Doug and Richard are also using classroom documentation to make the process of learning more visible in their classrooms. The ways in which they do this, however, is slightly different in each classroom. Janet posts a daily journal entry to her class website daily. Richard (on the right) posts a month’s worth of daily journals at the end of each month. Doug (on the left) digs into a few individual classroom projects each year, and documents the entire project in great detail. Click below to see an example of Richard’s Monthly Journal and Doug’s recent Earthmover Project:

Richard’s Monthly Journal (.pdf)

Doug Earthmover Project (.pdf)

For Janet, documenting learning in her classroom on a daily basis became an important goal, and she asked for help in getting started. What began as a 1-2 hour process last fall has now been whittled down to a 20 minute/day committment on her part. The steps include taking digital photos, transferring them to her laptop, dragging them into a template she’s created in Keynote, typing up the description and student quotes, saving as a .pdf and uploading the file onto her classroom web page. Here are a few examples:

In honor of Halloween, I asked the 1st graders to write & illustrate simple spooky stories. I then used my iRiver to record them reading their stories. The unintended consequence of this rather pedestrian assignment was that it gave the adults a window into the kids’ thinking process as they try to sound out and spell words. I put all of the pieces together into an iMovie, which we then posted on our website for parents to enjoy. Here’s the link:

Download

http://room12.edublogs.org/

To give a listen to the kids’ work (which I must say, sounds fabulous!) go to any of the 3 class sites below:

• Huckleberry Room
• Banyan Room
• Maple Room

The iRiver is my new best friend. I’m impressed with the sound quality, ease of use and storage capacity. Less impressed so far with the Snowball USB mic we just got, but I’ve admittedly only just started playing with it.

But I think one of the biggest points we managed to drive home had to do with how teachers only typically provide parents with a tiny glimpse into their classrooms and the students’ learning process. The rare times parents come to the classroom to see student work it is for the final product — the PowerPoint speech, the Winter Concert, Spring Art Show, Portfolio Day, etc. Rarely are parents exposed to the process of learning, and rarely are students and teachers asked to reflect about what they are learning as they are learning it.

I used an example from my own life as the parent of preschool-aged twins. One of my sons brought home yet another painting from school several weeks ago. When he showed it to me, I thought “that’s nice, honey” and planned to add it to the growing pile of preschool art we already have.

Later in the week, however, the teacher stopped me in the hallway to tell me how excited my son had been about their recent experimentation with color mixing, and upon learning that blue+yellow=green and red+blue=purple, he asked “but how is black made?” The class proceeded to experiment with paints until they came up with black, and his artwork was the end result of the discussion. Suddenly that “nothing” painting became a treasure to me. A glimpse into his development.

A quick note on the back of the painting, a typed caption, or better yet, an audio recording or digital photos and transcription of the class discussion would have allowed parent, teacher and even student to understand the process of learning so much more deeply.

“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.