One of my colleagues with pastoral responsibility for our Y8s wondered if there might be a way in which ICT might help us collect information from our students on their participation in co-curricular activities. Although participation in certain school and out-of-school activities enjoys a high profile, some students hide their light under a bushel. What my colleague wanted was the means for any of her students to provide a few words (or even a picture) describing anything they were proud of achieving or participating in, thereby allowing her the chance to celebrate that achievement with them … whilst of course maintaining an ongoing record of her whole year group. At report writing time, providing deserved pats on the back would be much easier.
The solution? A blog! Yep, a blog. The main architecture of our learning platform is a SharePoint implementation which hides behind a gateway allowing entry to only those with accounts … students and staff at the moment. Within there then we created a blog to which the students could post and ‘tag’ their post under certain categories based on multiple intelligences.
Listen to the two characters we got explain things on the blog:
We decided that posts would be anonymous, in the sense that each student can only see their own posts, hopefully encouraging them to be open about their experiences. They’ll build up a ‘portfolio’ of experiences, arranged conveniently chronologically, but which can be filtered using the tags feature at any time. ‘Comments’ mean that form teachers (who are able to see all the posts) or my colleague can add words of encouragement or congratulation. Perhaps in the future as students become more comfortable with the idea, they’ll feel able to open their postings to a wider audience and spread the word about their passions and interests … I’ve already learned what ‘Zumba’ is … perhaps not one for me though!
Practically In the pICTure 