March 26th

Course pack reading p.235

According to Barrett, when planning to use a computer based portfolio, the teacher must take many factors into consideration. First, the teacher must determine the possible stakeholders that will be involved and look at the portfolio; these being: the teacher, student, parent, administrator, community members, the school district, or the board (p.242). Each person, school and board will have different goals for the use of the portfolio. For example, the school district might want to use it to assess the program, or to document progress achieving standards, whereas high school students might want to use their portfolios as exhibitions, or to demonstrate their academic achievement for college applications (p.237).
In comparison to the “old fashion” way of portfolio making (notebooks, folders, pizza boxes) which can’t be easily stored and necessarily available for a long period of time, the electronic based portfolios will make work portable, accessible, and more easily and widely distributed. All you need is an electronic tool such as a memory stick, or CD to demonstrate all the kids’ great work (p.236). However, the teacher must make sure that the work remains secure and confidential; because after all this is a mean of assessing students’ work (p.239).
Studies on computer based portfolios are still in progress; this is still a new idea and that’s why there aren’t many softwares that are available for portfolio making; the only two are Learner Profile and Graby profile. However, only Graby is able to store portfolio items (p.239).

During this class we went around the building trying to figure out what to create as a video assignment! We finally decided to videotape ourselves in the washroom so we can teach the right use of the toilet and the proper ways of washing our hands. We encountered several glitches; first the camera started turning off for no reason so we taught that there were no more batteries so we went to the media center and rented some batteries. Then it started working a bit so we were able to film a little more; we got most of what we wanted on camera and then it turned off again! Now we didn’t know what the problem was. We asked some help from the guys at the media center and they didn’t know how to work it either. Technology always comes with a risk! We never know when we might encounter a glitch that may slow our work done; or even worse not let us finish what we initially wanted to do. We weren’t able to fix what we wanted to fix but at least we were able to take the memory stick and plug it into the computer so we can get our video. I had never used a device to record myself and transfer it onto a computer; not everyone is familiar with these kinds of technological advancements. Some are still focused to the idea of videotaping to see on TV and they are still afraid of transferring the information onto their computers; if I can do it, anyone can (p.240)!

When we started working with movie maker, we couldn’t get the program to cut where we wanted it to cut. When we selected a specific place, it would cut at the wrong time. We tried different ways and it still didn’t work! Our video wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t the way we really wanted it to come out. But if we had a little more time we would have probably figured it out. When technology doesn’t work and you think you’re doing it right, it can get really frustrating!!! However, what’s nice about using movies is that it’s the best way to use role playing, and student presentation performances; we enjoyed seeing ourselves and I’m sure children would like to see themselves as well (p.240)