This chapter includes: (1) why I chose the Web/CD format (2) how I gathered information from educators around the globe, (3) my personal process in developing the K-12 Electronic Portfolio and (4) the specific software packages and processes used to convert student work into a Web format.
As Roger Wagner, creator of HyperStudio, stated at the Classroom Connect Conference in Long Beach, California in November 1999, we are now living in a "media-centric" world. Today the World Wide Web is the most highly utilized medium for the distribution of information. The range and appeal of accessibility to anyone, anywhere, at anytime makes the convenience of "just in time learning" or distance learning available as a viable learning tool that is revolutionizing how and where learning and communications are taking place throughout the world. The computer and the Internet are as revolutionizing a tool as Gutenberg's printing press. However, because we also live in a world of realities that includes the issues of the digital divide, considerations should be given to schools with classrooms that are not Internet wired for connectivity, however, have some access to computers with CD-ROM drives. This is the reason the CD format is included for this K-12 Electronic Portfolio project.
The basic design of the K-12 Electronic Portfolio project is HTML in the form of a Web site and compact disk (CD) to be housed in the California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) archival library, and for use with a CD-ROM drive in the classroom. This design was chosen for two reasons: First, a Web site is readily accessible by anyone with a computer, and Internet connection. Teachers and students alike could view, access information, and use the examples given as a prototype to study the development of digitized portfolios or to design their own electronic portfolios.
Second, not everyone has an Internet connection in the classroom. Access may come from a community library. Many schools have at the very minimum computer access with a CD-drive through their school library, or a computer lab if not in their classrooms. A compact disk (CD) would give access to the K-12 Electronic Portfolio information to students, teachers, parents and other educators who may not have an Internet connection and wish to access the information.
The K-12 Electronic Portfolio Web site is intended to be user friendly and to engage users in seeking information as to what the various links have to offer. This site is designed to be as straightforward as possible to use with the "what you see is what you get" format (WYSIWYG). The CD although static will avail users of the same information as in the Web site with suggestions of how to possibly design and format their own electronic portfolio with the resources available at their schools, county education or new media resource centers.
A limitation or drawback as well as blessing of Web sites are that they have a relatively short lifespan. Therefore, this original Web site will continually be updated with added changes to the information and the removal of obsolete links. A benefit is that some educational sites have archives, so if one wanted to research something previously done, one may do so with the correct key words, dates, etcetera.
The intention of this electronic portfolio project is to offer an educational self-teaching process tool that can help educators and their students develop their own electronic portfolios. Hopefully the product will save users time through the service of its contents.
The organization is based from a practicing classroom teacher's point of view. My thinking followed utilitarian as well as pedagogical considerations. Conscientious teachers want to see examples, read supporting literature, and review applicable theories. Educators want to know who has developed these kinds of portfolios before and their rationale. Why should one create an E-folio? What are the advantages and limitations? How difficult is it to design a prototype, to "make and take" using templates? What software needs to be acquired, or purchased off the shelf? Will there be on-going technology training? Teachers need staff development time to create their own professional portfolios (Burke, 1996). Developing their own electronic portfolio with their students could be an excellent opportunity to model the practice. These were some of the burning issues that seem to keep coming up. David Thornburg said "If someone brings a lot of new technology into your school district, and doesn't provide staff development, the only thing that will change is your electric bill." There has to be a foundation a support system or the structure will crumble.
Besides my own classroom work and Web site examples, I turned to other teachers through cyber networks such as Classroom Connect Listserve automated CRC Digest that keeps educators abreast of what are current trends in education and the thinking behind those trends. Participants are mostly from the United States although we hear from our colleagues in other countries too. The CRC is where I started an inquiry by reaching out to teachers that actively participate and willing to share knowledge and information related to this topic. I was able to find the sites I have chosen through their generous help and support. Many teachers on-line would direct me to their cyber-colleagues or recommend Web sites that could answer some project questions.
Teachers nationwide are using
the CRC Listserve as a resource at: (http://listserv.classroom.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2+ind0009B&L=crc&P=R707)
Here teachers of like-mindedness can gather and share information
about what colleagues are thinking about pedagogy and practical
applications. In this manner inquiry-based teacher research from
willing participants can be gathered and compared.
I placed several notices to request that teachers contact me via e-mail or on the listserv to share their electronic portfolios. Surprisingly, the mixed results were not what I expected. From the numerous responses I received, came anything that may be considered to be an "electronic portfolio." Lesson No. 1 --not everyone views the term electronic portfolio in the same way. Educators apply the term electronic portfolio liberally in more ways than expected. The electronic portfolio examples received include: teacher résumés, classroom newsletters, classroom bulletins, teachers' descriptions of student projects with and without examples of student work; and authentic student work displayed in many different types of digitized formats. The latter is what I had hoped and expected to receive for samples. The undertaking had become an interestingly curious phenomenon with daily surprises.
Besides receiving guidance from my advising professors on this project, I received feedback from colleagues in the MA in Education program and students whom were interested in this work project. Participants giving feedback include savvy computer literate high school students from Northern as well as Central California, and educators through the aforementioned listserves.
PERSONAL BITS AND BYTES
In the quiet of the night or the early hours of the morning is when I can most clearly and creatively think. As a visual learner the concept map as seen on the opening page of the K-12 Electronic Portfolio Web site came first. It came together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle represented by the geometric forms. Later, through my research, I found a Web site with similar questions and realized these indeed are the commonly asked questions about the subject of electronic portfolios. This confirmed that I was on the right path. Through the process of inquiry, I kept searching for what I needed to know about this subject and how I would proceed with this project. In retrospect, I remember as a Science and Bilingual Mentor Teacher, our staff development classes would generate a creative flow by the problem-solving questions asked. This energy led to many fruitful, professional conversations. We learned much from our shared expertise. That is the challenging perspective I tried to work from in order to continue that professional conversation my professor in the MA program often talked about.
Through visualization, using a question and answer format, that I had been mulling over for weeks perhaps months at a subconscious level, I proceeded to find the different pieces of the puzzle. The visualization of the scenarios under which the questions followed, guided me to find the examples, student work, and Web sites that I specifically researched and located. These quests led me to view how many of the learning outcomes and different ways of knowing of our students are discounted and not valued by traditional assessments.
How could this product serve students and educators? What could exemplify what I hoped to convey in the Web site concerning technology that enhances learning? For years as a teacher I learned to become a collector of special examples of student work. Cherished items included started my first year of teaching. In my collection, I looked for items from grade levels I taught recently and from long ago to contribute student examples of the application of the theory of Multiple Intelligences. As a practioner of the MI theory since my first year of teaching, I have selected many learning examples. Included in the Web site are photographs of student-made artifacts representative of different Indian tribes they studied. Other contributions are journal writings, video, and most recently multimedia that could exemplify these applications. Some of these can be viewed on the "Authentic Student Work Samples" page. Much of the multimedia learned for this project was on-the-job training, solo, or with colleagues.
There are a variety of uses for electronic portfolios at the K-12 level. For the purposes of this project, I have collected from my classroom and pulled together a number of different examples both individual and groups working together that could be included in an electronic portfolio for different purposes. In order to show the many uses under this term, I have posted their works under "Authentic Student Samples" of the K-12 Electronic Portfolio Web site. These are for demonstration purposes only. Some of the pictures were taken to capture some of the students work, such as the Native American Indian projects, because it was impressive and we had made a classroom museum and invited other classes to share our work. These photos were then scanned, digitized and sized using Adobe Illustrator and PhotoShop.
Other photos were taken with a regular camera processed for both prints and floppy disk or digitized. Other examples of their authentic student work that could have been included are their written reports of the different tribes they researched. Each child could have their own portfolio including a photo, reports, and reflection piece of their project experience. In the following site with thumbnail sketches one can see the variety of applications and the ways of showing students' multiple intelligences that are missing from the traditional record keeping system (http://webfolios.home.netcom.com/Samples/Student Work Samples.html).
Electronic portfolios can serve a variety of purposes some of which can include collections of students works tied to learning to show growth over time. The advantage of electronic portfolio storage over traditional portfolios is foremost in the physical storage. A thin CD can replace thick three-ring binders, or bulky stacks that can be lost, damaged or deteriorate in time. In addition, the ability to have continuous running records using CD-RW allows records to be kept up to date. Works in progress can be kept or replaced with finished products that make the record keeping process a fluid document.
The current technology allows for mixing different types of media formats. For example, instead of having to view numerous video tapes that are time consuming and perhaps difficult to know what exactly is where on the tape, the digitized format can be labeled and dated to allow the viewer to select those areas the creator has reflected on and preselected saving the viewer time and effort in searching for specifics. Digital video can have text, graphics, still images, as well as movies with sound. Besides text, a PowerPoint presentation can, for example, include a QuickTime movie with sound. Microsoft Office can include hypertext that can be linked to a Web site to further demonstrate a point or to find additional information as needed. Within text QuickTime video can be incorporated to demonstrate individual class projects.
In creating this K-12 Electronic
Portfolio Web site, I was able to piece together some of the parts
into a Web format with relative ease. Other parts came together
with creative problem-solving made necessary for the conversion
to HTML. In the following section, I will describe the technology
used to build the K-12 Electronic Portfolio Web site.
| Netscape Communicator | Web browser (Win/Mac) |
| Adobe Page Mill | This site was designed with this web authoring tool |
| Adobe GoLive | PageMill-Discontinued for GoLive (Win/Mac) |
| WS-FTP | FTP program-useful to manage files on server |
| WinZip | File compression, archive utility--Windows |
| Adobe Acrobat | Standard for documents on the Web (Win/Mac) |
| Adobe Photoshop | Image editing (Win/Mac) |
| Adobe Illustrator | Publishing tools (Win/Mac) |
| QuickTime Pro | Media Player/Editor (Win/Mac) |
| Kid Pix Studios | Multimedia Software Designed for children |
| Inspiration | Graphics & Concept Mapping Software |
Kid Pix was a new software program on the market when I purchased it in 1996. I had written a grant and was awarded six PCs by Smart Valley, Inc. to use in our classroom. The students used PCs in the classroom and Macs in the school's computer lab. Kid Pix was used only on our PCs in the classroom. After I practiced and taught myself to use Kid Pix, I used an LCD panel projector to show the students the different tools available for discovery on a large screen. The students were given exploration time to specifically use this program one part at a time. They naturally adapted to the paint tools first, and later moved on to use the stamps, puppets, moopies, moving pictures, and progressed to piecing these together with audio, recording their voices, music or sound effects that comes with the software package.
Students were given an assignment to create a piece for a class demonstration for Open House. Their parents were their main audience. Since we are in a bilingual classroom, the students could choose English or Spanish language. Most of the students are fluent in both languages. Since their family members were going to see and hear the Kid Pix project, most students chose Spanish for their target audience--their parents. The Kid Pix slide show designed by the students has a full year capsulated in one large project. One can see the various holidays depicted. For the purposes of demonstration, only a few slides are shown on the Web site. Another Kid Pix project portrays the theme "when I grow up" with Spanish audios. Many students created a technological piece with their recorded voices and made a statement to express their thoughts along the given theme.
How to translate Kid Pix Studio
files to a Web page is not exactly straightforward. I made a number
of experimental trials, numerous consultations, and the results
were not fruitful for the efforts made. Since the original Kid
Pix project created by the students in my classroom was in the
Windows format the final product did not work out quite as well
as I hoped for and was difficult to adapt. The present day updated
version should be easier to work with. One has to remember my
original project was from 1996 in Windows. It was a challenging
experience. I did try to contact the company, however, I was not
able to contact someone to help with this project. This URL contains
one of the best-detailed protocols that I received via e-mail
(http://www.inform.umd.edu/MCTP/Technology/Slideshow/).
The method found in the preceding Web site is for the Apple MacIntosh version of Kid Pix and it was shared by an educator from Classroom Connect Resources Digest. I used the PC version so it was altogether different and this did not quite work for me. However, it did provide the strategy and Apple QuickTime Pro (PC or Mac) does a good job of extracting the images and sounds from the AVI files that the program produces. You cannot easily produce a true representation of a Kid Pix slideshow on a Web site without somehow saving it as a movie file. That is the only way to see the animated effects. The problem with these movie files is that they are very large and slow to download. The PC version lets you save it as an AVI file and the Mac versions saves it as a MOV file (QuickTime format.) I found that the show I wanted to use had AVI files in it, so I could not save it as an AVI file. Kid Pix Studios (PC version) lets you save puppets, moopies and stampinator projects in AVI format to put them into a slideshow. The Kid Pix drawing files are saved in a BMP format. The odd thing is that the program somehow can associate a sound with the BMP file. QuickTime does a good job on the AVI files but it cannot extract any audio from a BMP file.
To make an HTML slideshow from Kid Pix files assemble all of the AVI files you want to use in a folder. Open each in QuickTime Pro. The free player will not work for this. Select File/Export and send the movie to a BMP file. It takes a snapshot of it. Select File/Export and send the sound to a WAV file. You should change all of the BMP files to JPG image files. I did this using the iMac Picture Viewer program. Whatever image-editing program you have should do it. Insert the files into the templates. You may download the template files here in either PC or Mac format. See the method above for more detailed instructions on this part.
The streaming videos were produced using QuickTime Pro. The Kid Pix AVI files may simply be exported to the streaming video format. Limitations of using streaming videos for Kid Pix are evident from the sample in the Electronic Portfolio Web Site. At this time the quality is not good, however, there may be better applications or uses for other examples not found here. The technology of streaming videos is still evolving and has room for growth.
Some of the images for the collage were from photographs that were scanned. The scanned images were saved as JPEG files. Some of the images were in digital form on a disk from the photo developer. All of the images were first manipulated in Adobe PhotoShop. They were sized to make them smaller and minor adjusting of brightness was necessary on some. After the images were prepared, they were assembled using Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is good for working with text and images on a single page. The Illustrator file was exported to a JPEG file again. After minor cropping of the image, it was ready to insert in the Web page. The Adobe suite of programs, PhotoShop, Illustrator and PageMaker are widely used, very powerful programs. The learning curve in them is a little steep.
The video movie clips were produced using iMovie software on an iMac computer. The Native American Dancer film of Tanya was captured in several steps. First the original analog videotape from nearly twelve years ago was transferred through a Sony DVMC-DA2 media converter to change the analog recording into a digital medium. Next the video was sent in real time into the iMovie application. Secondly, the clips were selected, edited, and assembled into a short 20-second movie. The movie was exported to a QuickTime Web movie. This file was transferred to the PC where the Web site resides. Lastly, the file was imported onto the K-12 Electronic Portfolios Web Site into the Native American Projects Web page using PageMill. iMovie software designed for Macintosh is not available for the PC at this time.
Limitations of the filmmaking process are the following: (1) if the original film is analog and not digitally filmed, a conversion needs to be made for transfer to a computer or Web page. (2) iMovie software is designed for newer versions of Macintosh. You need a FireWire connector (3) PC's, at the time of this writing, are not capable of using iMovie software. QuickTime software is used by both platforms. Choice of software is a matter of personal preference and platform design. Other programs may accomplish the same thing.
Creative endeavors require
innovative ways of thinking and creating meaning. I did not try
to make the project fit a label or I would have stopped myself
from doing anything. The process for creating this electronic
portfolio Web site was like trying to solve a scrambled Rubik's
Cube. There is an indefinite number of ways I could have done
this project. I have learned much about perseverance, collaboration,
problem solving, patience, and letting go. We can see what others
have done in this effort to develop what may be called electronic
portfolios and we can either copy it, improve it, reshape it to
make it our own, or develop it into a whole other direction. Time
will tell how this project will be utilized. Resources can limit
the time or direction endeavors will take. Assuredly, the indomitable
spirit of adventure and creativity of our students' with their
enthusiasm and desire for learning will never be an obstacle.
Amazing technological tools are now available, we have a number
of ways to show how students learn and make sense of knowledge.
We have a great opportunity to grow as a people and help our students
in reaching their highest potential of becoming well-rounded citizens
of our global community.
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