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From the first week of school, the six-year-olds in my classroom begin to create an online presence in the form of a blog and digital portfolio. We use a blogging platform to do this, and include artifacts that show their progress in writing, reading, math, social studies, and science. I am frequently asked why I do this. Even more frequently, I can see in a colleague's eyes that they are thinking "why," even if they don't verbalize their question. The way that those educators have always done portfolios has worked well for them. Their students are learning the things they need to learn and are building a paper portfolio as they do so. Why do I take the extra time to upload those artifacts?

Got a question about eportfolios? Here is the place Should be a compulsory starting place for our teachers.

In the past, my students have used Photostory3 to show and talk about their learning as a starting point for their Student Led Conference with their parents. I'm now teaching in a mac school so Photostory3 was not an option. I felt that iMovie was just a little too intricate for what I wanted, a wiki was a consideration and then the brainwave of VoiceThread appeared in my head late one night!

In the past, my students have used Photostory3 to show and talk about their learning as a starting point for their Student Led Conference with their parents. I'm now teaching in a mac school so Photostory3 was not an option. After considering iMovie (and all of it's amazing features) I felt that it had too many features that might be distracting for what I wanted. The ease at which a mac allows you to record your voice, and video using the inbuilt webcam and mic was still going to be the foundation of recording our learning but I still needed to find a suitable platform. A wiki was a consideration and then the brainwave of VoiceThread appeared in my head late one night! The more I considered VoiceThread, the more it's interactive features appealed to me. Using Photostory3 meant a final product. Nothing more added, no room for comment by parents and unless you sent the exported movie file, or embedded it on a wiki, no way for other family members in different parts of the country or in other parts of world, to see it. Using VoiceThread was easy! We've already used it several times this year, so the "tool" and how to use it was already established. Here's the step by step organisation we used to complete a digital protfolio for each student in Room202.

Digital storytelling comes in many forms. Digital storytelling could refer to creating podcasts, creating videos, or creating multimedia ebooks to name of few of its forms. If you're considering developing your first digital storytelling project for your class, here some resources that can help you get started.

voicethread as a digital portfolio

I had two eye-opening experiences this week, both really got me thinking about online sharing, curation of digital versus "real" work (E-portfolios) , and overall student learning, both in terms of motivation for and expressions of. The first was the grade 10 MYP Personal Project exhibition, the second my daughter, Kaia's, student-led conference for her PYP Kindergarten class.