After setting up their digital portfolios, students are often overwhelmed with the amount of information they need to add to it. Our freshmen have their portfolios on Weebly, which means there is also content that they did not create to contend with. To address both these issues, we designed a station-based homepage lesson to offer more individualized attention and support. During this lesson, a class comes to the Learning Commons and is divided into four groups. The groups rotate through four stations, each of which is headed by a teacher, librarian, or LMS student leader. At the stations, students learn:
How to ethically source legal images and how to insert their header image and add it to different pages;
How to upload images from their phones or download images they own from social media before uploading them to their portfolio;
How to find and properly attribute quotes that appeal to them before adding them to their homepage; and
How to transfer and format their previously written biography paragraphs.
Students invariably complete the activities at different paces, so at each station, we also guide them in removing unwanted content and adjusting placement of their information. By the end of the lesson, students have a clean, attractive homepage that showcases them and their interests.
This lesson highlights 21st century skills which students then use to support their efforts in other classes. Students add artifacts from all subjects to their portfolios, which teachers use for assessment. Having the small groups allows us to offer individual attention and gives students a chance to help each other at different stages, boosting their confidence and self-efficacy.