About the Project

Promoting holistic learning in the 'digital now'

This is a student centred project aimed to target current Yr.9 students (2015) identified as 'priority learners'. One of the school’s strategic aims is 'to provide all students with the skills and confidence to succeed now and in the future'.

The benefits for the students are that it will contextualize student learning, provide wider insight into the impact of students learning for all with a vested interest, allow implementation of 21st century skills, and provide more evidence based mentoring.

This proposed innovation aims to collate student work and ideas using e-portfolios directly for the purpose of improving engagement, learning experiences and academic outcomes for the targeted group of priority learners.

The proposed use of digital portfolios is innovative as they are not currently used within our school. Currently the product of a students learning paper based and is primarily subject-centered. This results in disjointed information that is not easily accessible to staff, whanau and family or the wider community.

The educational needs this innovation addresses:

• The low level of achievement of the school’s identified disengaged learners - achieving below expected Curriculum Levels 
• The need to strengthen student-centered academic mentoring procedures – more informed and wider resourced mentoring 
• The need to have whanau/family and community engaged and involved in the learning of their ‘student’ 

The proposed innovation aims to shift this practice so the product of learning becomes more student centered and driven.