Digital Portfolios

Trainer's Agenda

Before the Workshop  

Materials

• Butcher paper
• Markers
• Check sheets for resource centers
• Task cards and directions for centers
• Digital Portfolio CD (recommended)
• Two diskettes per student
• Digital camera
• Scanner

Students bring

• Two photos (one of self )
• Journals
• Art or class work

Preparation

1. Call site coordinator and discuss hardware/software; know how their hardware/software works.
2. Make copies of check sheets for students.
3. Make copies of rubric for students.
4. Display task cards and directions at resource centers.
5. Preview the elementary and secondary portfolio examples.
6. Make sure you know how to work the digital camera.

Trainer's Agenda and Guidelines

Interview Activity:

Match participants up with someone they do not know. Ask them to interview each other for two minutes per person. When the interviews are completed, each partner will take a turn introducing the other to the whole group. (Leader could take notes to compile a warm-up activity for next session ­ ex. Fill in blanks: ___was raised in South Dakota.)

Record Keeping: Attendance, surveys, consent forms, other paperwork as necessary.

Define Digital Portfolio.

Have the following questions on a board or poster in clear view of all groups.

• What is a digital portfolio?
• How/where do we use it?
• How would technology be used?

Divide into small groups and brainstorm questions for 10 minutes or so and have each group report. Return to large group for discussion.

Break

Discussion of Assessment and Assessment Tools

As a group, read and discuss the Assessment Guidelines piece included in the participants' packets. These are the guidelines participants will be following as they work with digital portfolios. In the last session of our workshops, participants will use these guidelines to assess presentations and provide feedback from peers as a form of assessment.

Digital Portfolio Presentations: CD

There are examples of two different types of digital portfolios to be shown to participants. Have participants take notes for discussion after the presentations. The first to be shown is an elementary student digital portfolio, which is set up in folders on a floppy disk. Although this is an elementary portfolio, there are many ideas, which can be used at any level.

The second demonstration is a secondary level demonstration on a CD-ROM disk. It is important that instructors preview these selections on this disk prior to presenting so they can determine which selections they would like to use with their groups.

Implementation Discussion

Leader will conduct group discussion about how digital portfolios can be used in participants' classrooms. Have a recorder write ideas and post them.

Bridge to Practice

• Design the template for their portfolio
• Create rubric for portfolio presentation
• Wrap it up

Resource Center Activities Guidelines

Participants will work with a partner to complete the following centers. Each participant will have a checksheet to complete for the stations. You may introduce the centers by going through and explaining each center to the whole group or compose direction cards for each activity to be placed at each center. The centers can be completed randomly except the Digital Camera and Scanner Centers must be completed before the Publishing Center. We have included task cards, which can be posted near materials and directions, to identify each center. The task card templates and directions are located in presenter's folder. Participants checksheet template is in the participant folder.

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STATION 1: DIGITAL CAMERA

1. Insert formatted disk in digital camera provided by the instructor..
2. Take at least 2 digital photos using the camera. One of yourself; the other may be any subject of interest.
3. Make sure that camera file is set for image size 640X480 resolution when set in the still mode. This will give you a file of manageable size that can be altered using a photo-imaging program.
4. Your photos will be saved on the disk. Remove disk from camera. Make sure your name is on the disk!

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STATION 2: SCANNER

1. Read and discuss directions to operate the scanner.
2. Scan the photos you brought to class. You will save them to your floppy disks.
3. Save photos as JPEG files.

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STATION 3: PUBLISHING

1. Open up your image disk with a program such as Adobe PhotoShop, Photo Imaging Software, etc.
2. Select one of the photos and work with the editing tools ­ cropping, sizing, etc.
3. Watch the size of the finished photo you save by saving in a medium or lower resolution, around #3. This is necessary in order to save your photos on 1.4 Mb floppy disks.
4. Try to keep photos around 45 to 60 Kb.

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STATION 4: INTERNET

1. From one of the following Internet sites (or your own favorite site), select four pieces of clip art you would like to save and possibly use in your portfolio.
   http://www.clipart.com
   http://clip_art.com
2. Save the clip art you have selected onto your disk.
   If you are using a PC, right click on the image you would like to save and save image to your disk.
   If you are using a Mac, hold the mouse button down until a window opens. It will give you a variety of options. At this time, direct it to save to your disk.

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STATION 5: SETTING UP PORTFOLIO

Create folders on a formatted disk in drive A. Give them appropriate names. Directions for creating folders:

1. Put floppy disk in drive.
2. Go to "My Computer."
3. Click on A drive; click on File, select New, select Folder.
   This will create a new folder on your disk.
4. Backspace on words "New Folder" and name the folder. You can always rename a folder by right clicking on the folder. A pop-up menu bar will come up, and you can choose the option Rename.

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STATION 6: E-MAIL [NOTE: If you already have an email account, compose a note to send to your instructors.]

1. Set up a free e-mail account with Hotmail or Yahoo or Excite.
2. On the Internet, go to http://www.hotmail.com (or one of the others) and follow the directions to establish a free e-mail Account.
3. Once you have established your e-mail account, send your instructors an e-mail message.
4. Explore Global Schoolhouse telecommunications activities at http://www.gsh.org/pr_cfm/AdvancedSearch.cfm.

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STATION 7: INTERNET DIGITAL PORTFOLIO INFORMATION

1. Go to the Internet and open the following sites:
   Middle School Science teacher portfolio: http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~jjmohn/portfolio.html
   Portfolio Guidelines: http://www.indiana.edu/~ist/programs/portfolio.html
   Several Portfolio Assessment links: http://www.coexploration.org/htmlpedagogy.html
    
2. Look at each of these sites and record four good ideas about digital portfolios to share with the group during group discussion time.

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Assignment (optional)

All participants may create a personal digital portfolio, which will be about what was learned in each of their sessions, and is due at the last session. Participants who are not taking the class for credit will present their portfolios at the last session.

Participants who are taking the sessions for college credit please see the Course Syllabus.

NOTE: To access New Mexico Standards and Benchmarks, go to the RETA site at: http://reta.nmsu.edu.

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Copyright 1999 New Mexico Regional Technology Assistance Program.