Student Digital Portfolios are definitely the way to go to not only display work, but prompt Students to own their own learning. Completed projects are displayed with journal-like entries describing the project and learning outcomes. It's also a great journey down memory-lane at the end of the year at just how far we've all come this year!
There are so many programs out there that can be used for this, however since our 3rd through 5th Graders received Chromebooks this year and were new to Google Apps, I chose Google Slides to be the program we used. In this presentation document, they added a "slide" for each completed project, along with a title, a picture and they wrote about the project (what it was, what they liked, what they found challenging, their final results and more). Their designs were uniquely theirs and it was fun to see the creativity. At the end of the year, Students had more than 20 slides they presented in the Lab to other Students and these gems were also on display at our Tech Fair. Nice work!
For 2nd Graders, I used Board Builder in Discovery Education, with the same concept of adding pictures of completed projects and several comments about the project, then presenting to the Class. This is a fun online poster, easy to assemble and eye appealing when presented. They need only a username and password to access this program. Discovery Education is also a great tool for gathering research, links and pictures and similarly displaying this collected material using Board Builder. I will use this next year for 'Research Season', in the Lab.
Students are always encouraged to be creative and to tinker. Their imaginations are really quite something.
Elana Moore
