Areas is a complimentary digital portfolio tool that introduced previously this year and has rapidly turned into one of my top suggestions for students and instructors who wish to bring Portfolio-based evaluation into their classrooms. Considering that it concerned my attention in the middle of the last school year, some teachers might not have actually tried it since they currently had a digital portfolio in place. Now that the brand-new school year is here, take an appearance at
Areas and its numerous functions for instructors and students including some that were simply released for the new academic year.

Find out more about Spaces Activities right here or enjoy my short video at the bottom of this post to see the instructor and trainee perspectives of Spaces Activities.

Activities” Activities” is my favorite brand-new feature in Spaces. Activities are exactly what the name indicates, activities that you can designate to your trainees to include and finish to their Spaces digital portfolios. And due to the fact that Spaces provides group portfolios and individual portfolios, you can appoint Activities to groups or people.

Curriculum Goals & & Tags lets you import sets of standards with which you desire to “tag” your Activities. The sets of standards that are offered to import is rather excellent. There are the typical state and province standards commonly utilized by public schools as well as standards regularly utilized by independent schools.

After youve picked the set of requirements that you want to import into your Spaces class, you can then include requirements tags to your projects in Spaces. This is an excellent method to assist parents and students comprehend how an assignment lines up with a curriculum goal.

Disclosure: Areas is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com

You can produce an Activity that is as basic or as complex as you would like. An easy Activity would be something like “connect a picture of your marshmallow tower and explain what you d do differently next time.” A complex Activity might be something like asking trainees to tape-record a brief video discussing the crucial points of a presentation theyre making and how those points line up with the requirements youve appointed. Heres a list of some sample Spaces Activities.

Curriculum Goals & & TagsCurriculum Goals & & Tags is another brand-new Spaces feature for this year. Ive seen other digital portfolio services attempt to do something similar, however none has made it as simple for instructors to carry out as Spaces has.

To import Curriculum Goals & & Tags into your Spaces account just sign into your account, select a class, then click on “Curriculum Goals & & Tags “on the left hand side of the screen. Youll then see a search box pop-up where you can browse for standards sets according to state, organization, or province.

Three Reasons to Try Making Spaces Digital Portfolios.

Head here to find out more about Curriculum Goals & & Tags or see the video at the bottom of this post to see how simple it is to include Curriculum Goals & & Tags to your Spaces account

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To create an Activity in Spaces just sign into your instructor account, pick the class that you desire to assign an Activity to, and then click the blue “create” button under the Activity heading in your account. Then all you have to do is write the directions for what you want your trainees to do. If you already have directions composed in Google Docs or Word, you can just import those directions instead of manually writing instructions in Spaces Activities. Spaces will even let you tape a video to discuss the directions to your students. When trainees submit their Activities assignments you can evaluate them in your Spaces account much like you can examine any other items that they add to their portfolios.

1. Ease of access.
As I composed earlier this year about.
Spaces, availability was one of its huge selling points when I tried it for the very first time. Areas offers a way to make certain that the announcements, Activities, and feedback that you publish for trainees can be accessed by them in a range of ways.

When you post in your class Space you can write it out, but you can likewise tape audio and video messages to accompany that written message. For instance, lets say that I need to post an information about an assignment. I can do that by composing a message and I can use Spaces built-in audio and video recording tools to publish the same message. Likewise, when you publish feedback for students you can do so in the kinds of written comments, audio comments, and video comments.

2. Moms and dad involvement.As I alluded to above, moms and dads like to see what their kids are dealing with and digital portfolios are a great way to facilitate this. Parents can be welcomed to view their kids Spaces portfolio. Doing that supplies a great opportunity for them to see their childs development throughout the year instead of just at parent-teacher conference night. Welcoming moms and dads to see their childs portfolio also offers them with the opportunity to speak to their kid about what theyre discovering in school. And the new Curriculum Goals & & Tags function in Spaces makes it easier than ever for parents to understand how their childs work aligns with the objectives of your curriculum.

3. Group Portfolios.
One of the things that makes Spaces rather distinct in the digital portfolio space is that there is a built-in way to produce group portfolios within your class account. Your trainees can have private portfolios where they show their specific work, however they can likewise be a part of groups in which they share their work.

The much better use of group Spaces is as a location where trainees can share their work in progress and get feedback from each other as well as from their teacher.

Spaces is a totally free digital portfolio tool that introduced earlier this year and has actually rapidly become one of my top suggestions for instructors and students who want to bring Portfolio-based evaluation into their classrooms. Activities are exactly what the name implies, activities that you can designate to your students to add and complete to their Spaces digital portfolios. Spaces will even let you tape a video to explain the directions to your trainees. When trainees send their Activities tasks you can evaluate them in your Spaces account just like you can evaluate any other products that they add to their portfolios.

Once theyve joined, from your teacher dashboard you can rapidly generate specific areas for them to utilize. This video strolls you through the procedure of creating spaces for your trainees and this video shows the trainees point of view.

You can appoint trainees to specific group Spaces to share with each other and with you. The better use of group Spaces is as a location where students can share their work in progress and get feedback from each other as well as from their teacher.