To be completely honest, I was not the fastest convert to working this way. I already had all my work on my class site where my students made copies of the docs and I kept track via a spreadsheet. I made the workspaces as I had been asked to, put them on my site with some work on them, but didn't really engage after that. Bit of a "box tick", compliance thing.
Since going in and out of lockdowns over the last two and a half years and the students not having a lot of consistency, I decided to give it a better try.
I am a definite convert now. As I already had all the resources on my class site, it did not take a lot of time to set up the cards on the workspaces for all the activities. Yes, it is putting the same stuff in two different places but this has proved to be a positive thing as it gives the students the ability to start the work from where ever they are accessing it. Blog post here.
I got some students voice last year about how they liked to be presented with the work. A lot of the things that I do came out - like making examples and making step. by steps / how to's - blog post here, so I wanted to make sure the students still had access to these things if the only place they were going to for the work when not in the classroom was the workspace. I have been putting my examples and step by step documents and how to videos all on the workspaces so they are easy to find. There is also a link to where everything is on the class site so they can see it there too.
Another thing that I wanted to try this year was to use workspaces as the evidence "dump" for the drawn work that the students produce as well as the written work. I have only just started trying this, but it is going ok so I will be continuing this next year. The Year 13 student who has been trying this out for me has been taking here own pictures of the work so it hasn't created extra work for me really. I wrote a blog post about this thinking earlier this year.
Here are links to some of my workspaces embedded on my class site.
- Year 9 Food Tech
- Y11 DVC - Architect Information
- Y11 DVC Design Brief
- Y13 DVC Initiate Design Ideas - This was my first attempts at getting the students to put their drawn work on a workspace.
- Y13 DVC Product Design - This one includes blank templates to add design concepts that the students have drawn and photographed.
Here are a couple of examples of one students design and concepts and concept developments that they put onto the workspace (I have made copies of them so their names do not appear as the owner)
This has definitely made it easier to have all of the work referenced in one place. This is really useful for marking and moderating. The original drawings will still need to be posted to Wellington for external marking. I actually agree with them seeing the originals to be honest as it is difficult to get a consistently clear image from scanning or photographing and you don't want to risk any details being lost.
I am a definite convert to this, but I still have to make my workspaces look pretty!!! - Blog post here
Thank you for sharing your journey Karen and Im sure it will inspire those who have not given it a go in the past to relook at what’s possible with the use of workspaces. Your ‘work’ is always inspirational in this ‘space’. Student voice on the use of mystudentdashboard has been positive.
ReplyDeleteThis is fabulous Karen. Defs agree that workspaces still need to be pretty, and yours definitely are! Mystudentdashboard does seem to be a hit with the students, and for a variety of reasons but mostly they tell me they like that it's a "one stop shop" for all their learning. Thanks for sharing this, it's great!
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