Wednesday, April 10, 2013


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.

1 comment:

  1. 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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