Project as a Digital Portfolio

Background first
We (PDHPE) were given an extra period this year in Year 9 as an opportunity to pursue a “Project”. The “Project” concept was designed to exploit the opportunities that the DER laptops has provided us.

We (PDHPE) spent first semester playing with ideas and training staff in the software and potential ideas for the project. We liked the idea of Project Based Learning (PBL), and tried to make our piece more like this concept than not. Our lack of training in PBL probably means it is probably more not like PBL, but we were definitely influenced by that thinking.

Since Easter, the Year 9 students have been finding there way around the devices and are now confident enough to launch into most of the software and techniques needed for the project. With some help from classroom teachers (and hopefully some organic peer tutoring), the products that are the end result of this initiative should be exciting and broad in their range.

The final question – what to actually set as the project theme – was a question answered by my PLN on Twitter. This Wallwisher wall collected many responses to the question, and after a faculty meeting one idea was used to develop the theme.

Deployment was the next issue. Moodle was the natural platform, but a simpler method came to light – email. Every student has a DET email account. The project was sent as an attachment to every student in Year 9. All they had to do was download the portfolio to their DET laptop harddrive and away they went. (The only hiccup was that when we launched the portfolio project at a common time, the DET Enterprise Portal was down for 30 minutes, resulting in some ad-libbing until the kids could access their email)

And the result – check it out here. You’ve got the staff version, with some suggested teaching notes as well.

As a first attempt at something like this, it won’t be perfect, but my staff are committed to implementing, evaluating and ultimately renewing the project in the future.

If you get a chance, have a look and comment back here on what you think of it. Apologies to @deangroom and other PBL advocates – it’s not PBL , but it was the best fit starting point for us.

And as always, take it with you, play with it, change it and make it your own if you like it.

Going paperless

One of my dreams, right from the start of my journey with technology, is that one day I could eliminate paper entirely from my job. Pipedream….perhaps, and up to now I’d never quite cracked a method that would allow the dream to become reality.

Recently, I was helping out at a Moodle workshop and I was shown a method that may head me closer toward the paperless classroom. It includes using Moodle, a photocopier that can scan documents into PDF format, and Microsoft OneNote. It’s funny how all these conditions suddenly coalesced one day, not only in my thinking, but also in reality.

One of the biggest spends at my school is the printing of coursework booklets for students. Just about every faculty prints booklets that contain “learning” activities. I could spend a whole blog post discussing the merits (or otherwise) of these booklets, but that’s for another day. A guestimate from my boss was that we spend $20K+ on printing costs each year! Imagine what you could spend that sort of cash on, rather than on “one use” booklets that inevitably get tossed away at the end of each semester.

So what if we could make the use of these booklets electronic in nature? The obvious question was how do you make the electronic version editable to the extent that students could submit work, without having to print out pages, write on them and hand them in? That would just defeat the purpose of trying to go paperless.

So, in a wonderful combination of serendipity and old fashioned professional networking I have a potentially workable solution to play with. I have to thank Pam from Newcastle High for her insights in showing it to me.

Firstly, my target group. In my case, the participants will by our Year 10 (2010) students, who will have their DERvices (netbooks) and will hopefully, by then, will be skilled in the use of them. These netbooks have Adobe PDF readers and creators and OneNote preinstalled, making the whole process possible.

OK..here’s how it works.

Take your paper version of your booklet. Stick it through your photocopier, so it produces a complete PDF copy (in my case 40 pages). Upload the PDF booklet to your Moodle course, and make it available as a resource file. At the same time, create an “Upload one file” assignment activity that is named after the worksheet, or whatever, and put it in the same area as the booklet PDF.

Now, in class, when you want to use a resource or activity that is in the booklet, the kids can open the PDF booklet to the required page. Select the page for printing, but instead of printing it to paper, in the print dialogue window, select “Print to OneNote”. The page selected will now appear in a OneNote notebook. For those that know OneNote well, you know you can click and type anywhere on the page. In this case, the kids can click and type anywhere on the selected page imported from the PDF booklet. The kids can now do their work on the page, and when they finish, save it as a PDF file on their PC.

They head to Moodle, and upload their work as a PDF to the assignment activity. The teacher can open the file, grade the work and feedback to the kids….without touching one piece of paper! Samples of student work can be collected and presented electronically as an ePortfolio, without carting folders, books or paper to your Head Teacher or Principal.

Sure there will probably be limitations that don’t suit everyone’s workplace, but I my humble opinion, it’s a right step in an exciting direction.