LearningLog™

School exhibitions can be small or large and centered on a common theme for each student to demonstrate mastery of a subject for display on a Portfolio Day. Students explore different tools and component parts important to building and constructing an artifact to required specification to be shown carefully to tell the subject matter story based on their understanding of the elements and principles of design inspired by the natural environment. Students are required to capture the processes, procedures, and materials in the stories they are expected to tell through their final products.

Students provide insight into their collections of finished artifacts by adding explanatory notes and Meta information to guide reviewers who are exploring their exhibitions, to ensure they are aware of the differences between the artifacts should they present more than one piece.

Some school exhibits are closed to the general public and require either a special family invitation or prior approval through the school administrator’s invitation. In each case, only authorized persons can enter the exhibit and view the artifacts.

Reviewers wander the temporary gallery of students’ artifacts on their own or in groups and point out what they see or feel, discuss the artifacts and a student’s wider collections. They may engage with the student-curators or even the artists in discussions. They leave feedback or sign a school visitor book to voice their opinion. They also overhear other people talking about the artifacts and learn from these interactions in low tones while adhering to the school’s rules that forbid reviewers from passing information about a student’s work to another. A student overhearing the mention of an element like bamboo, clay, etc. quickly adjust their exhibition.

The school administration team would want to share the artifacts with everyone as they also gather feedback data on which exhibits are the most popular, the presentation by students, how often, and what it costs to organize such events. Some of the foreign teachers ask questions about the historical diffusion of certain design elements into the culture of the local community, but a few minutes of discussion is too short to impact subjectivity in a meaningful way.

The number one feature of the LearningLog™ is premised on ensuring the data captured from learners interact with the classified destinations source data to inform a content-driven differentiated pedagogical and extra-curricular instructional design. The activities resulting from the component elements of knowledge and skills within each subject matter are identified and provided to students to help in the application of understanding in contextualizing their stories through artifacts captured from moving and still images, audio, documents, and blogs/publications.

This feature represents the sources of data describing what learners must be able to do using academic and occupational data-driven pedagogy on which learning artifacts represent subject understanding that is demonstrated through creativity, innovations, and inventions. The reviewers must also know the knowledge, skills, and understanding they are reviewing within the artifacts provided by students, the importance of this prior knowledge was captured in the metaphor above through the foreign teacher’s questions.

This requires the classification of learner destination pedagogical data with rules based on hierarchical students exit levels. To ensure reviewers do not only understand the knowledge, skills, and understanding they measure, they are also aware of the grade level and the sources of data.

The second feature ensures all learning processes and the contexts of learning at home, school, work, playgrounds, and performances are inextricably linked, while outcomes prioritize learner destination.

In the halls or gallery of the school on this faithful Portfolio Day are works of different artifacts designed by students inspired by their cultural heritage and characteristics of their natural environment. Including collections from learner destination sources in local communities to inform the benchmark of contextual understanding of elements representing the culture and value system of the stories told through colors, wood, clay, and the like. The reviewers may be representatives of learner destinations in local businesses who must give up their precious time to attend this important community event.  The LearningLog™ is premised on establishing a learning community where support for learning is unobtrusive to individuals’ lifestyles globally. From cradle through retirement or end of life every day is a Portfolio Day and our learning at home, work, school, playgrounds, and performances must be captured to inform reinforced continuous learning.

This translates to:

  • The School Storage Area: Where a school has student’s artifacts storage area it may not be structured with tags that allows links to the student’s Progress File for reviewers to easily locate an artifact.
  • Artifacts: The pieces of evidence collected at home, school, work, playgrounds, and performance that illustrate a skill applied, gained, a competency accomplished, a step made in a longer process or material referenced for learning purposes. Automated using concepts of integrative competencies to tease out data from the internet.
  • Organizing and cataloging: Putting files into folders and using tags on artifacts to retrieve them again later on.
  • Curator: LearningLog™ author, student, or learner.
  • Exhibition spaces: LearningLog™ pages with collections of the blog, and static pages consisting of links to artifacts sources.
  • Insight into artifacts: Reflections and explanatory commentary from reviewers.  

Skills4Industry LearningLog™ makes this entire process unobtrusive to the life and work of community members, families, caregivers, and local businesses, thereby saving time and money. Because it’s online, experts worldwide can participate to offer superior judgment of students’ work in a global village.