When we met this week, someone mentioned that we do not yet have a clear idea what should be in the portfolios that we will have the students develop. Let's start the discussion now (with ablog of course)
As a fisrt thought, the students should have for each year these things:
1) one of their finest homework assignments
2) one of their best quizzes or tests
3) a discovery activity or "math lab" investigation (example: exploration of y = A sin (bx) family of functions in 11th grade)
4) a project in which they have applied mathematics as a model; this should include some significant mathematics
5) a clear proof written by the student of a math topic related to his / her current grade level
OR a short paper on a math history topic related to that year's topics
Okay, that should get us started. Reactions? Other ideas?
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12 comments:
That seems to be a pretty solid start. I did explore this software as the portfolio container.
http://campus.digication.com/micdsmath/Welcome/published
I wasn't at the discussion, so maybe this was already mentioned...who will keep and maintain these portfolios? I see by Elizabeth's comment that they will me electronic, not paper. How will projects get on there? You know, things like posters and such?
Actually, I think we might want to preserve all project artifacts and deliverables electronically. So, a poster is perhaps better archived by a photo or a video of a presentation of its content.
Also, it seems that at some point of the process we (or the students) may of necessity find that the best display container for a math portfolio is an appropriately created blog.
I have now created a blog for my courses which is located at http://drpcourses.blogspot.com/ Some of the examples I mentioned earlier this summer are located here. If you scroll down the left-hand sidebar (click on the images) there are two different parametric curve movie projects, a paper on Kepler's Laws, a paper on Predator vs. Prey. Near the bottom middle of the page there is a star trek applet (former java student) and a video created for the flat classroom project.
One hint about creating blogs that the kids visit is that you probably want to remove the navbar at the top of the page so that they can't click on "next blog" and be randomly sent to some inappropriate page. This was a big issue when teachers first started blogging their courses. In order to do it you have to insert a few simple lines of .html which I can give you.
Cheers,
John
I like the list of items the portfolio should contain. But will the students be responsible for scanning these items and uploading them or, as in the case of a poster, taking a digital picture and uploading?
I like the idea of having everything available electronically, but will we
totally discontinue putting projects in display cases or in our rooms? Some projects might involve hands on three dimensional models that the students would make. I would be sad if the possibility of sharing such projects is lost because "everything" has to be electronic.
Also, I was thinking that we should include some sort of reflection from one year to another about the growth the student is experiencing - maybe a journal entry on how the student sees the junior year project as richer or more sophisticated than the grade 10 project.
To paraphrase "a portfolio should be made as electronic as possible but not more." Of course cool posters, physical artifacts, etc. should continue to be displayed appropriately in their own element. On the otherhand, for preserving, archiving, and sharing (wider distribution) an electronic portfolio seems to be the most useful. But why not use inclusive-or thinking and do them both.
Suppose you have a student that creates a contraption that demonstrates several physical laws in an unusual and clever way. What's the best way to incude this work in a resume or application for an internship or university scholarship? Links to (or media containing) a paper and a video of the demo/presentation is now the currency of the realm. It's as easy as pie to turn the video camera on. So, why not do it, if it is in the best interest of the student? The day is coming when not just art students will be submitting their portfolios with all applications. Why shouldn't we be first in helping our students present themselves in the best and most up-to-date way?
I think Dr P has an excellent idea to use video to capture dynamic aspects of physical models and "clever contraptions" so they can be shared globally - as he points out, this could include sharing with colleges for admission and maybe scholarship purposes.
Hi,
I just stumbled upon your blog and read through the comments. Two thoughts occurred to me:
(1) If your students are creating digital portfolios a wiki is a better tool than a blog for that. Blogs can be used to archive projects but they are better at facilitating conversations. Since a student working on a portfolio is likely to edit their work again and again, well, that's exactly what a wiki is for. Any wiki will do but I know that pbwiki.com wikis have a portfolio functionality built in.
(2) I was intrigued by the idea that having digital portfolios suggested a difficulty with displaying student work in school. If you don't have them already, maybe your school might look at installing a digital information system across your campus with display screens scattered across the various buildings. You could then highlight a different students ' work every day on a different screen all across the campus giving the student a much wider audience than the people that pass by a display case. Nonetheless I think Drp is right on taking the inclusive-or approach. ;-)
Cheers!
Darren
Hi Darren,
Sorry, I missed your talk and workshop this summer.
Thanks very much for your helpful suggestions.
John
I am intrigued by dkuropatwa's comments:
(1) that a wiki might be a better
tool than a blog for a digital portfolio. Since I have only used wikis a few times, I have a question: Suppose a student has his portfolio in a wiki; can he/she easily limit who is able to make changes in that wiki?
(2) I think my comment about physical models was misunderstood because of my unfortunate reference to display cases which are probably totally outmoded; I do think we should make use of our new flat screens to display student work and get a wider audience; my larger point was that I have students who enjoy making physical models and express themselves in a way more meaningful to them when they can actually build something and not do everything in a "virtual world". But through Dr. P's suggestion to use video images of those models, we can have the best of both worlds.
Hi willh,
Yes, you can limit who has access to make edits to a wiki by making it semi-private. That means anyone can view the content but only people who have the password can edit it.
Wikispaces.com has a promotion giving educators private wikis (only members can view or edit the content). Sign up for a wiki, make it private, and keep reading and clicking through the links. You'll find a checkbox that allows to request the add-free private wiki for educators.
Pbwiki.com is currently has a promotion going on where they are giving full featured wikis (with very fine grained control of pages; valued at $250/year) to educators. Sign up now and you'll get your full featured wiki soon:
http://www.backtoschoolchallenge.com/
For the record, a free pbwiki also gives you al the features you need need to restrict access: anyone can view the content, only "members" or folks with the password can edit pages.
Cheers,
Darren
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