Choose Your View	10 Big Ideas	Electronic Publishing

Electronic Publishing
Student Portfolios on the Web

	Unit Description Objectives Materials and Resources Unit Lesson Plans Relation to Standards One Computer versus Many

• 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.

1. Special hardware requirements: A scanner and access to server space to store portfolios.
2. Special software requirements: None.
3. Internet access: A Medium-speed (28,000 BPS via modem) or high-speed (greater than 1 MBPS via network) connection.

Unit Lesson Plans

1. Lesson One: Portfolio Planning. Students critically review their work, making selections to be placed in their Web portfolios.

2. 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.

Choose Your View	10 Big Ideas	Electronic Publishing