Digital Blog Post #E

Digital Blog Post #E

Digital Portfolios

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Elements of Teacher Portfolios

A teacher's portfolio can include many things, but most will have these elements: Resume, Philosophy of Education and References, Lesson or Unit Plans and Reflections, Academic Courses and Research Experiences, Teaching Experience. In years past, teacher portfolios were documented on paper in a folder. Now, teachers can create digital portfolios, which open up new opportunities. Standards-based digital portfolios connect teaching skills to standards as a way of showing competency and qualifications of teachers. This is also a helpful way to organize portfolio material. What I think is great about digital portfolios for teachers is that it creates a way for teachers to reflect on their growth as an educator. I can imagine that in the past it would be much more difficult to do this with paper records. With digital portfolios, teachers can review, edit, and reflect on their teaching as they progress to become better educators in a more organized fashion than paper portfolios. Also, since the portfolio will be digitalized, there is no need to carry around a paper version. Anytime the teacher wants access to it, he or she just needs the internet access.

Digital Portfolios for Students

A digital portfolio is not just for teachers, but it can also be for students. This is a great way for students to look back and see their improvement in their learning. This can become both a personal and public form of writing. Students used to only be able to share their information with small amounts of people, but with the digital portfolios they are much more accessible to larger crowds. This is a great way for students to find their voice, and to receive feedback for their writing. This is a way for students to find enjoyment in writing. This connects something they enjoy (technology) to learning. Not only does it benefit the students, but parents and teachers can track a students progress.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Digital Portfolios 

While their are many advantages to digital portfolios, such as accessibility, portability, creativity, community, and technological self-confidence, there are also some disadvantages that need to be acknowledged. For students to be able to create their own portfolios they will need extensive knowledge on modern day technology, which can take up great amounts of class time. Some students may spend more time making it look pretty than on the actually learning part of it. Also, some students may be disappointed when they do receive feedback from readers. These are all some negatives of digital portfolios, but nothing is perfect in education, and in this case I believe the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. I think that this is a great tool that both students and educators can use to track progress and organize ideas, and most of the disadvantages are manageable or preventable. 

Resources:

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Blog Post #D

Strategies for using Wikis with Students

Of course, there are many ways you can use technology, and Wikis are just the same. As a teacher, there are some decisions to be made about how to use the Wiki in your classroom. Chances are it is a decision you will have to make each year with every new group of students because each class will have different needs. This is my approach. I believe that the Wikis should be used in context with how the class runs most efficiently. If as a teacher you know that you have a good number of students that will not do their part in group work, maybe it would be better to have each person do their work, and then have students review other wikis as a way to learn information. However, groups work is very important. It helps to teach students the idea of teamwork which is valued in most careers. Therefore, another option that would allow group work would be to put the group of students who do not typically do group work in the same group. This will force students to take charge and hopefully collaborate. There is a downside to both options, but I think the group work would be ideal in many situations. Another huge thing teachers need to keep in mind is that students could plagiarize information, or even post inappropriate information. I know I have had a teacher that would very lightly skim through an assignment, and miss inappropriate information that students would try to sneak in there just to see if he would catch it. As much as we would like to, we cannot always trust that a student will do what we ask. Another thing to keep in mind is that if a student is plagiarizing information, he or she might not even realize it. By catching those mistakes, teachers can help students realize the importance of citing and paraphrasing information properly.

Text Reading Software

Text reading software is one of the best applications that technology can offer us. I recently went to a convention in Orlando that displayed new technology advances in the education field, and there were so many amazing applications regarding text to speech. Each application basically had the same screen reading software, optical character recognition, and word prediction software, but then had its own little twist. One actually tracked eye movement on the screen, so students who can not physically touch the screen can look at words to create sentences or learn new words. This opens up so many doors for students with disabilities, or even typical students. These applications allow every student to access and learn the words they need. The word prediction software is very helpful for students who are just learning how to put sentences together because as a student builds a sentence, it will only give words that would make sense in that context. For example, if a student already put together "I am...", then the software would give words such as "going" rather than "go." 

Process Approaches to Writing

There are five steps to writing:

-Brainstorming: generating ideas for the topic

-Drafting: beginning the writing process

-Revising: changing the writing to make ideas more clear

-Editing: reviewing possible gramatical and punctuation errors

-Publishing: sharing the complete work with others

These steps are all very important in the writing process. By skipping over just one step, the students paper could be less than what is expected from him or her. The good news is that students can feel connected to these steps by incorporating technology. It used to be that when you wanted information you had to go to the library. This is even before my time. I have always had access to technology in school. Technology can greatly help the brainstorming process. If a student has no idea what he or she wants to write about, the student can look to google for inspiration. If a student has a good idea, but does not know where to go from there, he or she can look to google for more information. Now, it is always important for the teacher to make sure that the students know how to look for relevant information. The revising and editing stages can both be helped by a computer thanks to spell check. In many instances, the computer will be able to tell you if you spelled a word wrong. When the writing is complete, technology gives the opportunity to share it with people all over the world, or just the teacher if need be.

Resources:

Friedline, C. (2016, March 5). EME 2040 [Prezi]. Retrieved March 05, 2016, from https://prezi.com/y2qbg2_zjfpi/strategies-for-using-wikis-with-students/

J. (2014, July 17). IVONA Text-To-Speech - Accessibility. Retrieved March 05, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtnYBKVSXf0

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.