Student-Led Coferences Digital Portfolios

What is a student led conference?

It's just like a parent-teacher conference except it's ran by the student!

The student gets to be engaged by sharing their own progress to the parents. They can prepare for these conferences. The students are in charge of sharing their academic progress, their classroom behavior, and what they do in the classroom each day. I believe that this really allows the student feel responsible for his/her learning. This type of conference can begin as early as KINDERGARTEN!

I listened in today in class to two of my classmates that presented on this topic. This is something that I would have never thought about before.  Although this may take more time and effort than a normal parent teacher conference, I believe that it is so worth it. If the students know that this is coming, I feel as if it will give them more of a goal to want to present later on to their parents. Here is an example of a teacher led conference.  

Along with this, they shared about student digital portfolios. This is something that I would love to incorporate into my class someday. Students are able to take pictures and document their own work using a program called Seesaw. Seesaw allows the teacher to keep up with all of the student’s work and it will send a notification of all of the students work to the child’s parent when something new is uploaded to the app. The students can access their portfolios through a QR code or a Google account. I really enjoyed the easy design and use for students. They shared that students at the age of five are able to use this program. I feel like that is the most important part of every student driven app. I believe that the student should be able to use the program with ease. This program is great to be shared at student-led conferences. It is easy for the students to flip through and share with the parents all that they have learned throughout the semester because everything is documented in a systematic way.

Overall, both student-led conferences and online digital portfolios like Seesaw are great things that I want to implement into a classroom of my own someday. I feel like there are so many options these days on allowing our students and or future students take part into their own learning. Sometimes as teachers we need to sit back and just see what they are getting out of things. Often times, we try to take charge into telling them what they will get out of something. Students need goals and something to give them a feeling of self accomplishment. Self accomplishment is such a big thing in the classroom. It allows them to feel more confident in working towards anything in the classroom.