Why My Six-Year-Olds Have Digital Portfolios

This article was originally posted on the Getting Smart blog.

From the first week of school, the six year olds in my classroom begin to create an online presence in the form of a digital portfolio. We use a blogging platform to do this, and include artifacts that show their progress in writing, reading, math, social studies and science.

I am frequently asked why I do this. Even more frequently, I can see in a colleague’s eyes that they are thinking “why”, even if they don’t verbalize their question. The way that those educators have always done portfolios has worked well for them. Their students are learning the things they need to learn and are building a paper portfolio as they do so. Why do I take the extra time to upload those artifacts?

Audience

For any writer or creator, it is all about the audience. Why would a student even want to write on a piece of paper for their teacher to see when they could write on their blog for the world to see?

Because a blog allows comments, the students’ thoughts and learning can be not only read, but responded to as well. Students relish the feedback a comment gives, whether it is from a classmate, a parent, or someone they have never met. The audience becomes part of the student’s learning.

Creating a Community of Ripples

Having a blog creates a community around our classroom. The articles, podcasts, images and video we post are like stones dropped into a pond.

The first ripple in our circle of community is the circle of parents. Parents can watch their child’s blog and observe their child’s progress first hand. They don’t have to wait until our student-led conferences to see what and how their child has been learning. The growth is obvious for them to see.

The next ripple is the circle of the child’s extended family, friends and our local community. They, too can watch, encourage and interact. Often, this circle includes students who have been in my classroom in the past and who come back to our blog to comment and encourage the younger students.

The largest circle is—well—the entire world. We have received comments from many places including many states in the USA, classrooms across Canada, India, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and New Zealand. And those are just this school year.

That is a very large community.

Digital Footprint

Even at a young age, it is important to begin to have an idea of the significance of a digital footprint, including what things are appropriate to post online, how to protect your identity and ways to interact with others in an online space. As my six-year-olds grow up, the world will become increasingly digital. Tools will change, but connectedness will continue to grow. Children need to learn early that it is important to present yourself well online and some of the ways that can be done.

Their Culture

We teach kids that have no concept of a world without the Internet. Technology is a ubiquitous part of their world. They want and expect to use it at home. For me to deny that technology and what it allows them to do would be like asking someone from an earlier generation to learn without a pen or pencil. It just wouldn’t make sense.

Student Conferences

When we have student-led conferences in my classroom, my students use what is posted on their blog as the starting point of our conversation with their parents. Their moms and dads are already familiar with what is posted, and the students are able to focus on sharing what their goals were, what they feel they are doing well and what they want to get better at.

Student Choice

Allowing students to have some choice in what they create/post is important on so many levels. It empowers the students and involves them in their own learning. We teach students who have a plethora of choices as to how they spend their time. In addition to the choices children previously had, they can choose from many types of gaming, hundreds of television channels or video on demand. It only makes sense to give them a sense of choice as to how they show their learning as well.

An online portfolio gives those choices. Students can choose which of the many tools available will best help them to show their learning. Paper is not always the best way to communicate your ideas.

Joy

I will never forget the delight in one of my student’s eyes who had just had a working computer in his home the night before for the first time that school year. “Mrs. Cassidy, I showed my blog to my parents last night. I showed them all my stuff! They liked it!”

That moment of joy was worth the few extra minutes it takes to post my student’s articles online. I know that, although I don’t always hear about it, that moment is repeated over and over in the homes of all of my students, as they are able to share their learning with their parents at home.

Joy is the best reason I use digital portfolios with my young students. We can all use a little more joy.

Commenting With Pre and Emerging Writers

“For me? There’s a comment for me?” asked an eager five-year-old in my classroom, eyes aglow. I assured him that the comment was indeed for him and read it aloud to he and his classmates, pointing to each word on the Smartboard as I did so. He beamed as I read aloud, marveling at the fact that what he had posted on his blog was valuable enough to provoke a response from someone he had never met.

Ensuring All Students Receive Comments

When my students begin blogging each September, I ensure that they ALL begin getting comments as soon as possible. I hold a parent night and show the parents how to comment. I enlist the help of students who were in my classroom in previous years. Sometimes I have put out a plea on Twitter using the hashtag #comments4kids. I know how encouraging those comments can be, and I want all of my students to have that experience as soon as possible—to feel that rush of acknowledgement a first comment elicits.

Learning to Comment Ourselves

Soon after, I begin teaching my students how to leave comments themselves. With pre-readers and writers, this is a lengthy process! Sometimes we begin by going to the blog of someone who has just left a comment for us. Sometimes we begin by going to the blog of another classroom that is linked from our classroom blog. Wherever and whenever we begin, we always comment together as a group. (With pre readers and writers, this is not just good pedagodgy, it is a necessity!)

We start by talking about the comments we have received, how they made us feel and what was good about them. We want to be able to mimic the best of other people’s comments to us. Almost always, the students want to start by saying “I like your blog”. To help the students to stay on track, and to encourage them to think beyond this over-used phrase, we make an anchor chart to help us remember our discussion. (I first heard the term “anchor chart” from the Two Sisters. It refers to a chart that records a process or strategy and is created WITH the students in their own words. It is then posted in the classroom for the students to use as a reference.)

Commenting Together

To be honest, although this chart is made up by and with my grade one students each year, it does not change a lot from school year to school year. A good comment is still a good comment. Linda Yollis’ students have done some great work explaining how third graders comment, but for my pre and emerging writers, these steps seem to work best. Besides teaching them to comment, they reinforce other concepts my students are just learning.

Say something nice. What specifically did you like about the post? What made you smile?
Make a connection. What did it remind you of? Does it make you think of something you know or have done? Something you saw in a book or on a video? Understanding and making connections is a skill five and six year olds are just beginning to learn.
Ask a question. What do you wonder? What did the writer not include that you wish had been in the article? Understanding the difference between something you tell and something you ask is difficult for most six-year-olds. Including a question helps them to learn what a question is and how to think about someone’s ideas beyond their own.
Re-read your comment. This is a vital skill for commenters of any age. As the students realized how often they needed to change something we had written to make it better, we added this step at the end of our chart.

We follow this pattern pretty closely together for months as they learn the literacy skills necessary to comment on their own. The first independent student comments are often written from home. This year, the first student to comment on the blogs of his peers decided to be “fair” and left a comment for every other child in the class! I make a big deal about these comments, and as with every other comment we receive, we read them aloud together. After one or two students have written comments, the others start to want to do it as well!

Commenting Independently

It is usually near the end of our grade one year when I will actually officially ask all of the students to try making a comment on the blog of their choice. At first, I ask them to show me the comment before they click “submit”, but when they have shown me that they can do this independently, I let them comment on any of the blogs that are linked from our classroom blog, knowing that if there was ever anything inappropriate (to my knowledge there never has been), the teachers we are linked with would contact me. For students whose spelling skills are still developing, I stay close by and if necessary will write an editor’s note in brackets after their comment, in the same way I do with their blog postings.

Do they all follow the pattern that we have practiced together? No. It is a long journey. Learning to comment when you are an emerging writer does take a long time, but learning to read and to write also takes a long time. To me the result—a student who is beginning to understand how to interact with others in a social media situation—is worth the long journey.

The Big Move–Why Am I Here?

We're Excited!

If you are reading this, you are at my shiny, new space. For almost four years, I have been blogging on a WordPress blog, also called Primary Preoccupation. (I’m partial to that name, so I brought it with me.) Thanks to some stress-filled evenings and lots of support from my new hosts, all of the content from my old blog is now here. (Why, oh why, didn’t I properly tag and categorize my posts when I first began blogging?)

For some time now, I’ve been thinking about trying to get more of my online “stuff” into one place. A couple of years ago I set up a Yolasite to begin collecting links. That was a good step, but I wanted my writing to be in the same place as the rest of what I share. After much thought, and looking at what countless others have done, this is what I have come up with. I know it will change over time–that is a good thing, I think.

Suggestions to improve this space are more than welcome. I have some ideas, but I’m willing to bet that others have better ones. I’d love to hear them.

So here I am. New space. A clean slate. More room to grow. And still preoccupied with teaching primary students.

Students Posting Online: How Do You Do That?

I get that question a lot. When people see my students’ blogs, the online artifacts they produce, their videos, and the digital footprint the children are beginning to create, the question I am most often asked is “how do you get permission from the parents to do that?”

The parents of our students have spent their whole lives protecting their children. Even before the child was born, they loved and sheltered that little being. They nurtured the child through the preschool years and then trustingly put the child into the school’s care. While this was happening, the media bombarded them with messages about how unsafe the internet is for children. When we broach the subject of posting their child’s work online, is it any wonder they have questions? Frankly, I would be more concerned if they didn’t.

This is What We Do

Blogging is not an option for the six year olds in my classroom. It is what we do. My students’ blogs are their online learning portfolios. From the first week of school to the last, my students write (even before their writing is “readable”) and produce digital artifacts that showcase what they have been learning. That portfolio is available any time of the day or night for parents to view or comment on. It is also available for grandma and grandpa in Calgary or for their older sibling who is away at university. The fact that people who have never met my students read their blogs and sometimes leave comments is a bonus.

I am fortunate that my school division recognizes that posting online is valuable. On the first day of school, a form explaining possible online uses of student images/work is sent home for parents to sign. (Click on school services and then on Student Media/Privacy Form.)

In the second week of school, I always hold a parent information night. On that night, along with talking about how to help their child learn to read, and pleading for them to not send birthday party invitations to school (it leads to tears from those not invited), I show our classroom blog to the parents. I show them my blog, with the pictures and videos of students from last year. I show them a student blog from last year including the way that student’s learning was documented through writing, images and video. We look at the way that student’s writing ability improved through the year and listen to podcasts of the child’s reading fluency. I show them the way our blogs record the number of page reads and a sample of comments the students received. I usually show them our Clustr map, with dots from all over the world showing where people live who have visited our classroom virtually.

Keeping Them Safe

Most important of all, I talk about how I safeguard their child. There are two policies that I have that are the keystones of the way I protect my students online.

I post images of students, and I post the first names of students but I never match the two. I know of many teachers who do identify their students, but that is not my personal policy.
Nothing gets posted unless I see it first. No student articles. No comments. Nothing.

The first class that I blogged with are now in grade eight. In all that time, I have never had a parent who, after seeing what we do on our blogs, has refused to have their child participate. The first year that I posted pictures of the children on my blog, I had one parent who asked for her child’s picture to not be posted online. By Christmas she had changed her mind.

If a parent DID have concerns, I would offer options.

Not including that child in any pictures that would be posted online.
Having their child blog under an alias.

Making it Happen

I realize that many teachers do not yet have a blog to show parents. In that case, I have encouraged teachers to show the parents a blog they would like to emulate. There are lots of great blogs, and this is a case in which a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Parents want to know that we are not putting their child at risk. Their questions come from their overwhelming desire to ensure their child’s safety. I want my students to have an audience and to make connections with people they would otherwise never connect with. I think we can do both.

Five Tips to Get Your Classroom Blog Started

I’ve had a classroom blog for about six years. Over that time, that blog has evolved in ways that I could not have predicted when I began. When I started, there were no other primary teachers that I could find who were blogging. After a few months, I discovered a kindergarten teacher in New Zealand who had a blog (she now teaches older students) and then gradually I found others. My initial thoughts were that I would do a quick daily write-up about what we were learning for the parents of my students to read. It didn’t take long for me to realize that that was pretty boring, so I began adding images, then slideshows, and then video. My students’ blogs have evolved, too, from a weekly writing activity, to portfolios that reflect their learning in many subject areas.

I am frequently contacted by teachers who are interested in starting a blog and who would like some tips for getting started. I decided that the discipline of writing my thoughts about it in this space would help me to give them better answers. Here, then, are my top five tips for starting a classroom blog.

1. Read a lot of blogs to see what others are doing. If you are a primary teacher, check out primary blogs, but don’t forget to also look at blogs from classrooms of older students as well. Seeing what others are doing will give you ideas about what is possible.

2. Think about what you want your blog to be before you start blogging. Do you want your blog to be a showcase of what is happening in your classroom? Of your students learning? Do you want your students to have their own blog, or to share yours? Do you want to pose questions for your students to answer? What about a combination of all these things? Like my blog, your blog will probably evolve over time, but it’s always good to have put in some thought ahead of time.

3. If your students blog, don’t edit the student’s work TOO much. It is wonderful if your students’ blogs can be a reflection of their learning through the entire school year. If you do too much editing, their growth won’t be evident.

4. Comments are the lifeblood of a blog. If you are posting on a blog and no one gives you feedback, you might as well be writing in your notebooks. Encourage comments from parents, grandparents, friends, other classes in the school etc. Ask other people you know to comment. If you use Twitter, use the hashtag #commentsforkids to encourage others to comment on your students’ blogs.

5. Persevere. It takes time to build up readership. Keep blogging even when it seems no one is reading it. Put a Clustr map or a Revolver Map or some other form of tracking system on your blog. Then, as you have visitors from other places, you and your class will be able to visually see this. Very few people who read blogs actually comment on them, but knowing someone has actually SEEN your blog can be almost as encouraging as a comment.

Six years later… there are now lots of teachers who have classroom blogs, including lots of primary teachers. That means lots of teachers who can give good advice. I hope some of those teachers will see this and chime in. Blogging is one of the best things I do in my classroom.

Blogging With Our Big Buddies

For the third year, my class is being mentored by a class of pre-service teachers at the University of Regina. From January to April, while the university is holding classes, these second year students will be commenting on the blog entries of my six-year old students. This program has been so successful, that Patrick Lewis, the university professor whose class is participating in this, and I shared about this experience as part of the K12 Online Conference.

Once again, my students are over the moon to have these big “kids” as part of their learning network. They got to meet their buddies face to face digitally last week via Skype, and were eager to ask important questions such as “Do you have a phone number book?”, “Do you like Pokemon” and “I wonder if you’re having a good day?” Patrick took pictures of the “big buddies” and emailed them to me. I printed them off and gave them to the children to keep in their desks. As in past years, these precious pictures come out to be looked at many times each day. I even saw one of the pictures getting a kiss!

My favourite response, though, was by one of my students when I first explained what we would be doing with our blogging buddies and how they would be helping us to get to be better writers. He said, “Maybe we could find out if they have blogs and we could comment to help them out, too”. Out of the mouths of babes… Apparently none of them are blogging–yet. Well, ELNG 325? We’re waiting.

Starting Right

Sheryl Forsman has just started blogging with her first grade students. Before she started blogging, she spent a lot of time thinking about why she would blog and what she would do if she had a blog. How do I know? Just look at this list that was one of the first entries on her blog.

20 Uses for Our Classroom Blog

Why did we create a classroom blog and how will we use it?
1. document our growth across the year
2. inform families of what we are doing
3. expand our audience
4. collaborate with other first grade bloggers
5. use another form of writing
6. learn about writing for an audience
7. learn about digital literacy
8. document favorite events of this year
9. integrate writing with other subjects
10. write book reviews
11. write journal entries
12. respond to class assignments
13. free choice writing
14. develop keyboard skills
15. communicate with each other
16. collaborate with reading buddies from other classrooms
17. collaborate with teachers from the university as blogging buddies
18.post pictures of our work
19. learn about visual literacy through the design of our pages
20. to have fun!

What a great list. What a great way to start.

Busted!

I’m not as good as Clarence Fisher, who can get kids expelled in another country, but I did feel a bit like Dick Tracy.

A few days ago, one of the students in my classroom received a comment that was not very nice. It made fun of her writing ability. In case you are not a regular reader of my six year old students’ blogs, I don’t edit their writing, but instead let it be an online portfolio of their developing ability to write. The particular child who received the comment has not yet made the connection between sounds and letters in her writing.

Because I use Classblogmeister to host my classroom blog, the comment came to me for approval before it was posted, so I was able to delete it and she was never the wiser. Her self-esteem is still firmly intact.

If it had been one of my students who had written the comment, I would want to know about it. The student did not have a name that was familiar to me, but I went to the Sitemeter I have posted on my blog. One of the options is “referrals”. It gives the URL from which the person linked to my blog. Since I knew what time the comment arrived in my email, it was easy to check and see where the referral had come from near that time. I followed the link to another Classblogmeister blog, with the offending student’s name and the teacher’s email address clearly there. The teacher wrote me back thanking me for the information, saying that she would be “definitely dealing with it”.

I am currently blogging with my fifth class of students, and this is the first time I can recall getting a comment from someone outside our classroom that was inappropriate. A pretty good record, but it is good to know that if I do get something unsuitable for publishing, I can do something about it.

Proving It

Last spring I blogged about a research project that Etty Rosen, a researcher from Israel, was doing about my classroom blog. She sent questionnaires to each of the parents in my class, asking them to rate a wide range of items including Internet access, visits to our blog and involvement with their child. She recently finished compiling the data, and was kind enough to send me a copy of her spreadsheet. Some of the results are below. It is interesting to note that three years ago, less than one third of the children in my classroom had Internet access at home. That has changed dramatically.

The results are overall very positive. Obviously, I wouldn’t keep blogging with my students unless I felt it was valuable, but it is nice to have some research to back up what I think is happening.

I Love Classblogmeister

I really do.My new class of six year olds (actually some are still five) has begun their blogging adventure, and I have been reminded about how exciting blogging with this great tool can be.

Last week I held my Grade One Parent Night, and I used the blog of one of the students from the year before to demonstrate the dramatic change in children’s writing in the first grade.The parents were riveted by the fact that their child would have a similar online portfolio.During the presentation, I mused aloud “if you have some free time tomorrow at 1:00, come and give us a hand getting started with our blogs”.Four adults showed up (actually, I did too so that makes five).What a difference it made to have so much help.There is a feature in Classblogmeister that allows students to choose the colours in their backgrounds instead of the provided templates.It is a bit complicated for young students, so I don’t usually mention this feature until after Christmas.With so much help, the students were able to all choose their background colours, select a title, tell an adult a couple of things about themselves to be included in the “about me” section AND write their first blog entry. They were enthralled with what they had created.

By the next morning, someone’s parent had commented on her blog, so we all had to have a look.That led to us to checking everyone’s blog to see how many “reads” each one had had.Thanks to a workshop of teachers from Grand Forks who had talked to my class via the Yackpack on our class blog during the morning and had promised to check out what we did in the afternoon, almost everyone had at least 15 page reads, and one child had 35.Huge grins all around.The child who told me, “I don’t know how to write” and “I don’t know what to say” visibly sat up straighter in his chair when he saw that he had eighteen reads.He is now beginning to think of himself as a writer.The addition of the “page reads” feature was a brilliant stroke by David Warlick when he created Classblogmeister.

This year, David added a new feature that allows the blogs of my “orphaned” students from last year to be picked up by their new teacher.This means that they can continue to blog and show their growth in the same online space—a two-year portfolio.The only thing better would be if their grade three teacher would allow them to blog as well.

I love that nothing is posted online unless I see it first.I love that there is a Classblogmeister Yahoo email group where users can ask and answer questions.I love how responsive David Warlick is to questions and suggestions that users have.But most of all I love the fact that my students have an audience can begin to see their place in a global community.