Electronic Publishing
Student Portfolios on the Web
- Grade level: Elementary, Middle School, High School.
- Subject Area: All subject areas.
Unit Description
The Web provides an excellent medium for compiling and displaying student
portfolios. In this unit students and teachers will create Web portfolios of students' work.
Objectives
Students will:
- Critically reflect on the work they have created over a given time period.
- Identify areas in their work where they need to develop and grow.
Materials and Resources
In developing our lessons and activities, we made some
assumptions about the hardware
and software that would be available in the classroom for teachers who visit the
LETSNet Website. We assume that teachers using our Internet-based lessons or
activities have a computer with the necessary hardware components (mouse, keyboard, and
monitor) as well as a World Wide Web browser. In the section below, we specify any "special"
hardware
or software
requirements for a lesson or activity (in addition to those described above)
and the level of Internet access required to do the activity.
-
Special hardware requirements: A scanner and access to server space to store portfolios.
-
Special software requirements: None.
-
Internet access: A Medium-speed (28,000 BPS via modem)
or high-speed (greater than 1 MBPS via network) connection.
Unit Lesson Plans
- Lesson One: Portfolio Planning. Students critically review
their work, making selections to be placed in their Web portfolios.
- Lesson Two: Assembling Portfolios. Students create
their Web portfolios and up-load them onto the server.
Relation to Standards
Portfolios can be used in many different academic areas in support
of different curricular standards.
One Computer versus Many
The plans for this unit are tailored to fit teaching
situations where students
have access to several computers with an Internet connection. To accommodate
classrooms
that do not have access to a computer lab with full Internet connections,
students can
work in research groups to explore Internet sites and conduct their research.
If you have only one computer with Internet access, you
may
choose to do one of the following:
- If you have the technology, you may hook up the computer to a TV
monitor or
LCD projector. This will allow the whole class to see sites in the preliminary
stages when students are exploring sites created by other children.
- You may choose to have
students take turns working in groups using the computer with Internet access.
- You may also download files from the Internet and save them on a
disk. Now you can transfer the
files you saved on a disk to the other non-Internet computers. Installing copies of
your Web browser on all non-Internet computers will allow you to view the
pages you saved to a disk. This will not allow students to explore
hyper-links, but they will be able to access and view the information by opening
each file with the Web browser.
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