Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Most students want to get a higher score on the SAT or ACT ... maybe their bigger goal is "How do I show that I'm outstanding?" Use a digital Portfolio to highlight how you take initiative and show the Seven Survival Skills

Some people think that it's a good idea to 



Digital PortfoliosHere is the link to Benjamin's Portfolio

Digital Portfolio for 10th Grade

The Project ... click here

Here is an example of a Portfolio's Blog

Click here and visit Tony's website
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  • Many students want a higher ACT or SAT score.


  • The bigger goal is to get into an excellent university

  • Students will benefit from reading the first chapter of Dennis Littky's book.   Most students don’t take the time.  It is a shame....  CHAPTER ONE

  • Unfortunately, to most people, teaching is the giving of knowledge. What are you going to tell the students? What is your expertise? But teaching is really about bringing out what's already inside people.
  • Dennis Littky
  • Schools that are serious about fulfilling every student's promise must develop structures and relationships that nurture the strengths and energies of each student. Truly personalized learning requires reorganizing schools to start with the student, not the subjects or classes. A school that tries to take personalized education to its full potential is equally concerned with what knowledge students acquire as with how the individual students use and apply that knowledge. The priority at such a school is to know students and their families well enough to ensure that every learning experience excites the students to learn more. There are many great small, personalized schools that do all of this. What I'm saying is, they need to take the idea of personalized learning to the next step: to where every student has a completely different curriculum, based on who he or she is right now and who he or she wants to become.
Central to the idea of treating everyone alike differently is understanding that there cannot be a uniform curriculum for every student in the country—or for every student in a single school or classroom, for that matter. Force-feeding kids a rigidly defined body of knowledge is in total opposition to what we know about learning. Everything I know about kids tells me that there is no content that's right for every kid.
  • Go ahead... click here and read this
    You can also get an idea about the power of digital portfolios (as used at highTechHigh.org)




  • Most admission officers want to create a community that is interesting on their campus.  Most officers do not want to admit “well-rounded” students.  They want “spiky” students.

  • Can you show that you are UNUSUAL or OUTSTANDING in some area?

  • What says more about you, your test scores?  Your GPA?  Grade Point Average?

  • Or a Powerpoint that you created?

  • How about showing the world the work that you did in the past three years in school?

  • What do you think about visiting this list?

  • Have you given a speech?  Are you proud of your work?

  • Why not show the world an essay and make a video to explain the highlights of the essay.

  • Yes, you can make a video on YOUTUBE and you don’t have to show your face.  Point the camera at your essay and perhaps at five useful websites that you discovered when you searched for information on your topic.

  • What did you do to persuade people to change their behavior?


  • What did you do that shows that you are a person who takes INITIATIVE?

  • Tony Wagner of Harvard points out that there are SEVEN SURVIVAL SKILLS.  Can you show a project for each of these skills?  Can you show projects that demonstrate how you have these skills:

  • Collaborate
    Communicate    Tony Wagner's list
    use Curiosity
    Imagination
    Access and Analyze information
  • Agility and Adaptability
  • Initiative and Entrepreneuring
  • Critical Thinking (can you solve Lateral Thinking Puzzles?)

  • Here's an example of a video that I made to highlight and link my projects.
Search on Yahoo for "Steve McCrea
Transform Education"
Search on Google for "Steve McCrea
Transform Education"


Look what happens when we search "Steve McCrea
Transform Education" with IMAGES

  • Notice that “finding the square root of 132” and “factoring the difference of two square numbers” and using a matrix are not in the Tony Wagner list.

  • Here are other ideas about PORTFOLIOS
    Making a website?
    Starting a YOUTUBE campaign?
    Creating a Facebook page or group?

  • Yes, those projects show initiative

  • If you are interested in creating a digital portfolio, do the following, please
  • a)  create a Gmail account.
    b)  Visit Drive.google.com and learn how to upload files and documents, photos and videos.
    c)  create a Youtube account.
    d)  collect the materials that you have created for school (papers, reports, projects) and put them on a table
    e)  borrow a camera and point the camera at a project and start talking.
  • f) make a tour of your town and show how you know something about the history of your area.   Oh, you don’t have much to say?  Then prepare by visiting the local websites and take us on a virtual tour using your computer the Internet.

  • If you want more ideas, call (954) 646 8246 and I’ll show you how to create a DIGITAL PRESENCE and how to make yourself seen.

  • The goal is to connect YOUR NAME and A PROJECT that is near to your heart.


  • For example   “STEVE McCrea” and “Transform Education”  gives a lot of information.





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