Week 4: Web Portfolios

Hard to believe another week is in the books. The semester is flying by already. I wanted to check in with how the course is going for each of you, so I designed a quick web survey using a free application called SurveyMonkey. You can find the link to the actual survey below.

Now that we have our blogs up and running and we've set up RSS aggregators as a way of pulling the information we want to us, it's time to develop more traditional web pages. As you work through this week, try to think about the different affordances and constraints of blogs v. web pages. Obviously, one is the presence or absence of RSS feeds. Another is the design flexibility. Still another is a self-archival structure.

Another goal of this week is for you to lay the framework for your web portfolio. The term "portfolio" itself can mean a variety of things, but primarily in education I tend to break it into two categories: teaching portfolios and job portfolios. Teaching portfolios tend to focus on professional development by documenting your experiences, reflecting on these experiences, and using the reflections to make changes to practice. This process is recursive and never ending. A job portfolio, on the other hand, tends to provide the kinds of information that will help you get a job.

Though these types of portfolios are by no means mutually exclusive, one difference tends to be the audience. For the teaching portfolios, you are often writing for yourself as a way of improving practice whereas with job portfolios your audiences are administrators, teachers, and parents. For the purposes of this course, we will be focusing on creating job portfolios.

To get you in the right mindset consider this scenario. I'm a principal (or potential employer) who has a stack of resumes on my desk--yours is one of them. I'm trying to decide who I should invite for an interview. Some people I know, others I don't. For those I don't know, I do a quick Google search of your name to see what I find. What would you want me to see if I Googled your name? You can probably imagine the possibilities:

1. No matches -- In the twenty-odd years you've been alive, you've left no digital footprint. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
2. Sites that talk about you -- Perhaps I find little clips from hometown newspapers or the sort. They might help me get a little better picture of what you were like growing up. What else might I find. The key point is that in these instances, others speak for you.
3. Sites where you talk about you -- If it were me, I'd rather have a potential employer looking at sites that I've authored, and probably ones I've pointed to on my resume so that the principal didn't even need to Google me in the first place. However, if the work I'm authoring isn't of substantial quality, it could be worse than no web presence at all.

All right, enough of the intro, it's time to get to work. Below you will find the agenda for the week. Please have all of the work done by Saturday evening so I can get your grades back to you on Sunday. Last weeks grades should be up in ANGEL by Monday morning. As always, let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers, Joe

1. Please complete the brief survey so I can get your feedback on how the course is progressing.
   
2. Watch the brief VoiceThread on Internet Basics.
3. Look through some of the past galleries to see the kinds of portfolios your peers have created. You might even want to check out some school websites and see if they have links to teacher pages.
   
4. Do a quick web search of your name using whatever site you'd like. (You will need to write about this in step 8 below)
   
5. Set up an account with Google Page Creator or another web creation site. You might want to draw on some of learning strategies we talked about during week 1. Note: if you use GPC, make sure that you use the page that has the home icon in it as your home page!
   
6. Create the main pages of your site. At the very least you should have the following sections:
1. An Autobiography/About Me page. Students want to know who you are as a person and so do administrators. Devote at least one section of your site to this purpose. You might consider it like a bulletin board you would put up in your room.
2. Resume Page: I'm rather specific about this part. Because your resume is the most common piece that will be printed out, you need to have a version on your site that is in .pdf form. If you don't know how to convert a document to a pdf, click here. You can either link directly to the .pdf from your home page as the resume section, or you could include it as a "printer friendly version" or ".pdf version on an html page."
3. Teaching Philosophy: Don't be concerned if you haven't written a teaching philosophy yet. Most students in the past have not. However, by the time your portfolio is evaluated, you ought to have a draft you can build on as you continue through the program.
4. Technology Integration Project: You will build this section later in the course, but you can create the page and set up the links now.
5. Other types of pages that have been popular in the past, but are not required have been coursework, web resources, and lesson/unit plans.
6. As far as navigation is concerned, a person should be able to get to any of your major pages from any page. That means each page should have links to About Me, Resume, Teaching Philosophy, Tech Int. Project, etc.
7. For this week's Wiki Gallery Project:
1. Create your home page and five major sections pages that are linked to from the home page (See the #5 above about the required sections)
2. On the home page, insert a picture, add text, and a link to your blog.
3. Give each page a clear title, and set up the links to each of the other pages.
4. Choose one other major section besides the home page to develop for this week. The remaining sections only need a title and working navigation links. As you build these pages, think about balancing your use of written texts with visual ones. In later week's will learn some technologies that will help us with this.
   
5. Update your portfolio link on the Wiki Gallery so that it links to your homepage.
8. Create a new post on your blog that
   
1. Tell us what you found when you Googled your name and what you felt someone else could learn about you by doing this. (1 paragraph is fine)
   
2. Discuss what you want to accomplish with your portfolio and how your structuring of the portfolio will maximize your success with these goals. Be sure to give the post an appropriate label or tag.

Best of luck this week and let me know how I can help.

Week 3: Personalizing the Internet

Week 2 is already complete and it looks like you have been quite successful getting your blogs up and running. During the first couple of weeks its been difficult to for me, and probably for you, to feel like you are part of a class community when you aren't meeting face-to-face or writing in discussion forums. I've decided to switch weeks 3 & 4 from the syllabus so that we can start communicating with each other more efficiently.

I hope you've noticed the new "What We're Blogging About" widget in the right sidebar this past week. This is a little tool that I've set up that monitors all of your blogs and any time you create a new post, it adds a link to it at the top. That's pretty cool because now instead of looking through each blog for new content, new content comes to us in a single convenient space. That's the theme for this week.

By the way, I have posted your grades in ANGEL for this past week. It is really the only time I use ANGEL. Let me know if you have any questions on them.

Here is your agenda for the week of January 21st. Please have all of the items completed by Saturday night, January 26th:

1. Watch the VoiceThread on Personalizing the Internet.
2. Complete the following reading:
1. Educause. (2007, April). 7 things you should know about RSS. Educause Learning Initiatives. Retrieved January 17, 2007 from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7024.pdf
3. Set up a Google Reader Account.
   
1. Watch this Jing clip on how to add your classmates blogs to your reader account.
2. Create a new folder in your Reader Account where you subscribe to all of your classmates' blog. You might even want to subscribe to this blog as well.
4. For your Weekly Gallery Project, do ONE of the following:
1. Pick a topic you can see yourself teaching. Your goal will be to supplement whatever materials you have inside the class with the freshest content possible. Therefore, look for web pages specifically about your topic. Each page or blog, though, will need to have an RSS feed on them. Create a new folder in your Reader account in which you subscribe to at least 3 RSS feeds about your topic. Make this folder public and add it as a widget to your blog. I've included a Jing video below on how to do this.
2. Imagine that you have parents asking for information about a certain topic (In my experience, this could be things like test-taking and study strategies, behavioral strategies, enrichment activities, etc. It usually starts with parents saying . . . "Hey, can you recommend . . .?" or "Where could I learn more about . . .?" Your task will be to look for web pages specifically about the topic you've chosen. Each page or blog, though, will need to have an RSS feed on them. Create a new folder in your Reader account in which you subscribe to at least 3 RSS feeds about your topic. Make this folder public and add it as a widget to your blog.
   
3. As educators and advocates of lifelong learning, we are constantly seeking out new ideas and information to improve our teaching. Think about an area you want to focus on for development. Your task will be to look for web pages specifically about the area you've chosen for professional development. Each page or blog, though, will need to have an RSS feed on them. Create a new folder in your Reader account in which you subscribe to at least 3 RSS feeds about your topic. Make this folder public and add it as a widget to your blog.
4. Here is a link to the Jing video that will show you how to make your folder public and add it as a widget to your blog.
5. On your blog, please create a post in which you talk about:
1. Which of the three Gallery Projects you decided on and why. Be sure to provide us with enough context to so that we can understand the resources you have linked to. Please also create an embedded link to the public page url for your project (see the Jing video) as well as linking the permalink of the post to the Wiki Gallery (the Aggregator column please).
   
2. Please also write about how you might use RSS feeds in your future teaching. You might want to think about each of the three categories above-- for student learning, for communicating with parents, and for professional development.
6. Play with iGoogle and Google Alerts. Personally, I thought it was pretty neat that I could add Pac-Man into my Google Search Page!

Because we've set up the aggregators (Reader), we can now communicate with each other by leaving posts on our own blogs. Let's try to use this method for communicating with each other. Here is what I suggest. If you have a question about something for this week, Begin the title of your post with "HELP:" to alert each of us about your need. Also, tag it with "cep416help." Whomever reads the post first can then try to offer assistance by leaving a comment on the post. If you want to share something with the group, start your title with "Comment:" and tag it with "cep416comment. "

Best of luck this week. Please don't hesitate to ask the group for help.

Cheers,

Joe

Week 2: Blogging

Now that the semester is settling in a bit, we will have a more typical week in terms of what you need to accomplish. You can view the agenda below. If you have any questions this week, let's practice using the commenting function of blogs. It will allow each of us to benefit from others' questions or comments. If need be, you can always email me as well. Please have the work for this week completed by midnight on Saturday, January 19th. Best of luck, and let me know what I can do to help.

Cheers, Joe

For the week of January 14th, you should:

1. Watch the VoiceThread about blogging so that you can get a brief introduction to blogs and blogging.

2. Please complete the following readings. Each is quite short, and I've tried to focus them around how some teachers are using blogs in the classroom:

Ferdig, R. E., & Trammell, K. D. (2004). Content delivery in the 'blogosphere.' T.H.E. Journal, 31(7), 12, 16-17, 20. link

Echlin, H. (2007, January 7). Digital discussion: Take your class to the Internet. Edutopia. Retrieved January 13, 2007, from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-discussion-take-your-class-to-internet.

Colombo, M. W., & Colombo, P. D. (2007). Blogging to improve instruction in differentiated science classrooms. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(1), 60-63. link

Lesesne, T. S. (2006). Technology meets literature: Meeting authors through their blogs. Teacher Librarian, 33(5), 58-59. link

Ishuzuka, K. (2006). History teacher 2.0. School Library Journal, 52(4), 26-27. link

Richardson, W. & Mancabelli, R. (2007). High-tech inspires the read/write website. The Education Digest, 72(9), 14-18. link

3. Decide which service you would like to use for your blog. Two that I might recommend are Blogger and Edublogs, though you could even use a blog that you already have provided that is more tailored to your professional identity. In past courses, most students have chosen Blogger and have had good success with them, but you should read over the Terms of Service for each to make sure you are comfortable with them.

4). Set up your blog account. As part of this process please create an about page or update your profile to briefly talk about yourself and how you are going to use this blog. Keep in mind that the goal is to use this blog professionally, so if you have to create a new account, make sure you have a url and title you won't mind referring students and parents to.

5. Since we will be creating podcasts later in the semester, "burn your feed" with Feedburner. Here is a quick 2 minute video I created using Jing to show you how to do it.

6. Update your blog link on our Wiki Gallery. Here's a quick clip on how to do this.

7. Locate two examples of teachers using blogs in ways you find interesting. You might try using a blog search engine such as Technorati or Google Blog Search. You can also find a list of educational blogs here. There are different categories there, so be sure to scroll through the entire page.

8. Create a post on your blog in which you a) devote at least one paragraph to each of the blogs you liked best (# 7 above) and tell us what it was about them that you liked. Be sure to create an embedded link back to each blog so we can see the blogs you are referring to--hint, the links in this post are embedded links because they do not display the url address, and b) capture some of your current ideas on how you might be able to use a blog in your teaching both as a classroom management tool and for student learning. Please try to tailor these ideas to the grade levels and subject areas you are most interested in teaching.

Finally, when you create the post, also think about what tag or label to use for your organization.

Week 1: Introduction to Course

Welcome to CEP 416. My name is Joe Freidhoff and I am very excited to be instructing the very first online section of CEP 416. Over the course of the semester we will get to work with a variety of free web-based applications that you can use in your future teaching careers.

To model what teaching with these tools might look like, I'm using this blog instead of ANGEL as our method of communication. You can find your agenda for this week below.

Cheers,

Joe

For the week of January 7th, please complete the following items:

1. Complete the poll in the right sidebar asking you if you already have a Google Account.
2. Read over the course syllabus carefully so that you understand what this class is about.
3. Look through some of the past student galleries so that you can get some sense of the work you will be asked to produce during the semester.
   
4. Watch the presentation on Learning New Technologies that I created using a free web-application called VoiceThread. The video should introduce you to some strategies that might be helpful in the coming weeks for problem-solving on your own.
   

This week's tasks should be completed in full by Saturday, January 12th, by midnight. Best of luck and feel free to email me should you have any questions.