Van Nood explains that after spending years with paper portfolios, he transitioned this concept into digital form, and have started to implement Evernote as the primarily system for creating portfolios in his classroom.
He was using portfolios with limited success and spending a lot of time on them, until Evernote came into the picture.
When he first started researching options, he was coming across a lot of companies that were really expensive, charging a lot for each student's use. He also knew that he needed an app for mobile devices that would make it easy to capture and document paperwork and he wasn't finding that in most of the tools I was evaluating. Evernote was free, had an app for virtually every device, and he could get started right away.
A young second grader uses evernote to record herself reading aloud and reflects on her progress and sets goals for improvement. Something we could use in the WL classroom - students can use the app on their phones as well.
Free PDF download of excerpts from Collier's handbook.
Aside from simply creating notebooks and notes on ideas of interest, students (and instructors, too!) can use Evernote features to track to-dos, share folders, even build portfolios. Evernote provides useful tools for helping students stay organized in our fast-paced, digital device-driven world.
Explain Everything is a screencasting app for the iPad. It costs $2.99 in the App Store and no account is needed to use it.
This iPad app is designed for educational professionals and students alike, to create projects and record them as screencasts. It is a powerful tool and flexible app that is easy to use. Students use Explain Everything to make collaborative projects using multiple mediums. The recording feature allows foreign language students to create speaking samples with their projects, which can be used to measure progress with language proficiency in a digital portfolio. Teachers can use the recording feature to create a lecture capture. Projects can be designed directly in Explain Everything or files such as presentations, photos, notes, and videos can be imported into the app to create a project that can be annotated with pencil or text, narrated, recorded, and shared in a variety of ways, uploading to Photo Roll, You Tube, Email, Drop Box, and Evernote. Explain Everything can be used by both teachers and students as an interactive whiteboard tool for presentational purposes, when connected to an Apple TV or projector.