Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Who's the Audience?

Tomorrow we will work with our first group of students, 6th grade, to introduce them to their digital portfolio. This is something that we have been discussing for some time and I am very thankful to our MYP Coordinator, Mr Fambro, for his determination and hours spent making this a reality.

One of the major discussion points that has come out of our conversations has been the concept of audience. This is a very interesting issue and it has been intriguing to listen to the different view points. I found this blog post by Jeff Utecht - Audience as Community - very timely and I would encourage anybody who has doubts about the value of audience to student engagement to read this post and the associated blog posts mentioned within.

I have seen first hand how powerful it can be when the students know that their product is going to be shared with an audience wider than the teacher. I know that adding a Clustr map to this blog and seeing that there are readers outside of the GSIS community has prompted renewed energy in my posting. This same sort of engagement and enthusiasm for writing can be passed onto our students through the use of audience.

The digitial portfolios in the MS will be very beneficial for providing a place where our students can store work and reflect on what they have been learning. The real value of these portfolios will be realized when our students can share them with a world wide audience and receive feedback and comments from people all around the world, thus helping them to create their online presence.

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