Jan
30
Using Technology to Show the Process, Not Just the Product
January 30, 2006 | |
This coming Wednesday, Debra Jarjoura and I will be giving a presentation to the MCDS Lower School faculty about how to use technology to document classroom activities and to create simple student portfolios. Debra, a preschool teacher at The Phillips Brooks School and a true Reggio Emilia aficionado, would definitely not describe herself as a technology power-user, but she always seems to find relevant, simple, elegant ways to use technology in her classroom. In her handout describing the purpose of documentation and portfolio work she says:
“Portfolios and documentation in the classroom are used to tell a story of a child’s life at school. This story is told through multiple perspectives (teacher/child/family), and is supported with a variety of work samplings, transcriptions, and other documentation types.
Several goals are attained through the thorough, thoughtful, and successful use of a well-planned portfolio and documentation process. These are:
- A child’s developmental progress is charted over time, and this aids in revealing their quality of thinking and skill level. Documentation is an authentic assessment tool that aids our assessment of the child’s experiences, and provides an opportunity for each child to self-assess their involvement and goals.
- Parents become more connected to work of their children. Documentation reflects the classroom experience to the outside observer, and shows the respect we hold for this work. Further, it gives parents and others a glimpse of the child’s involvement in project work, social relationships, and their use of the classroom environment.
- Documentation, portfolio development, and work sampling help us to make more informed curriculum decisions. It highlights activities that provide successes, and helps us to identify needs and areas to develop. It reflects accountability on all levels.”
Debra goes on to enumerate the different types of documentation that can be used for student portfolios, including narratives, transcriptions, photographs, observations, products and work samples, self-reflections, webbing, video and tapes.
I have seen Debra and her colleagues employ technology to help document their classroom experiences through extensive use of the digital camera, voice recordings, daily emails home to parents encapsulating that day’s activities, scanning student work, videotaping big events, and using word processors to type up enormous amounts of hand-written and recorded transcripts from student interviews.
I think that once most teachers learn about classroom documentation, they clearly see the value in it and would love to send their students home not just with completed “products” (research papers, artwork, etc.) but with a description of the process used to arrive at the product. But the inevitable question is how exactly are teachers supposed to find the time and wherewithal to pull it off?
I’ve been experimenting with using a combination of a digital camera and a PowerPoint template on my laptop to try to capture classes in the Computer Lab as they are happening. The template has a variety of ready-to-go slides with 1, 2, 4 or 6 picture placeholders and text boxes underneath them. I run around during class, capturing students at work with my camera. Then I put my camera aside and move around the room with my laptop and template. I interview kids as they work, asking open-ended questions like “how did you decide how to make this?” or “what is the hardest thing about this project?” while I type their responses into the template. After class I bring the photos in to the template, matching up the kids to their quotes. Then I can print out the documentation to display on the wall or email the whole thing home to parents. But I have to say, it takes a lot of steps and I couldn’t pull it off without other teachers in the room.
There’s always voice recordings or video cameras to help with this process of classroom documentation. But again, who has time on a regular basis to pull the sound into a movie or to edit the video into iMovie during their regular teaching life?
I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the various ways teachers and students can use Web 2.0 tools to document the process of student (and teacher) learning. Blogs and podcasts seem like excellent ways for learners to reflect, experiment and to evolve in front of a larger audience. I hope to work with some of our teachers in the coming months to begin experimenting with these newer forms of documentation.
An administrator once gave me some great advice, saying that not every classroom endeavor has to be a “gourmet meal.” That if you have one or two gourmet meals every once in a while, you’ll appreciate them more. Most of the time classroom “meals” end up being nourishing, healthy and perfectly fine, but nothing too fancy. Maybe the goal of using different documentation techniques should be to showcase an occasional gourmet meal that shows, rather than tells what is going on in our classrooms and inside the heads of our students.
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