STJLabs » Delsie

Electronic Student Portfolios

Delsie — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:24:51 +0000

At the Language Dept. we are trying to start using electronic student portfolios. At their teacher’s request, the student will choose a sample of their best work from their language class (this can be extended to other classes as well) in any given year. The portfolio should be available for other teachers to see in future years. We decided that it would be a good idea for this to be be stored as a Google Document since it avoids storing CDs, thumb drives, etc. Each teacher could be made a viewer by the student (who will own the document) as needed.

The document would be titled:

Last Name, First Name, year of graduation, STJ Academy

and it will be in stjlabs.

I’m thinking that a Presentation would be more versatile than a Document since we can then upload pictures as well as written documents.

If you are doing electronic portfolios already, or if you have any thoughts on this, please let me know. Thanks. My stjlabs address is: delsie@stjlabs.com.

BYKI (Before you know it)

Delsie — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 12:21:41 +0000

I have been searching for a way to give my students a way to listen to the daily vocabulary at home. During the semester I have tried, with Josh’s considerable help, to devise a delivery system. I thought I was all set but then I found this other website that creates flash cards with sound. It also sets up games for the kids to play with the flash cards. It is very easy for the teacher to set up and I think more engaging for the student than just the written word and the sound. I haven’t had any feedback from the kids yet and I’ll let you know when they do. My card lists are in:

http://www.byki.com/user/dgandiastj

Introduction from Delsie

Delsie — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:13:48 +0000

(Written on 2/3/08) I’ve been using computers since they were as big as a bus and we had to feed them punched cards. I started my work life as an Economist doing research on tariffs which required massive numbers of punched cards. It took me a couple of years to punch all the commas in the right place. I had to program all that in Fortran and I’m very glad that’s all over.

Over the years I kept up with the new technology introduced in the world of computers both at work and at home, including websites.

I have been teaching Spanish (a rather accidental transition) since the turn of the millennium and I am especially interested in using technology to help students with learning disabilities learn Spanish. I find that children, who have trouble paying attention to a lady speaking in a foreign language, love to sit for hours in front of a computer listening to the same language and playing language games. For those kids, developing reinforcement tools might be invaluable.

My immediate problem is that I have been laid low by a horrible cold for the last two weeks and I’m trying to conserve what little energy I have to teach class, etc. I haven’t been able to get to work with all these wonderful toys.

The one thing I did do was introduce Google Documents to the students and, having ironed out some initial problems; things are going swimmingly for us all.

For those who might be thinking of using Google Documents let me tell you that story. Since I had difficulty talking (and I talk a lot in language class since, at the moment, I am the only one in the room who knows the target language) I decided to move our Hispanic Country Project forward and started working on that.

The project consists of a Power Point presentation on a Hispanic country. The presentation is in English for SP 1 and in Spanish for SP 3. The first day we went to the language lab was almost a disaster. All of them knew enough about Power Point to start the presentation but some don’t have it at home, some don’t have a thumb drive, and thus couldn’t save what they had done. We scrambled and all was well in the end but I knew we had to find alternatives.

Enter Google Docs. They still need a thumb drive but only for a few minutes at a time (while they save pictures from the internet and then upload them to the presentation). This makes it easier to share a thumb drive. They can also work from home and from the library and don’t need to have Power Point at home.

Google is ten times better than I could possibly be in explaining how to set up a gmail account and the Google Documents account. I had to point them in the right direction when it came to uploading their presentations and making me a collaborator. My guess is that 75% of the kids have set everything up correctly and I told them they should all be set up by tomorrow (Monday). I will be able to help anyone who still has difficulty in the lab tomorrow.

As their collaborator I have been able to check their progress, their revisions, make suggestions and corrections. Up to now I am very impressed. It is easy to use and allows me to keep track of their work, which, I hope, will cut down on extensions and will improve the quality of the work. I want this to be quality work not just for the author’s sake but also because I hope the other children will learn something useful from each one of the presentations.