During this first quarter of school, I decided to try something new with one of my well-behaved group of 6th graders. I suspect most of these students will decide to continue with engineering during their middle school career and possibly even their high school career.
I thought, hey it would be cool to have a digital portfolio with my 6th graders to help them keep all their engineering information together from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade! The last thing a senior engineering student completes in engineering is a portfolio showcasing all of their work from their first course in 6th grade to the last course as a sr. To do this I decided to use a website creator that allowed me to monitor student websites and blogs with ultimate control being mine.
I tell my students about this project and they are pumped! They think this is the best thing they have ever heard and are very interested in how they will do it, what they will use, when they get to use it, etc. Then I realized just how much time getting these sites to a usable place was going to take. I stopped talking about them for about 5 school days. I wasn’t sure what in the world I was going to be able to do! Then, in class, one student raised his hand to ask when they would get to use their websites. GULP! I explained we just don’t have time to stop and set them up. I really wanted to do it, we just don’t have time to set up websites right now. Then he suggested maybe doing it after school or one evening. I thought yeah right, no one wants to do that! The kids all agreed. I was shocked. We looked at the calendar and realized there wasn’t a single day without a baseball, softball, soccer or football. Someone suggested doing a website party on Sunday night. So with the number of kids agreeing to attend, I set up our Sunday night event. Sunday night rolls around and 16/20 students are in my room working on websites. How many times can you get a class of students to come in and do EXTRA work willingly?
So here we are, 6 weeks into school, 3 weeks until the first unit of engineering is complete. Looking back at the idea of websites, I still think it was a good one. The entire idea has had its hiccups along the way. However, I think I have learned a lot in this experience. I was terrified to start something new and unclear especially with kids that I want to keep in my program!
Pros of student sites
• Kids are engaged
• Excited to share their learning
• Creating a community of learners
• Sharing information in their blogs they normally wouldn’t verbalize
• Creating a personalized learning space that has meaning to themselves
• Simple communication and display
• Love the website features (makes for easy websites and free publishing on their domain)
Cons of student sites
• In the start of blogs, my students were commenting and writing on random topics rather than what they should be.
• Takes time to set up and prepare each student
• Students need instruction to handle the website creator successfully
• Not always classroom related materials being put on the site
Examples of Journal Entries students are sharing with each other:
Example 1)
Today we got to upload our first picture to our site. My was a "Nerdy Smile." If you go to the parts section you can see it and a paragraph to go with it. Please go see it. I can’t wait to see what everyone else is making. I really like being able to use Inventor to make whatever I want. I am a little worried about making the pegboard, it looks kind of complicated. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to do it by myself. Miss W has started to let us do things on our own, now I’m not sure that was a good idea!
Example 2)
Today I learned a lot about Inventor, but I feel that Inventor has many things that I have not learned about, like IAM. The fillet tool is amazing because it helped me make a car without sharp edges. I finished the checklist, and I saved four files; three were extruded, and one was a robot. I had trouble revolving, and drilling holes.
Example 3)
Today we worked on inventor again. We began our pegboard toy. I think I'm going to have fun on this project. I never realized how complicated it was to make something as simple as a baby toy, let alone a gadget such as an iphone or computer.
Students are starting to share their realizations, fears, questions, concerns etc. The other students are starting to respond and create discussions about topics that I don’t have time to cover in 9 weeks. They are creating personal connections to our material in a way I couldn’t even plan. I am finding my students are much more willing to put questions and fears out there when other students are responding to their blog pages. This experiment (that I was ready to throw out 3 days after I introduced it) has really changed the dynamics of my classroom. The students are creating more connections and honest evaluations of classwork. To me, this is an advanced skill for a 6th grader. So while there are occasional comments that remind me they are 6th graders, the overall content outweighs the random comments everyday.
Now, looking back, I don’t regret any of the days I gave up to make these websites an option for my students. I hope as they mature through the years their websites will become a reminder of where they started and where they want to go. I hope they are able to find this as a resource to communicate and partner with other students in our class and find inspiration from their peers.
