Digital Portfolio through SLN's

After a quick break and an exciting new beginning, we’re back in la clase de tecnología. This past week we had a guest come to class to talk with us about building a Student Learning Network (SLN). A SLN is an online portfolio that students create to keep all their digital work organized. Although our guest speaker noted you could use a variety of social sites (Twitter, .., etc.), Google docs and Google sites was used as an example because a neighboring high school was using this system.  On each students’ SLN Google site they had to include class pages divided by level (where all their mastery assignments would go), link to their log in to check their grades, links to common sites they go to for educational purposes, and a screenshot of their class schedule. The students are taught how to do this as 9^th graders, their first year in the school, and are asked to “share” the link with their teachers. Through sharing this link their teachers have access to it but it is not public and will not show up in any search engines.

Upon introduction to SLN’s, I thought that the portfolio was unique because an SLN would allow for a student to track their progress throughout all of high school! This would not only be useful for teacher’s to get sense of where the student is academically, but also for the student to reflect upon and use to better themselves as a learner. It also serves as a great place to store those assignments you don’t want to throw out, but don’t necessarily know what to do with. (How many of you hung on to things from high school until one day you were like, “this is something I’d like to hang on to…but it’s really only collecting dust.”) If students had all these assignments in one place and as an electronic file, so as to not have to worry about losing or collecting piles of stuff, they would be of easier access when the time came that they did need them. This makes me think about the seniors, who might be able to look back across their high school learner journey through their SLN and use what they see as guidance in writing college admissions essays.

I also found what the guest speaker shared about the Google doc part of the SLN interesting. He talked about how in Google docs, you can share your assignment with your teachers, who are able to make comments right on the work. Through this method students are empowered because there is no giving up their work to the teacher, but rather it is more collaborative because they are sharing it. I found this statement an interested way to think about technology facilitating collaboration and student/teacher relationship.

I think overall the idea of an SLN is a great idea to help students in their academic journey through high school. The only drawback is that I worry about those kids who don’t have access to a computer outside of school. Of course there are school computers and the library, but some students still don’t have the means to stay after school. That is something to think about as student work is digitized.