digital storytelling projects that require students to " gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and report on information and ideas."

When reading informational text, students often overlook the author's perspective on an issue. A great digital story doesn't just share facts about something, but shares information through a story from a specific narrator. Digital storytelling requires students to research a topic and read information with an eye to author's perspective, helping them learn to carefully analyze informational text for point of view.

While students may be able to quickly locate information online, they will need guidance in digging deeper to find high-quality information. Primary sources generally have a name attached to the creator, but you will want to include instruction on how to evaluate the quality of secondary sources. Who is the author of the information? How many other authors are cited as research to support the information?

Students also need instruction and coaching on how to analyze and use the information they find. The use of graphic organizers during the research and organization process helps students evaluate and organizer the information they are gathering. As students become more savvy using organizers, discuss how to choose an organizer most appropriate for the content and ideas.

Writing

While digital storytelling implies a focus on technology, a powerful digital story cannot exist without powerful writing. While students will be reading, researching, and even creating soundtracks, the heart of a powerful digital story is a well-written script. Digital stories are concise moments in time, usually consisting of approximately 300 words.

When students are trying to tell a story from their research, 300 words won't initially be enough. They may start with 500-1000 words and then work down to make the story more concise, focusing on precise language for powerful communication. The editing and redacting process helps them dig to the heart of the issue they are exploring.

As you begin to incorporate this process in your classroom, you may want to utilize how-to videos. Most students have used YouTube videos to learn more about something they find compelling whether it is creating rubber band bracelets or learning the latest soccer move. Students may have also encountered how-to videos in flipped classroom environments. Student's familiarity with this format means you have to teach them less about the process and more about the criteria makes them effective.

Digital storytelling also provides students with authentic opportunities to write in all three forms mentioned in the Common Core State Standards ( Appendix A): argument, informational/explanatory, and narrative. The best digital storytelling projects often combine these forms of writing for powerful effect.

Many PSAs include argument and persuasive elements to change the behavior of the viewer. Students can funnel their passion about issues into informative PSAs to raise awareness and educate others about an issue.

When creating documentaries, students often make the mistake of simply summarizing facts instead of telling stories that will engage viewers. To avoid this, encourage students to share the information as a docudrama or dramatization of events from a specific character's perspective.

Listening and Speaking

In today's digital world, research materials come in many forms. Students will, of course, read many texts, but they may also be listening carefully to music for lyrics, intonation, and mood.

They may also be listening to interviews and other oral forms of storytelling or even conducting their own. As they listen to this information, especially content from primary sources or interviews, they need to become critical listeners to better evaluate point of view and personal perspectives.

As students are work to get the narration just right, they don't often notice they are reading and practicing fluency. Effective digital storytellers don't "wing it;" they write scripts, read, reread, edit, and practice, practice, practice. They work on intonation, using grammar cues to help with cadence and flow.

If your students aren't strong readers or confident speakers, or if they are new to the English language, creating a digital story provides an authentic reason to practice fluency. To provide a non-threatening environment for this practice, use headset microphones. This allows them to record, listen, and rerecord until they are comfortable with their fluency and ready to include their speech within their digital story.

Media Literacy

The plethora of options for images and soundtracks can lead to stories with a lot of flash and not much depth. Educators can structure the process and provide feedback to help students build essential digital age communication skills. For example, many teachers require a script to be written and even a storyboard and pitch to be given before work on the computer can begin.

As with any skill, students will grow into their ability to " take advantage of, rather than suffer from, the visually stunning effects today's tools provide." As students work to combine a compelling narrative with powerful imagery and a meaningful soundtrack, they become increasingly savvy about the media they are creating. It takes practice to become effective communicators, regardless of the medium.

The creation process also turns them into more astute media consumers. As they add pans and zooms to their stories to focus the viewer's attention, they start to see these same techniques being used on them in the commercials and movies they watch.

Digital storytelling provides a wealth of opportunities to engage students in content learning in your classroom. No matter what content they explore, the process of research, writing, creating, and editing a digital story builds essential 21st century literacy skills.

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Build Literacy through Digital Storytelling

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The process of creating a digital story provides an authentic opportunity to practice essential literacy skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.