The Pros and Cons of Using Livebinders as a Digital Archiving Tool for Student Work

Teachers at the Magnet Middle have wanted a user-friendly way to showcase students' work from the school year so that all stakeholders could access the work at any time.  We knew that the Chromebooks would be launched this semester, and I think we were all aware that when the students had their gmail accounts set up that everyone would be able to collaborate, create, and store work using Google Drive and the suite of Google tools.  However, we couldn't wait for the Chromebook roll-out because of the (impending) IB Authorization Visit in early October.  We felt that we had to show the team that we were beginning the process of setting up a system for organizing student projects.  Since I was already familiar with Livebinders.com and its ease-of-use (basically little to no training of staff or students required -- a kind of log-in and use-straight-away tool), we looked at the free tool and decided to implement its features immediately.  The IB visiting team came and viewed student work samples and reflections via Livebinders (with the permission of students, of course), and we seem to have "passed that test." So here is an assessment of the online portfolio tool.

Pros:  Livebinders serves a good purpose for what it was designed to do: it is a fairly decent organization and presentation tool that can be accessed at school or at home.  Students may showcase their best work from all of their classes -- even music, visual art, Spanish, and participation in community service projects -- with minimal effort or steps.  It is relatively attractive with its color-tabbed format.  Students find it easy to upload pictures of their 3-D projects and their text documents. They can write directly onto the tabbed pages to reflect upon a project or to describe a picture of the project. They can create layers of subtabs under each school subject. They can provide links to videos that they have uploaded on Youtube, such as their video or animation projects, or even embed the Youtube video itself onto the page (however, see Cons list below for caveats regarding this feature). Teachers can monitor the most recent session time when a student has logged in, and when the level of student effort is in question, teachers can show parents or students a screenshot of the most recent log-in time.  Work is automatically saved, so there is little risk in "losing" work.

Cons: According to the teachers, one of the cons of using Livebinders is the fact that there is not an admin feature to the website.  Teachers have to log in to every student's account to make sure that their work has been uploaded as assigned.  This can get very tedious for the teacher. And although the teacher can edit work when he/she is logged in, there is no feature to comment on the student's work. It is not designed to be a collaborative tool among teachers and students, and that is where the usefulness and productivity of Livebinders ends.  Another detraction from using this tool concerns momentary "freezing" of the program while students are working.  One teacher reported that one student could not work on his binder for a few minutes, which can be frustrating for students working on a deadline.  Livebinders is also hampered by its slightly static, "old school" Powerpoint slide-like format interface for each tab. In addition to its rigid styling options, students can get buried in creating multiple subtabs to the point that they have to dig to find their own work.  The file formats supported by the Livebinders platform are very limited as well.  Video files can be inserted as links to other document saving sites, but unless they have been uploaded to Youtube, they cannot be embedded right into the tab page.  Some students do not have permission to use Youtube, and therefore, this limits what a student can show directly on his/her portfolio. PDF files cannot be embedded either. They display as links.

Another inconvenience for setting up Livebinders in a middle school classroom:  Livebinders requires students to be 13 years of age in order to use their personal email accounts to set up a Livebinders account; however, the company provided a way for our under 13 population to use the program. Because we did not have our systemwide student Gmail accounts in time to set up our Livebinders accounts, we had to create "subaccounts" on  teacher's existing Gmail accounts.  There is a detailed video that shows teachers how to do this, and it is provided in a link on Livebinders.  It is not as difficult as it sounds.  The username is created by the student and the password can be a generic password for all users.  The teacher receives emails on his/her Gmail inbox that each student account has been set up.  In order for the teacher to access and assess the Livebinders account for that student, he/she keepst the list of usernames handy.  Students are encouraged to keep their usernames private so that others could not compromise their binders.

Overall, the teachers, students, and parents have been pleased with Livebinders and its simplicity.  Students have taken real pride in organizing their work in this manner and have shown a genuine enthusiasm for reflecting back on their learning goals for the projects they have posted, writing down what they learned and enjoyed, and evaluating their work to describe what they could have done better.

Of course, since we are now launching Chromebooks and Google Drive in the classroom (as of this week), once teachers have set up the folder sharing feature, they will be able to view and comment on student work without having to log in to every individual student's account. True collaboration in the classroom to improve learning is our main goal.  We are excited to see what G-Drive can do for writing workshop and math class, and we're ready to incorporate what we learn from every new tool to improve our fledgling digital archiving system.

Lavanda Wagenheim is the IB Coordinator for the Tuscaloosa Magnet School - Middle.  Connect with her on Twitter, where her handle is @ELavanda.