Creating
Online Scrapbooks to Enhance Student Learning 
by: Leanne
Semprimoznik, Physical Education instructor,
Central Washington University
As
the undergraduate physical education
majors at Central Washington University
near the end of their program coursework,
they look forward with somewhat nervous
excitement to their last 6 credit-hour
class, Movement Analysis III (Mov. III).
This time-intensive, skills-focused
class was created to introduce students
to a variety of “non-traditional”
skills that didn’t fit in other
skill oriented courses. Many of these
skills are now taught in schools today,
but many of them still don’t have
an obvious home in our more traditional
physical education skill theme courses.
Examples of activities include adventure
education, circus arts, unicycling,
rock climbing, archery, mountain biking,
and inline skating.
In preparation for this class, students
are given a calendar for the 10-week
quarter that outlines specific details
about each class meeting: location,
skill topic, preparatory material, clothing,
and whether they need to bring food.
The predictable students’ response
after receiving this calendar is, “overwhelmed”
and “anxious”. And after
watching students go through the course
material and cycle of emotions and experiences,
I remind them with an encouraging smile
that I think they can accomplish great
things if they are willing to put in
time and practice to become proficient
at the many different skills. And the
process of fear, excitement, frustration,
and finally success, begins in earnest.
In order to help students to recognize
this learning process, they complete
a reflective assignment. Reflective
teaching is a mainstay of what we teach
students through each course in the
major. Most reflective assessments are
written journal entries or final reflection
statements. Because of the challenging
nature of this last class in their major,
reflection has been a crucial part of
the learning process. In the past, it
has taken the form of a scrapbook album
filled with photos, journal entries,
quotes, poems, pressed flowers, and
other items taken from their class experiences.
These scrapbooks also serve as a take-home
memory book for their time in the program
and with their fellow cohort-mates.
Recently, we became aware that creating
a traditional scrapbook was not as motivating
to our students compared to just a few
years ago. Students seemed to have grown
less interested in paper cutting and
flower pressing. Scrapbook costs for
photos, printing, and support materials
were a barrier that created some resistance.
Many students dropped their scrapbook
off for review and never picked it up
again, leaving their memory book behind.
Today’s students use their phones
and digital cameras for photos and videos
to record experiences and these are
not easily transferred into a hard copy
book. The problem was clear. This reflection
scrapbook was a valuable part of the
class experience but we needed to find
a new way to help students create meaningful
scrapbooks.
The idea blossomed from a staff discussion
about integrating technology into our
courses with websites or social networking.
Dr. Heidi Henshel-Pellet, CWU PE Professor,
connected the dots and said, “Why
not a blog?” So a trial was created
for digital scrapbooks instead of a
traditional book. At first, I saw eyebrow-raising
at the idea, but my enthusiasm persuaded
members of my department to see this
as an opportunity for enriching a student’s
reflection by making it a more accessible
and economical way to create a reflection
scrapbook.
The Blog’n Scrapbook started
and students had their free accounts
set up on blogspot.com in minutes. Students
were visiting each other’s sites
within the week and posting photos,
videos and reflective posts or journal
entries. Considerations for using a
blog site as a tool for student reflection
echo those stated by Martha Beagle and
Don Hodges in the June 2009 pelinks4u
article, “Social Networking in
Education.”
I should emphasize that student blog
sites need to be monitored for content
and safety. Issues related to copyright
material and personal profiles should
be discussed in detail with students
before opening a public blog. We assessed
student blogs using guidelines that
including the quantity and focus of
posts, links to articles and helpful
teaching sites for the skills taught
in class, photos, quotes, poems, and
appearance.
The end results of the Blog’n
Scrapbook in our class were impressive.
We saw that most students used the blog
site to post throughout the quarter,
describing significant learning experiences
from each class. Some examples of student
statements are, “I never thought
I’d learn how to do this,”
and “I learned more new skills
this quarter than I think I ever have,”
and “I didn’t think I would
make it, but the practice really paid
off.”
Students now have a site established
that they can modify for student teaching
or future classroom use. They also have
a way to maintain contact with their
fellow classmates. If you would like
to see some examples of these students’
online scrapbooks, follow these links.
Examples:
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