E-Portfolios

Hello everyone,

There has been a lot of speculation about the overall importance of portfolios and their effectiveness during job interviews. Many committees and employers during interviews often do not bother to ask or look at the interviewee's  portfolio. The applicant then carries a large 2 inch binder full of samples of work and places it under their chair never to be seen from. These portfolios are often dangerous to applicants as their lack of organization can cause the interview to falter and result in the loss of a job. I always thought that the interviewers expected to see a hard copy of your portfolio, but it seems that it is not always the case.

An E-Portfolio is a great way for you to be able to connect your portfolio to your resume without having to drag a huge binder around to every interview. The portfolio can be created online using any template based website such as Weebly. People can use their creativity and produce an online version of their portfolio including, their certificates, professional development, pictures, work experiences, volunteer work and so on. When you send your application and resume into the selection committee, you can place the link to your E-Portfolio on the resume and the committee can choose whether or not to click on the link. It is more likely that they will view it when posted on a resume than asking to see it during an interview.

The one problem that I might have with creating an E-Portfolio, is that there is a large amount of private and personal information that could be included in the portfolio and I am not sure whether I would be comfortable with it being open to the public. However, I could get around this by creating it to be a private site that one would need a password for and I would give the password to the employer. Another way that I could make a portfolio would be to use a PowerPoint system. However, using PowerPoint is sometimes less neat than using a website and it can be more complicated to operate a PowerPoint. The last thing that you want to do is make it hard for the employer to navigate through information. That's one way not to get a job!

I guess i'll just have to think about it for a while
Anyways, that's all for now,

Jordan

Staying Connected

Hello my fellow bloggers,

Well, this week it was discussed how important it is that as teachers, we need to be connected to our students, their parents, and other teachers through the use of technology and I am really starting to take an interest in using technology in my classroom. For example, just the other day I was making a list of all of my usernames and passwords that I have for different accounts all across the internet. I swear, I have like 15 accounts that I am currently using: so much to remember!!

I was recently introduced to Weebly, which is a site that allows you to create your own website. When I was in high-school, I had a few teachers that had their own classroom sites. It made it so much easier as a student to find what I had to do for homework and connect with my teacher. So my plan is to use Weebly to create my own website for when I am a teacher.

Some of the things that I plan to include on my website are different photos that relate to education as well as a picture or two of myself so that the site is more personalized. Later on, I would try and post photos of students or their work on the site as well. Other important applications to place in this site would include a calendar so that students can see what school day it is and what events, projects, or tests are coming up within the next month. I will eventually use a site called Symbaloo to bookmark or organize different sites that students can use in regards to the subjects that I am teaching. One organizer may include sites for science resources and games while another would be established for math. These are just some of the ideas that I have for my website.

I believe that making this website will allow both students and their parents to connect with me as the teacher. Parents will be fully able to be involved in their child's learning as they can contact me about issues that they are having and can examine how their child is doing in my class.

Teachers need to be connected to their students, parents, and other teachers. The best way for these students to grow up into successful independent people is for their parents and teachers to be involved in their learning. Other teachers as well as parents offer advice and strategies on how to teach students. The best way to stay connected to one another is through the use of technology. Teamwork needs to be established for the good of the next generation.

That's all for now,
See you next week.


Jordan

GOOGLE IS TAKING OVER!

Sup everybody!!

When most people think of GOOGLE, they think of the most popular search engine in the world and that's all. A couple days ago, I was one of those people and man, was I wrong! It seems these days that Google is connected to everything in the internet. Even YouTube is connected to Google. It's Crazy!!

The other day, we were shown Google +, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive and many other sites that Google controls. I have been using Hotmail for receiving all of my emails since the day that I started using the internet. Last week, we were asked to create a Gmail account, and it is amazing how much access I have to sites on the internet. Due to Google owning so many sites, I have complete access to them all just by using my Gmail account. Its like the open sesame of the internet!

Two of my favorite Google features that I have been using this week are Google Docs and Google Drive. For one of my assignments in school, I was placed in a group and we had to work together on a large project with many pages; WAY too many pages. What Google Docs allows you to do is create a document and invite anybody you want to view that document. You can also let others edit your document that you are currently working on. So that means that if each person is given a different section of the essay or project to work on, everybody can type on the same document at the same time and everyone can view work that is being done in the moment by their members. There is a chat button available that allows group members to communicate while they are working on their document. There is no more single emails that are sent to individual members; its all on one page and you type what you are assigned to do. The coolest part of it is that while you are typing, the document saves Google Drive. You can close out of the window and pick it up where you left off without any hassle.

I think that this has forever changed how I will do work and group assignments. Now that I think about it, this source is unbelievably helpful for teaching purposes. Teachers can ask students questions and they can work in groups to collaborate ideas into a single document. Teachers can see what each student has contributed to the document as the writing is categorized by who wrote it. Students can work together on these documents from anywhere, so if a student is sick at home, they won't miss a thing and won't need to catch up when they get back to school.

It completely blew my mind!

Anyways, that's my rant for the week.

So take some time for yourself, crank up this song and have a good weekend!

- Jordan

First Week in a New Domain

Well, this is the first week back at University since Christmas holidays, so that means that I am starting a new term this week, full of new and exciting courses. Most of my courses are really interesting as they teach me new content about how to manage my classroom as a teacher and how my students' think. Perhaps one of my most interesting and engaging classes that I will have is "Using Information & Communication Technology in Education." During our first class, our professor went over the course syllabus, as most professors do at the beginning of a course. We were shown a website called, "Wordle," which allows people to create a picture containing a plethora of words that are related to a subject. You can type a list of words of any sorts and if you type the same word over again, it will simply increase the size of that exact word. I thought about what I would be able to use this sight for as a teacher and I realized that I would use it to create a Word Wall about a unit and important words that the students must know. It could also be used for different poetry exercises or grammar exercises.




Our professor showed us many different videos on YouTube about technology and the use of ICT in schools. One of my favorite videos that he showed the class was Taylor Mali doing slam poetry about what teachers make. I thought that this video really spoke to me because I feel that many parents as well as people in different professions do not treat teachers with respect and feel that their jobs are insignificant as they do not make as much money as other professions. This video really tells the truth that teachers do make a difference in the lives of others and that's why I want to be a teacher. I feel that this video really "sticks it" to those critics. If you haven't seen this video, I suggest that you check out it here.

We had a speaker named John Finch come to class and he discussed Literacy with ICT* Across the Curriculum. It is based on a continuum and teaches the students how to expand on the use of  technology when combined with Manitoba Curriculum. For example, students would use technology to find information about a given project. The next step would be to source the information as references. Another step would be to find how reliable the information really is by checking if it is recent information and who it is written by. I thought John used a very good example in portraying the importance of technology. He talked about how in earlier times, students would be given a project and would have to go to the library to find books about their subject. They would possibly find 10 books at the library about their subject. These days, students can look up their subject on their own device, whether it be a laptop, Ipad, Ipod, or Iphone, and find millions of sources about their subject. One can see that technology is a great and reliable source for this society, but I still have my doubts about it.

During my practicum, I witnessed a student using the popular application known as Snapchat. Now don't get me wrong, I think that Snapchat is a great app that can be used to communicate and send photos to friends or loved ones that are not around you. I use it all the time. But that's just it; this student was sending a Snap to his friend who was about 10 to 12 feet away from him. What happened to the days when people would walk over to their friends and start a conversation? How often do you go to a restaurant and see a couple or a group of friends sitting at a table and every one of them has their device four inches from their face? What ever happened to human interaction, face to face? I found during my practicum that students would type entries into Google incorrectly and would just let the computer correct the word for them. They were not learning how to spell the words correctly, they did not even care, the computer was doing it for them. Students would write written responses for the teacher and while I corrected them I found that a lot of them wrote, on paper, words that they would use in a text message. Such words would include, "like," "u," "wnt," (went) and "r."   I feel that students need to have a background of applicable knowledge before using some devices. Students should use technology as a tool to assist with learning, not to substitute their learning with a device that gives them the answers. I believe that technology and devices should be used as a tool, not as a shortcut. Technology can be helpful but I think that it can also be very harmful.