A Teacher uses her own Student Work

During the recent holiday, one of my former students and I got together. After initial catching up, we got down to the main issue. She wanted to access the work she did when she was in my CyberEnglish class, but couldn't. She repeatedly got "Not Found" messages when she tried. I explained that the server had died, but all the work was not lost. I showed her. I went to our old page and clicked on her name and soon the Not Found message appeared. I copied the URL of her page and then went to The WayBack Machine and pasted her URL into the space provided for such information and pressed "Take Me Back" and soon we had a listing of dates. I selected the last one since it would be her last iteration of her page and was a date that was after she had graduated. Soon her former page came into focus and she started to giggle with delight as something she had thought lost forever was found. She started clicking on the links to her work and instantly it was all coming back. All of her work, with the exception of some graphics, were all recovered.

After those moments of euphoria settled, the next and obvious questions began to come up. "How can I get all of this on my own page again?" she asked. Since she still knew HTML, I showed her via View Source to copy the code, then to strip out "The WayBack Machine" code from it in Notepad, and then paste it into the new webpage. She would either use Geocities to reconstruct her former home or buy some space and rebuild her home. Either way she would have her work for her new work. Her new work was to prepare to be a teacher. In her Masters program, she wanted to use her former work in her new work as a new English teacher. She was going to assess her former work in her Masters classes as examples since she didn't have her own scholars yet. I thought this was brilliant.

Of course this is an exercise only scholars who have had a webfolio could undertake. Portfolios might not be available or complete, whereas the webfolio can be and is more accessible even when the original server has died. This another reason why all scholars in all schools should be building webfolios of their work. As Arne Duncan begins his new appointment, I hope that he considers the use of webfolios for all scholars.