According to Gambill, Moss, and Vescogni (2008), “Directly teaching organizational skills aids students for their current task (school) while preparing them for their latter tasks (workforce). Simple tools such as binders increase learning time and grades earned by students while decreasing their frustration.” Now that most students are accessing their learning in a digital environment, how can we help them create a virtual location to bring together their learning artifacts in order to support their cognitive processing?
In this week’s podcast, our Digital Learning Specialists discuss how important it is for students to collect exemplars of their work, so they can reflect upon, share, and celebrate their learning growth. With an increase of tech-empowered classrooms and remote-learning environments, the need to teach students best practices for organizing their classwork, resources, and finished projects/performances now extends to the digital realm.
Join us as we share strategies for developing eBinders and ePortfolios where students can collect, reflect, and recollect their learning. Below, you will find resources and tips shared during the podcast to support your virtual-teaching goals.
Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write reflectively about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.
Arthur W. Chickering and Stephen C. Ehrmann, educational researchers
Resources
In this week’s episode, we discuss the following strategies and resources that are available on AVID Open Access for you to explore in more depth.
Explore Best Practices and Digital Tools to Help Your Students Organize Their Learning
For students to learn these best practices, we need to be intentional in teaching them strategies and tools for managing their digital materials. We cannot assume that students will figure it out for themselves, so we need to provide direct instruction as well as model these best practices for our students.
eBinders and ePortfolios
eBinders are primarily a place for students to collect work, reflect on the learning process, and then recollect their learning for the purpose of sharing or studying.
- Collect: Collecting information in the written word during class is important, but so is collecting multimedia, such as pictures, videos, and vocal components, to tie into your reflection later. It just so happens that the only place all of these artifacts can coexist is an eBinder.
- Reflect: Students reflect on their daily learning and make connections to the broader essential questions for a unit or chapter.
- Recollect: Recollection is a product of the organization of an eBinder. Students can easily find and remember what they did based on the learning hooks they created during collection and reflection so that they can apply and share their learning.
ePortfolios are a collection of students’ finished projects and/or performances that provide evidence of their knowledge and skills.
- ePortfolios demonstrate students’ growth over time and can be used to reflect on their learning journey.
- ePortfolios can also be shared with family, employers, or colleges to celebrate or highlight students’ skills and achievements.
Digital Tools
Let us help you look for new ways to engage students online. We share tips for the following digital tools in this week’s episode.
- AVID eBinder Templates: AVID eBinders work best using Google Sites or a Microsoft OneNote Class Notebook. The following links have all the templates and instructions you need to start using eBinders with your students!
- ePortfolios: Any of the same eBinder tools can also be used for ePortfolios: Google Sites (Tips), Microsoft OneNote, Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Seesaw. For more tool ideas, see these recommendations from Common Sense Education.
References
- Gambill, J. M., Moss, L. A., & Vescogni, C. D. (2008). The impact of study skills and organizational methods on student achievement.