I have spent a lot of time over the past few years encouraging teachers to tap into the resources of Google Drive. This past year however, I’ve entirely submerged myself in it! Not only did my networking and preaching land me in a pilot program, but I got to see first hand how my school district plans to utilize GAFE.
This was amazing news for any teacher who- like me- has had to go through the hoops of parent permission slips, training and getting set up… all in week one! I am beyond excited to launch the new program next year, and I can’t wait for the ease and support of a district wide movement.
One special way I ended my school year was to have my students use their Drive accounts to create ePortfolios. This took some creative thinking on my part to include a variety of elements- my students just don’t write essays, they create, and I didn’t want to have all the “fun projects” somewhere on the blog while the serious, formal writing was there to be seen.
Solution? QR CODES! I used the extension “anything to qr code” and quickly had my students turning their blog posts into QR CODES. Any post they wanted to add to their portfolio we turned into a code, the result is an aesthetic and literal pleasure! You can see the dynamics of their work, and the range of production.
I will finish off the portfolio by having each student write a reflection and make a copy of his/her grade sheet (this will save me TONS of time uploading the paper copies I have)!
The specifics:
Here is the assignment I gave students to get them started…
Here is how I got the students to create their own grade sheets…
Here is what it looks like!