Student portfolios, or Sportfolios as we in the #PhysEd community have dubbed them, are a hot topic in education right now with everyone searching for an easy way to effectively document student learning and achievement.
In my school we use Google Apps for just about everything. You may have seen my earlier posts about Using Google Sheets for Physical Literacy Assessment, Google Forms for Record Keeping, Google Forms for Assessment or even how you can use the power of Google Apps for Portfolios Part 1 and Part 2.
If you saw our previous posts about Google Apps for Portfolios you would seen our Google Drive Workflow and how each of my Grade 3-5 students have a Google Drive folder for #PhysEd into which they save photos/videos and documents which they create mainly on our iPad minis. We then head into our IT Room and use Google Sites to embed the files stored in the folder into one central student portfolio (which students have for all subjects).
This works really well for our students in Grades 3-5 who have been taught how to import and embed objects into their Google Site. I found however that I was unable to find an easy way of displaying and documenting all of the digital work that we were recording and creating on the iPads for my Kindergarten to Grade 2 students (who did not yet have the IT skills to work on Google Sites).
That was until I stumbled upon this little hack which made my life easier and enabled me to easily integrate Google Drive with Google Sites to create an aesthetically pleasing and easy manage portfolio system for my younger students. The best bit about it is that once it is set up all you need to do is literally drop things into the student’s folder and their portfolio website will automatically update. I find that now I am constantly using my teacher iPad to take photos and videos of the students within the Google Drive App and they are automagically added to their Sites portfolio.
Click on the picture below to check out an example of the finished product:
So I am sure your next question is “How can I do this?” The answer is in only 3 simple steps.
Step 1: Create a Google Drive Folder for Student
Step 2: Create Google Site for Student
Step 3: Insert Google Drive Folder in Google Site
I like to use the Display as Grid option which gives the portfolio a Pinterest type feel
So there you go as simple as 1-2-3 and you have a great looking record of student achievement in #PhysEd which requires a very minimal amount of effort and upkeep. Just another example of the incredible power of Google Apps and how they can assist us in our #PhysEd community. Happy Teaching!
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