The most extensive work that I (and realistically the school district that I teach at) have done from a personal/professional standpoint with ePortfolios is the preparation of my Professional Development Plan. As renewing your teacher's license in Wisconsin no longer requires the simple accumulation of credits, I have had establish certain goals that I wish to attain as an educator. I have also had to provide proof of completing these goals, in the form of an ePortfolio. This has been a long five year process of gathering information, implementing strategies into my classroom, and then tying it all together. Much like this class, I have had to collect artifacts and state how they have proven fulfillment of my goals (I assume that this time around it will be picking artifacts that verify standards). I have thoroughly enjoyed the online format, helping me contain all of my information in a convenient location. This also allowed me the added perk of being able to email my PDP to review team without having to "snail mail" a copy, wasting valuable time. For anyone who is not familiar with Wisconsin's PDP, here's a link to the website that I use to house my online portfolio that should answer some questions you may have about how it is run: https://qei.wisconsin.edu/index.cfm
My second example is mainly personal. As I have been trying to figure out how to create a website for my high school baseball team, I have been looking at others, deciding which format best suits our needs. As a baseball website is essentially an online portfolio for the accomplishments of my team, I see many similarities.
I look forward to using my knowledge from this portfolio to increase the effectiveness of my Graduate School Portfolio. It's hard to believe that we're this close to the end, to be talking about a final, cumulative piece!
I was the last graduating class that was grandfathered into the credit accumulation for license renewal, so I have never had to do a portfolio for work. I never really though of putting an electronic portfolio together until this class. After looking at the examples online, it looks like it will be a worthwhile thing to do for this cohort as well as for my career or personal life. I am looking forward to seeing everyone's unique portfolios. I hope you are able to find something you can use with your baseball team!
ReplyDeleteJared, I think your PDP portfolio experience is going to be extremely useful to you as you go into this culminating project for our masters program. I like your translation of the portfolio to your baseball team's website and think you are right on with that analogy.
ReplyDeleteWith your PDP, you set your goals and then gathered your examples of how you met those goals along the way. With this project, we are approching it from the opposite direction: starting with practice and examples of work and then determining how they fit a set of standards. What do think is an easier process or makes more sense?
I too have to create the PDP. This is a similar experience and creating a PDP has definitely helped me prepare for this. It would be nice if the state would allow us to continually update our e-portfolio instead of going through the whole PDP process each year. I understand why they choose this process it would just be nice to streamline the whole thing through an professionally updated e-portfolio. What are your impressions? WIll you plan to maintain this portfolio after you complete this program?
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