e-portfolio

One of the final assignments in this class is to create an e-portfolio. Personally, I did not see a point in this as I have already created a hard-copy portfolio and many administrators have told me they do not even look at them. I chose a design for my portfolio early on and left it sitting for many weeks. When I finally got to working on my e-portfolio and learning about them I began to realize that they may actually prove to be useful. Rather than lugging around a binder with a bunch of papers that nobody really cares about, I can highlight some of my best works and information about myself that I would like employer prospects to see. In thinking about the future, I am planning on making business cards so when I graduate they will have my contact information and my e-portfolio address. I have not put a lot of thought into this yet, but I would like to have them accessible in case I meet important administrative people. Back to creating my portfolio,  I have been "almost done" my e-portfolio for a week now and I cannot for the life of me decide what to write in my About Me section, or what I want to say in my Educational Philosophy. Although both of those two things are continuously evolving, I just feel like whatever I say will not be accurate or I'll dislike it when I publish my portfolio.

Anyway, something I really like about e-portfolios is that students could use them to showcase their works during the year. I think this would put a new spin on parent-teacher conferences, but that students could continuously add to them each year. Students would also be able to share their portfolios with family members and friends woh may not live in the same city. With the e-portfolio, anybody could have access to the address if they were given it. Grandparents from around the world could be looking at the things their grandchildren did in a grade 1 class. I think that's pretty cool.  If a student continuously added pieces of work to a portfolio from Kindergarten to grade 12, they could watch their own growth and progression. Portfolios are a good habit to begin and work on often. It is much easier to collect and add documents as you go along rather than frantically at the end. All in all, I think if I had to look through a portfolio I would be more inclined to do so online. 

I have included the link to my e-portfolio. Please remember that it is a work in progress and will continue to change with the increase of experience and knowledge that I gain.

http://jordanaetkin.weebly.com/

Prezi

Presentations just got much more exciting! Every presentation I have ever done until now has been on boring power point. In class, one of my peers suggested to her group mates that they do a Prezi for an assignment, I overheard the conversation but just ignored it. A week or so later, my professor held a 'show and tell' in class and explained that it would be on Prezi's. A Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software. Prezi's are a mix between using a whiteboard (or SMART board) and slides. A Prezi's canvas is created so that it can zoom in on different slides within each presentation. There are so many different layouts on the Prezi site, and a variety of journeys and paths to use for the creation of the best Prezi possible. The first step in creating my Prezi was to choose a layout and journey. Once I decided to go with frames over circles, I was all set and ready to go. I'm not going to lie and pretend I did the whole thing from scratch on a Prezi, rather I created my entire presentation in power point first and transferred it into a Prezi through the 'power point' option. This was actually pretty easy, but very time consuming. Really, it was just tedious work and effort that I wasn't expecting, because I thought it would transfer in perfectly. How naive. I really do know better. After getting all of my information and pictures into the Prezi journey and playing around for many hours trying to perfect it, I completed my first ever online presentation.  The topic for my group presentation was the Benefits of Early Childhood Education. This is a topic that I personally am extremely interested in, and I am so glad I had the opportunity to create my first Prezi on something I feel strongly about. I have attached the link at the bottom of the page for you, my viewers to look at. I believe that with practice and experience, I will make many more Prezi's and that they will improve with time. Hopefully, they will also be less time consuming, because I now know what I am doing.

Below is the link to my first Prezi. 
http://prezi.com/u0zs9fqqrrm8/benefits-of-early-childhood-education/

My Very Own Website

Over the past few weeks I have been working on creating my very own class website! I had so much fun creating it that I just didn't want to stop adding to it. I spent many hours just sitting, re-arranging, adding and editing, and I still feel as though it is not complete. To create my classroom website, I used the site weebly.com. I was so impressed at how simple it was to start, edit and publish because everything is laid out in an easy format. I was just so overwhelmed with all of the things I could do and add. I remember thinking that was going to be so tedious of an assignment and that I didn't want to do it, but I am glad we did.

I think class websites are such a great way to keep parents involved in their childs' learning. They can provide insight as to what is going on in the classroom, pictures of students learning (with permission), and upcoming events or assignments. Classroom website may also host a teachers blog that parents can follow for day-to-day information. For busy parents, this may be an ideal way to stay involved and ensure they know what is going on at their child's school. Classroom websites are also a great place for teachers to post links to educational sites, fun games and activities, brain breaks or articles relevant to the students learning.

When I was creating my classroom website I tried to think as a parent, what I would like to see on my child's classroom site. I included an 'about me' page and a link for a contact to make it easy for parents (or students) to ask questions or leave comments. I included all of the curriculum areas with links to the Manitoba Education curricular documents, as well as examples of what my students could potentially be doing in a classroom. I attached links to educational sites and games, brain breaks for students and resources for parents. I also tried to make my classroom website as easy as possible to navigate. I myself am not the most resourceful when it comes to technology, so I wanted to ensure that others who may not be technologically savvy feel comfortable using my website.

All in all, creating a website that I know I will use in the future has been beneficial to my learning. When I have my own classroom, it will be easy to reorganize my website and tailor it to my new students and the grade(s) I am teaching.

 http://msetkinsclasswebsite.weebly.com/

Google Doc

Before I begin my post on Google Docs, I thought I would begin by explaining what ICT stands for. In my last post, I started to call my class by its real name, rather then computers. As many of you already know, ICT stands for Information Communication Technology. Which totally makes sense, and also makes me wonder how I couldn't figure that one out on my own.

Back to Google Docs... Google Docs are online documents (spreadsheets, presentations, etc) that are created for multiple people to work on and share simultaneously. I really like them. I think they are a great tool for working together on any sort of group project. In a faculty like Education, group work is very, very common and resources like this are quite beneficial. When using Google Docs, the people working on each document are able to do so at their own leisure. Group work can be difficult, especially when there are many people involved. Rather than planning a specific time to get together, people are able to add or edit information when it is convenient for them.