Chapter 11
Focus Question
How can teachers and students use digital portfolios as
tools for learning?
Digital portfolios are a collection of educational materials
stored in an electronic format such as a CD-ROM, website, or computer file.
Teachers can incorporate digital portfolios as a way to encourage new and
creative work in the classroom. Also working with digital portfolios can
increase a student’s technological skills and confidence. These portfolios can
open a giant door for learning possibilities.
Photo credit: Pinellas School
Summary
Chapter eleven starts off by letting new teachers aware of
the teacher assessment that they will be evaluated on. Teachers are continually
assessed and evaluated by faculty who coordinate teacher license programs and
by teachers and administrators in the schools. As well as teachers, students
are also assessed. Student assessment is the ongoing evaluation of students,
and is fundamental to the work of elementary, middle, and high school teachers.
Finally there is the student involvement in learning and assessment, this
assessment is how students will participate in the assessment process. All 3 of
these assessments are important to consider when entering the Education field.
A effective tool that teachers can use to assess their teaching is with a
device called a digital portfolio. Broadly speaking, a digital portfolio is a
goal driven, organized collection of artifacts that demonstrates a person’s
expansion of knowledge and skills over time. Digital portfolios are a great
tool to consider incorporating into the classroom. With these portfolios as a
teacher you can ask students to hyperlink documents, create navigation systems,
and embed images from multimedia. This is allowing students to become hands on
with their learning. There are disadvantages to digital portfolios though.
Digital portfolios require builders to know or learn to use computers, cameras,
scanners, photo, and illustrating software, and other tools. Teachers may have
to go out of their way to get professional supposed to build a portfolio
template. This all involves time and money. Although these may take time and
energy teachers have found this extremely helpful when monitoring their
teaching. It’s important for future educators to know that assembling a
portfolio is a structure for examining your teaching practices, identifying strengths
and weaknesses, and making plans to improve or change certain aspects in the
future. Changing ideas a little, democratic schools and classrooms is a term that
every educator should be aware of. Democratic schools and classrooms are places
where students and teachers together make substantive decisions about important
aspect of educational operations, from the academic curriculum to school
climate and rules. Input and involvement require teachers and students to
engage in open and frank discussions about how their classroom operates. This
is a way to really get your students involved in the classroom. While
self-proclaimed democratic schools represent only a time number of the schools
in the United States, many schools and teachers see themselves as teaching
democratically, and they find many ways to do this within the framework of a
more traditionally structured school organization. Before introducing any topic
to the class some type of assessment should be given to see where the students
are at. Preassessments, prior knowledge-based learning, and online surveys are
all great ways to determine where your students are at. The ultimate goal for
every teacher is to get these students to succeed. There are a number of ways
you can about this and one way teachers are doing this is by student
participation systems. These tools are handheld and wireless tools that offer
interactive learning options for teachers and students. This chapter finishes
off by saying it’s important to change the classroom experience and really get
students involved in the learning which will ultimately help them exceed, especially
on those high-stakes test.
This is a great video that generates an overview on Electronic Portfolios.
Tech-Tool Question
The tech tool link I checked out was Survey Monkey. This web
site is set up very professionally and is very well organized. At the top of the
web page it gives web-users the option to get instruction on how the page
works, examples of other surveys created, survey services, and plans and
pricing. I will be sure to keep this website in mind if I ever need to make
surveys! On a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate this site a 10.
APA:
Maloy, R. (2011) Transforming
learning with technologies. Boston: Pearson.
The ePortfolios (for either student or teacher) are an important reflection piece for learning. So gathering the artifacts is important, but that's only 1/2 the task! :)
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