Project Summary

Doug Heavisides’s Project:

Exploring the Possibility of Using Weebly.com to Create Student E-Portfolios

1. Your grade level and subject area.

This project focuses on all juniors and seniors at the Hartford Area Career and Technology Center (HACTC), regardless of the program they attend. 

2. Instructional objectives.

The instructional objectives for this project are twofold:

1. Students will record their learning by collecting evidence for each of the competencies and tasks contained in their program’s curriculum.

2. Students will organize the evidence of their learning into an electronic portfolio.

3. Your rationale: Why include media education in the curriculum? Describe your teaching philosophy and justify why this unit is valuable for students.

In this age of accountability, it is important for schools to measure student learning beyond the data standardized tests provide. To this end, the HACTC asks students to record and reflect on their learning by creating a portfolio.  The portfolio not only teaches students the important skills of recording and reflecting, it also is assessed using a school-wide rubric and therefore provides administrators and teachers with consistent data to help improve instruction and assessment.

Currently, the display of these portfolios consists only of printing off the evidence (employability documents, pictures, certifications, etc.) and organizing it loosely in a three-binder.  While this method is tried and true, it is also out of date and misses an opportunity to teach and assess the information technology standards from the Career Clusters. By having students display the evidence of their learning electronically, they can increase their technology fluency while also providing prospective audiences (colleges, trade schools, employers, etc.) a glimpse of their technological skill set; a must in order to be competitive in today’s culture.

4. Specific goals from the Vermont Frameworks of Standards.

While full-day technical centers do follow the Vermont Framework of Standards, half-day centers do not.  This is because students attending a half-day center, like the HACTC, still take math and English at their sending schools.  As such, a more practical alignment for this project would occur with the Career Clusters Essential Knowledge and Skills Statements.  The Career Clusters organization creates the competencies and tasks lists for all programs at the HACTC (and the rest of Vermont) and the Essential Knowledge and Skills Statements are competencies that all students must achieve regardless of the program they are enrolled in. These competencies focus on areas like communication, problem solving, ethics, teamwork, leadership, and of course, information technology. This last area is where this project of creating electronic portfolios naturally aligns itself.  Below is a list of competencies that this project addresses:

Use Personal Information Management (PIM) applications to increase workplace efficiency.

Manage personal schedules and contact information.

Employ technological tools to expedite workflow.

Use information technology tools to manage and perform work responsibilities.

Operate Internet applications to perform workplace tasks.

Access and navigate Internet (e.g., use a web browser). Search for information and resources.

Evaluate Internet resources for reliability and validity.

Operate presentation applications to prepare presentations.

Prepare presentations for training, sales and information sharing.

Deliver presentations with supporting materials.

Facilitate group work through management of shared files and online information.

Facilitate group work through instant messaging or virtual meetings.

Employ computer operations applications to manage work tasks.

Manage computer operations. Manage file storage. Compress or alter files.

5. Knowledge, skills and attitudes promoted by the activities: What will students gain from this experience?

Aside from the collection and reflection, this project empowers   students to use technology to organize information in a personally creative way.  Most of the platforms that students currently interact with on the Internet do not allow the user the freedom of creation.  For instance, Facebook controls the color scheme and the layout, only allowing the user to input data.  The freedom lies only in what profile picture to post.  Creating an electronic portfolio using Weebly.com (or a host of other platforms) is almost the exact opposite of Facebook in that the information has already been generated and the user has to figure out the best way (color, layout, etc.) to present that information so that it has the desired effect on a particular audience. 

6. Sequence of activities: What will happen in the classroom? Describe the major activities you plan to implement, including a descriptive list of materials needed, sample materials, worksheets, video, images, audio, etc.

At this point, I have spent all of my time for this project learning Weebly.com.  Therefore, I have a general outline of topics that need to be addressed so students can get the most out of the platform. However, that outline comes nowhere near the specifics of a Unit or Lesson Plan (materials, worksheets, videos, images, etc.).  Below is the outline of topics:

A.    Students need to be taught the basic concepts of communication.  Our school uses Focus, Audience, Depth, Form, and Voice to do that.

 

Focus – What does the creator want the audience to know?

                        Audience – To whom is the creator creating?

Depth – What information does the creator need to provide the audience so that he/she/they can understand the focus?

Form – What is the best way to present the depth so that they audience can understand the focus?

Voice – What tone does the depth need to be presented in so that the audience can understand the creator’s focus?

In addition, and as a nice companion to the concepts above, students need to learn the 24 Persuasive Techniques.  Having an understanding of both will allow students to have the language to analyze media; a necessity for creating a successful portfolio.  

B. After the basics of concepts of communication have be learned, the students then need to learn the “psychology of color.”  I refer to it in this manner because it is a “unit” taught by the HACTC’s Computer Technology Applications instructor before he introduces to his class game and website development.  In building my own electronic portfolio using Weebly.com, the most difficult decision thus far centered on what color template to choose.  There are so many options that I really had to think about my audience in order to choose correctly. To get students to understand this concept, I will have to go no further than the advertising media.  Analyzing print and TV commercials using Focus, Form, Voice, Depth, and Audience as well as the 24 Persuasive Techniques will provide a strong foundation for students’ understanding.

C. After the “psychology of color”, the next thing that will help students utilize Weebly.com to its fullest potential is an understanding of how layout and placement of information can help to target an audience for a specific purpose (Focus).  This understanding is important because the second most difficult decision to make when using Weebly.com lies in choosing which layout will be the most effective for the purpose of the portfolio.  Having too many pictures on the “Home” page is not an effective layout strategy just like having no pictures on the “Evidence of Learning” page is also not an effective strategy.  And like the color schemes, the best way to understand the effect of layout on an audience is to analyze examples using Focus, Form, Voice, Depth, and Audience; however, the examples do not have to be portfolios, they again can be print and TV advertisements as well as various types of websites.

D. Lastly, once students have an understanding of color and layout, the next step is to get them familiar with the functionality and navigation of the Weebly.com platform.  Since Weebly.com allows teachers to create classes of websites with relative ease, it would be no problem to set up a bunch of proxy sites for the students to practice on. The practice will be structured, focusing on the skills needed to utilize the features available to them: scanning a document and saving it as a .jpeg; uploading the .jpegs to the site; inserting text; uploading files; etc. Again, I have not had time to create these practice sessions yet, but necessity will be the mother of invention when I began using Weebly.com with a pilot group.

7. Criteria for evaluating student learning/performances/products: How will you know if the experience is successful? What will students produce that will help you determine if they learned something valuable from the experience?

 The current school-wide rubric for portfolio assessment can still be used to assess these electronic portfolios.  The rubric is structured around Focus, Form, Voice, Depth, and Audience and those elements of communication still apply regardless of the form of the portfolio.  That said, since those elements exist as the foundation for analysis of examples meant to build understanding of concepts needed to actually create the portfolio, they will naturally provide the catalyst for formative assessments at every stage of the outline of activities.

8. Your expectations of student responses: Based on your teaching experience, how do you expect your students to respond to these activities? What aspects will they enjoy the most? What will be hardest for them? you?

I expect the students to do well with Weebly.com and to create some cool portfolios.  The most fun will be in analyzing print and TV advertisements.  However, the part of the process that will take the most preparation and clarification is the scanning of documents to create .jpegs.  The difficulty surrounding that aspect almost nullifies the ease of use the Weebly.com platform has worked so hard to create.  There is an easier option but it requires signing up for Weebly.com’s “Pro” package; a package that comes with a price. Go figure. It is a business after all.