Digital Technologies

Digital Portfolios at St John’s 2021

This year at St John’s there will be a slight change to learning portfolios for our students and families. In the past our students received hard copy learning portfolios, which contained samples of learning from each semester with a summary of each task and annotations attached.

Digital portfolios are designed to assist with ongoing communication and family engagement with each child and their learning progress. Our aim is to ensure the progress of student learning is being shared with parents and families regularly throughout the school year. Implementing a system for digital portfolios at St John’s allows for teachers to provide more frequent feedback and examples of student learning to show academic progress, growth and reflection on what they have learnt.

Over the past 18 months we have introduced digital portfolios into the Year 3-6 levels using the online platform Google Sites. This year all students from Prep - Six will receive a digital portfolio. We will be using Seesaw as the online platform for our junior students in Year Prep - 2.

Parents with children in the middle and senior school will be familiar with our digital portfolios using Google Sites and the process will remain the same this year, with the only difference being that we hope to share samples of student learning more frequently than just once every semester.

Parents with children in the junior school can expect to receive information soon on how to connect to their child’s Seesaw learning journal. Parents are welcome to download the Seesaw app on their phone or tablet at home in preparation.

Thank you for your ongoing support and please feel free to contact myself or Mrs Gridley if you have any further questions.

Tom Jackson

E-learning Leader

tjackson@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au

Cyber Safety

Just as you make sure your child is safe in the real world, you need to help ensure the same applies in the online world.

With kids being active online earlier and earlier, it’s so important that you help keep them safe – and teach them how to make the right decisions, regardless of their age.

While the internet is an amazing tool for communication and education, we also need to understand the downside of it: exposure to inappropriate content, sexual exploitation, fraud and scams, as well as bullying. These are just some of the hazards your kids are potentially exposed to on a regular basis.

As a parent, what can you do?

Take an interest in – and understand - what your kids are doing online.
Make talking about the online world part of every day conversations with your kids.
Set house rules about internet access and usage.
Educate yourself. Know what services, games etc your kids are using and familiarise yourself with the types of interactions, privacy settings and reporting mechanisms.
Educate your kids – and the easiest way to do this is through the eSmart Digital Licence, Australia’s #1 online safety education program.https://www.digitallicence.com.au/why-the-digital-licence/