A key element of adding items to a student’s digital portfolio is adding photos and videos – these are most often captured on a student’s mobile phone camera roll. At this point though, most students become stumped at how to get this media into their Google Site. (This becomes ANOTHER evidence that students need more practice with their digital skills.)
The best method is via the Google Drive app on the student’s phone. (Video coming soon).
If you often upload media (photos and/or video) to Google Drive or other platforms, you can save yourself lots of time – and storage space on your phone – by reducing the file size of your photos and videos as you capture them.
Watch the video for some quick tips on how to do this with both photos and video.
And, I’m pleased to add that I had to learn some new skills this week for this video and some others that I made for my Clean-up Blitz. Previously, whenever I’ve included videos from my phone, they have been just screen recordings with no commentary. I’ve just learned how to record my phone screen with a voice-over – something I should have learned a while ago. It involved Quick Time on my Mac – an app that I seldom use.
Digital Portfolios 2.0 is a series of blog posts describing the carefully crafted steps and scaffolds put in place to help a high school reinstate the use of Digital Portfolios.
Teachers must have a convenient way to follow up with students to ensure that each “course” portfolio page is complete. In addition, teachers might use a simple rubric (see below) to assess quality or do a completion checklist. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize sooner that teachers needed some help and support in the follow-through. I wish I had helped some of the earlier teachers and classes set up this simple workflow, but this is a case of better late than never. Hopefully, at least a few teachers will follow this simple Google Classroom workflow to help determine the extent to which their students have completed the digital portfolio post for each of their courses.
To make this easy for teachers, here is a workflow for collecting an appropriate Google Site link in Google Classroom.
Super important warning: If students submit an “edit” link to their Google Site, or “upload” their Google Site from their Google Drive, they will lose all edit access and the Google Classroom teacher will become the temporary owner.
Use the italicized text below to paste into the “Instructions” section of your Google Classroom Assignment:
Use the “link” option to submit the link to your Google Site Portfolio Page. Be sure that:
you click “Publish” to update your site
you go back to the Publish button, click the little arrow, and choose “View Published Site”
NOTE: as long as you continue to “Publish” your site, the most recent version will show up for your teacher
This clipped portion of the previous video shows students how to get the link they need for submission to the Google Classroom Assignment. In addition, this pre-written Google Classroom instructions text is in the YouTube video description.
Assessing the Digital Portfolio Page
At the very least, teachers should track the completion of the digital portfolio page for their courses as complete or incomplete. Assigning a grade will also support the importance of the digital portfolio. Here is the link to the rubric below. Feel free to edit this rubric or use a tool like magicschool.ai/ to generate your own rubric.
Review this YouTube video for suggested formatting for an EBHS Digital Portfolio page in Google Sites.
What I learned today... 