e-Portfolios - students' perspectives

Justin:
Thank you Mr Bradbeer. Now I’m going to tell you how we use the learning journals in our classroom everyday.

Each week in our maths and literacy time we get time to add posts on to our learning journals, and we can also access it at home and post whenever we want to. I also add them before school and in break times. You can upload a photo, and then put a comment about what the learning was about; and then your peers, your teacher and caregiver can come on and comment and ask you questions and say what they think about it. When they ask you questions you can add another comment in. You can reply to them and keep going back and forth talking to them. Here’s one on my literacy journal – I added in a photo and comments. You don’t have to just ask the questions, you can say what you thought about it but it has to be helpful, not just ‘good job’ and ‘well done’. You can include that but also something else.

When you log on to your learning journal, this is the front page and it tells you how many entries you have done, and it tells you [for example] it’s been zero days since your last entry in your numeracy journal and five days since your last entry in literacy. You can see I need to add a post [to literacy], and that’s also helpful. It shows your peers and also tells you the number of comments and the days since the last comments. We go on basically every two days or everyday, and the more you get into it the more you can’t stop going on it.
Now Nadia will talk about the impact of the learning journals and how it’s helped her.

Nadija:
Hi, my name is Nadija. Nice to meet you.

I like learning journals because I can put examples of my learning online and peers that I select, caregivers and teachers can comment. I like people commenting on my learning journal so I can improve. Learning journals are fun even though they may look boring. When we were all trying it out I thought it was a classroom once-a-month-thing, but then it got really fun and the more I went on the more fun it was. I recommend it to all schools because it has helped me a lot.

This is a before and after picture of my reflections. This was my ‘before’ one - I added a poem and I said ‘this is not the best poem I’ve made’. Then the peers did it but they didn’t really ask me questions, and I don’t really like that. This is my ‘after’ – I wrote a lot more and my peers started asking me questions so I could improve.

It is good because Miss Finlayson came up with a thing called ‘five-whys-deep’, for example, it says: ‘The book is cool’. The next thing would be: ‘Why is the book cool?’ Try and do as many as you can so it becomes ‘five-whys-deep’. So it has helped me with my reflection and so now I go ‘five-whys-deep’ so it gives you heaps of information.

It has helped me think more about my learning because I used to only do one sentence, but now I write heaps of sentences describing one thing. They help me because I get feedback about my learning from my peers and my parents - then I can make my work better. I can’t believe how much my learning has changed from everyone’s feedback.

I take questions by asking myself is this going ‘five-whys-deep’? I take risks by putting up learning that I don’t think is that good to get feedback so I can improve. I set goals and plans by setting a goal to improve and I make a plan that says next time I have to do… I self-motivate and say to myself: ‘I am going to go on this afternoon’. I persevere by saying ‘I’m doing it’, and I also persevere to keep trying to achieve my plan. I reflect by putting up learning that I’ve done before to ask for feedback to reflect and make my learning better.

Justin:
Thank you Nadija. Now Te Ropere will talk about how important feedback can be.

Te Ropere:
Hi, I’m Te Ropere and I’m talking about the feedback people give to each other. The feedback people give can be questions, next learning steps, things to work on and other things that are helpful or ‘need to work on’ questions.

Questions can start with:
What did you learn?
Was the learning stretching?
Was the learning challenging?
Did you learn anything?
Any comment that makes them think a lot.

Here are some examples of feedback that I’ve done on other people’s work. Other people have done comments on my work as well. This is an example of a comment that I have done on my buddy’s work. He put down a photo of some work that he did, and he already told me it was the ‘WALHT’ – which is ‘we are learning how to’. So I wanted to know more about what he was doing, so I asked him a lot of questions, for example, what were you doing? Did you have any stretch in this learning and have you done this activity before?

This is an example of a comment that my parent has done on my work. This was a numeracy one. My mum encouraged me to learn it and she said that she was looking forward to seeing the method of how I did it. This is an example of a teacher comment that Mr Bradbeer has done on my book that I uploaded, and he says I should tell him about it in the student comment box. Then I could just do another comment and tell him about the story.

Justin:
Thank you Te Ropere. Now Sophie will share about how parents’ feedback is important.

Sophie:
Hello, I’m Sophie. I will be talking about why parents’ feedback is important and how it helps students. I find my parents looking at my learning, a great way for them to see my work. They can see how I’ve improved, where I’ve had trouble, and how deep my reflecting is. My mum thinks it’s great to see pages from my schoolbooks online. Then parents can give feedback on their child’s learning. They can then have a good understanding of learning and the reflecting of their child. They can see how they have progressed and the challenges they face in daily learning.

My mum has found that she can see the discussions I’ve have with my teachers and the relationship I have with them. It is good to get feedback as then you can improve learning and make it better, like when parents’ ask ‘Was it challenging?’ You can answer back and think ‘why’ was it challenging. They might also ask:

Was it challenging or easy?
What is the level of stretch?
What is your next learning step?
What can you do to improve?

These questions and many more help us to understand, and not just learn, but learn at higher levels than before. Learning journals help us achieve goals and make a difference to our learning. My mum says:

‘Being able to see the pages from their schoolbook on my computer screen, just about blows me away. It certainly bridges the gap between school and home. Conversations about learning just happen so easily now and I feel like I am truly participating in Sophie’s learning. I can check on her learning more easily and more frequently and at my own convenience without having to wait for a parent evening. I can look at it in my own time at my own convenience at home or work – whenever and wherever.’

My mum can also see what peers from my class think of my learning. Here are some screen shots of my entry in my learning journal. Here I did a maths one and it was the first good one in class, and we were learning about measuring. We were measuring out the new staffroom at school because we couldn’t just visualise what it would look like. We found out that there was a problem with it, so we fixed that. You can also add sound clips, PowerPoint and Word documents, and put it on to your computer.

Thank you for listening.