Digital Student Portfolios Book Club - Introductions (plus poem!)

As part of my summer professional development, I am joining Matt Renwick of Reading by Example along with many others in a month-long book club study of his Digital Student Portfolios ebook. (Read his overview intro post here.) We will be sharing and discussing the book as part of a Google+ Community. I hope you'll join us!

Introduction

To begin the book club discussions, Matt asked us to answer the following question: "How has technology impacted your instruction and student learning?" We were given the choice to answer in either a written, visual, or oral way, so here is my visual response plus six word story.

Six Word Story: Technology is a challenge worth overcoming.

In brief, this is an image of the Smart Board in my classroom with the end of a poetry-memoir written by a student of mine Photoshopped onto the board. (You can read another student poem, using PowerPoint transitions to add visual impact here: The Power of Poetry Friday.)

The SmartBoard is the most commonly-used piece of technology in my third grade classroom, but for the past two years we have had an in-class set of hand-me-down Mac book computers as well. The computers are used during the drafting, editing, and publishing stages of writing time and are available as a choice during Poetry Friday time.

I love seeing how kids take technology and make it their own. I am looking forward to expanding my technology repertoire and seeing how digital portfolios can add to and enhance what is already happening in my classroom.

Here is the entirety of Ben's poem:

Fear

A pit
In your
Stomach

Strange are
The
Creatures
Waiting
To come out

Fear

Dark
Deep
What we have to

Fear

The pit
That we must
Overcome
When we do
Something scary,
Or don’t do it
At all

Fear

Was what I had
To overcome
To take a
Scary slide
With a
Scary name

THE
MINE
D
R
O
P

That moment
Walking up
The many
Stairs
I was
Terrified.
Push us
She did
A ninety
Degree
Drop.
And I loved it.

Fear

Almost held me
Back.
But it was what
I had to
Overcome,
And I’m
Glad I did.

Carol has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Carol's Corner.