Assessment continues to weigh heavily on my mind here at the beginning of the 2010-11 academic year. While I have worked with students using VoiceThread as an alternative learning artifact, I had not considered using it as form of assessment or digital portfolio until friend and colleague Diane Cordell pointed me to this fantastic post, “VoiceThread as a Digital Portfolio”, in which Chrissy Hellyer, a teacher who was working at an international school in Bangkok at the time of the posting, used VoiceThread as part of student led conferences (you can also read a cross-post of how this teacher implemented VoiceThread here). In these posts, Hellyer thoughtfully outlines the steps she took before, during, and after the creation of the digital portfolios, including reflections on what she would do differently.
One of my goals this year in my work with our teachers and students, particularly our new cohort of Media 21 students (now called Learning 21), is to help students take a more active role in articulating what they are learning. After reading this post, I think VoiceThread is a perfect medium for this endeavor; not only could students showcase learning artifacts they feel reflect mastery of course performance standards, but they could also use this digital portfolio to share other key learnings, insights, reflections, and learning tools they feel are an essential part of their story as a learner.
As I start to lay the groundwork to pilot this form of assessment in my collaboration with teachers and students, an additional blog post by Silvia Tolisano, a Technology Integration Facilitator and 21st Century Learning Specialist, is also informing my planning for helping our students create digital learning portfolios.
Are you using VoiceThread or other tools a means of student or learner led assessment in your library environment either with staff or with students? If so, what advice would you recommend for those embarking on this endeavor, and which web-based tools have you found most effective for creating digital learning portfolios? I look forward to your sharing your experiences and examples, and I will also be blogging on our own student created portfolios later in the semester!
Recent Comments