My E-Portfolio

The day has come that my E-Portfolio is finally finished.  I am looking forward to see what my classmates have come up with themselves when they present today and Thursday.  I am very proud of my own work and I have been showing my E-Portfolio off to my family as well as a couple of friends already.  This final project helped me a lot with using blogger and I believe that I will go back to this page to make updates as well as continuing to blog beyond ETAD 470.  I also have been thinking of what uses I could use a blog in my future classroom.  I think it would be a good idea to use a blog to post daily class notes and deadline dates for assignments.  This way if students were absent they could go to the blog and catch up on what they have missed.  This way they are responsible for the days they missed and the opportunity is there for them to catch up and then that way I would not have to deal with filling them in on what they missed the following class.  I dealt with this a lot through internship where students would miss a class and come up to me either before or after class or during lecture to ask what they missed.  It would also be a quick reminder if they were unsure of certain due dates for assignments as well as dates for quizzes and exams.

Volunteer Work

I am currently volunteering at Pleasant Hill Elementary School on the west side of Saskatoon.  I am going there in the mornings before school starts for an hour to promote physical activity.  When I get there I open the equipment doors in the gymnasium with a few of my fellow colleagues so that students who come to school early can be physically active and play in the gym before regular classes start.  I have little experience working with elementary students since I am a secondary teacher, but as I continue to go there I am enjoying it more and more.  I am learning a few of the students' names and building relationships with some of them.  It is quite delightful to bring smiles to these students faces.  Most of them have tough lives out of school.  For them to come to school and enjoy coming to school in the morning to play games, meet new friends and gain social skills is really important for them as they grow up.  There is a variety of equipment Pleasant Hill School owns and most of the little ones are changing equipment by the minute.  They see some of the older students play certain games so they want to be like them and do the same activities they are doing.  They have been respectful to me and my colleagues and are very good with sharing equipment and putting equipment away when they are done with it.

Our Blindness

Last week I went to church, the priest's sermon was about how Jesus healed a blind man.  The moral of the story is much more than Jesus can heal people.  It is how people today are blind to the world.  We all need to accept change because the world is forever changing.  Nowadays our elders are not aware and couldn't be bothered to learn about the new technology as they find it is difficult to accept this change.  They hear about devices like ipods, ipads and social networking sites such as facebook and tweeting, but still many decide to ignore these new technological devices and social networking sites.  We are taught in education that we need to change lessons once we try them and modify them afterwards to make improvements.  However, there are still a lot of teachers that present the same lesson year after year without any changes.  Since it worked 40 years ago, teachers figure it is still a good lesson today.  This is not the case, a lot has changed over the past 40 years, therefore we need to modify our lessons and make them relative and up to date to with the world today.

Final Project Proposal

Why have you chosen to complete an e-portfolio?

I have finally chosen to do an e-portfolio for my final project in ETAD 470.  It took me awhile to decide if I should do an e-portfolio or a Web Quest.  Then I had to decide on which program I would make my website onto.  I have made a website last year on dreamweaver for Jay Wilson's class so I am somewhat familiar with the Dreamweaver program so I thought of going that route for my website.  However, I changed my mind and am going to make the web-site through blogger.  After thinking it over I think it will be easiest to do it on blogger because I am familiar with how blogger works.


What professional uses does an e-portfolio have for you?


An e-portfolio has many uses for me as a professional and potential teacher.  I have chosen to do an e-portfolio so I can store all my job application documents in one place.  Having them in an e-portfolio on blogger will have these documents neatly organized.  This will be very useful in the future for when I need to electronically send out job applications to potential future employers.  By having an e-portfolio I can send future employers the URL to find my blog where all my documents are on the web, then future employers can locate these documents all in one place by a click of the mouse.




What content do you plan to include?


On my e-portfolio I plan to have an e-portfolio home page that includes a picture of myself and a little introduction to the viewer.  On the top right hand side of this page you will see various links to the following information and documents: For example, Blog, which will include my current blogs that I started earlier this year, an About Me page, on this page will be a couple of paragraphs that tell the viewer or employer where I come from and a little information so the viewer/employer can get to know me better.  The next link is my E-Portfolio Home Page, which I already said will have a picture of me with a little introduction, next will be My Teaching Philosophy, here I will explain what I value most importantly and my vision as a future teacher.  I will also provide links to the following documents: My Cover Letter, Resume with references, a character reference, Final Internship Assessment, and a sample Lesson Plan.  I will embed these documents by using a site called Scribd.  Here viewers and future employers can see a preview of my documents and then if they wish to print off a hard copy or download the document all they have to do is hit full screen or download and the document is there easier to read and ready to be printed.


What graphic design considerations have you taken into account for the look of the e-portfolio.


Well as mentioned before I will be embedding my documents through the program Scbrid.  Here the viewer can see a smaller preview of the picture or document and if needed they can always enlarge the picture or document by hitting fullscreen.  Here is a snapshot preview of my E-Portfolio Home Page that you will see with a picture of myself with the following links I mentioned previously on the right side of the page beside my picture.

The other links to the certain pages will look very similar but with the appropriate document that corresponds to the link that was clicked.

What concerns do you have about the process?  How do you plan to address these concerns?


A few concerns I have about creating this website is essentially the process of creating the website in general.  I am still fairly new to web design and I am sure I will have a lot of questions along the way on how to go about things.  To address these concerns Professor Ross will be around for four work periods that she has allotted to us to finish our webpages, during that time she can answer any questions I may have along the way.  If all goes well with embedding my documents I do not think I should have much of a problem with creating the web-site, but if I do have problems that will definitely be another one of my concerns during the process.

High School Stinks

After reading Shelly Wright's Just Curious blog post it brought me back to something I came across in my internship.  I'm a secondary school teacher so this was much more evident in high schools.  When students enter high school they have been in school long enough that all they want to do is get through with the best grades as possible.  The only message students get from school is that high school stinks.  Teachers are a big blame for this since they make their classroom lectures boring and their students aren't engaged.  Shelly explains in her blog that students don't ask questions all they really want is the content and to learn the content and write the exam.  She posted a TedTalk video by Chris Lehman called "Education is Broken."  Chris explains how students are just to stay the course and do what they are told over and over again.  So the point is, we as teachers need to make a better attempt, that school does not need to be boring and that school can be interesting and fun.  Use a variety of teaching strategies and keep our students engaged.

Chill

Since my last weeks post I found an interesting tool called Socrative from Richard Byrne's Blog: "Free Technology for Teachers" I decided to check back there and see what new programs he had found.  Richard's newest post was on a program called "Chill."  As Richard explains in his blog, it is like what Pinterest does for pictures, Chill does for videos.  It is a website where you can store and collect all your favourite videos from various sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, etc.  I went to Chill's Homepage and browsed a few videos.  Their homepage shows which are the most popular videos right now.  There sure were a lot of videos about Steve Jobs, but there were also videos on anything from how Facebook began to a girl saying any word backwards within three seconds which was also pretty cool.

I think any kind of teacher who may be willing to implement new technology instruments into their classroom or any kind of technology tool that could help them organize their work or anything to do with teaching, Richard Byrne's Blog is the place to go.  He blogs about four posts a day so there is definitely no shortage of info on his blog.

P.S.  I hope everyone enjoys their last February Break ever, sob :(

Socrative

I was reading a blog done by Richard Byrne, his blog is called "Free Technology for Teachers."  On his recent blog he was discussing his favourite tool on which he used to survey an audience.  The tool is called Socrative.  It's a tool teachers can use in their classroom as long as each student has some kind of device such as a cell phone, tablet or laptop.  With technology these days and almost every student in a secondary school having a cell phone it should be a feasible tool to use.  Basically what happens is a teacher poses some sort of question, whether it being a multiple choice or true or false question.  The students can then respond and give their answer just by hitting a button on their phone.  The teacher is then able to see the responses of each student.  It is some what similar to the clicker system used at the University of Saskatchewan.  I don't know how many people had a class that used the clicker system but I had a class in my first year that used this clicker system.  It is definitely a better system for larger audiences but it could work in the classroom for one specific reason.  I find a tendency that some students are afraid to raise their hand in class and answer questions because of the fact they are afraid to give a wrong response in front of their peers.  By using Socrative they can give their answer without the fear of their peers knowing whether they chose the right response or not.  Their answer is confidential except to the teacher.  This way the teacher knows who is understand and who isn't.  I recommend everyone to check out this new tool.

Today's ETAD 470 Class

Today is groundhog day.  Yay, early spring, if we haven't got it already, it's so nice out!  I really enjoyed my ETAD 470 class today.  I learnt a bunch of new different web tools that are educational like slideshare, prezi and livebinders.  I liked how Professor Ross put us into groups and made us present the different web tools to the class.  It nice to actually research your own tool and present it to the class.  I think you learn a lot more when you do your own research and then teach it towards your peers.  Its also enjoyable to have your colleagues present information to you as well.  Its nice to have a little change rather than taking information in from the professors lectures as usual.

School is now in full swing and things are starting to get real busy.  I'm having to complete 2-3 assignments per week and thats not even counting mid-terms!  I am definitely looking forward to February break.  I'll be sure to make the most out of this February break because it could be the very last February break I ever have.  It sounds like the school system may remove the February break and then have students start school after the labour day long weekend and even get a few extra days off during the Christmas break.

Internship/Career Fair

Hey, how did everyone enjoy their internship?  I did mine at Walter Murray here in the city of Saskatoon. I taught Grade 10 Wellness, Grade 10 Science, Grade 9 Mathematics and Grade 9 Phys. Ed./Health.  It sure was a little different than the high school that I graduated from.  The high school I went to was a K-12 school with a total of about 150 students.  Walter Murray has an enrollment of over 1500 students.  It sure was a great experience.

Who all went to the Career Fair yesterday, did anyone find a job?  I didn't but I sure found out a lot of useful information and got a lot of free stuff.  I probably visited a total of 12 different booths.  I sure am going to be busy filling out all the online applications.