Create your own Electronic Teaching Portfolio

(two day hands-on workshop conducted by Dr. Helen Barrett)

Abstract: Learn cross-platform strategies to store and organize your own standards-based electronic teaching portfolio, which can be a powerful tool to guide your ongoing professional development. Bring your own electronic "artifacts" to convert into PDF or WWW format, as well as the standards or goals you want these documents to demonstrate.

Workshop Description: As we move to more standards-based teacher performance assessment, we need new tools to record and organize evidence of successful teaching, for both practicing professionals and student teachers. This workshop will introduce a strategy for using a variety of cross-platform strategies to store and organize Electronic Teaching Portfolios. Participants should bring a floppy diskette with files that they want to convert, as well as the evaluation criteria/standards/rubrics they want to demonstrate with their portfolios. The results of the two-day-long activity can be saved on a floppy diskette (without video) or a high density floppy, such as a Zip disk or CD-R disc.

Objectives: Participants will become aware of the various strategies for authoring electronic portfolios and design their own personal electronic teaching portfolio. Participants will become familiar with creating and editing PDF files, and how to translate files from a variety of applications into Adobe Acrobat.

Prerequisite participant skills/knowledge required: Intermediate computer skills - this is NOT a workshop for beginners.

Description of major activities

Electronic Portfolio Development: Participants will begin to build a digital portfolio through all five stages of Electronic Portfolio Development, including CD-ROM production or posting to a web site. Participants will choose a development tool for Stages 1-3 (Word, PowerPoint, HTML Editor, database) and convert files in Stage 4 to Adobe Acrobat. Participants will convert portfolio artifacts into Acrobat. For those who are ready, create a CD-ROM disc at the end of the second afternoon.

Electronic Portfolio Scavenger Hunt: At the end of the first day, participants will begin an online portfolio scavenger hunt in teams, with reports on results on the second day, to test evaluation rubrics and find other resources. Participants will look for online portfolios on the Internet, and select certain portfolios to present and evaluate at several age/developmental levels: early childhood (ages 4-8), middle level (ages 9-12), adolescent (ages 13-17), college students (ages 18-22+), and adult, professional portfolios. We will use one of two methods: a web page of bookmarks with links to portfolios online or Acrobat Web Capture to collect the portfolios.

Optional Digital Audio and Video Clips: Participants may bring a maximum one minute video clip to digitize, or may record a video clip in one of the recording stations beginning at the end of the first day through lunch on the second day. If there is no facility for digitizing video, may use stills and add audio narration.

**Workshop Requirements**
Workshop facility:	Computer lab with multimedia-capable computers (Macintosh, Windows computers or both) OR room with laptop computer for every two participants VGA Projection system for presenter's Macintosh Powerbook (*optional*: additional projector & screen connected to Windows computer) Microphone for presenter (for groups larger than 20)
Internet Access:	Ethernet or wireless (Airport) DHCP or fixed IP for presenter's computer
Software -- Required:	Microsoft Office or AppleWorks Adobe Acrobat (not just the free Reader) Netscape Communicator
Software -- Recommended but *optional*:	Inspiration (30-day trial available from website) Scanning and Graphics editing software, like Adobe PhotoDeluxe Video editing software (iMovie, Avid Cinema, MoviePlayer Pro) Database software (Access or FileMaker Pro) iView Multimedia (Macintosh only) for organizing images Cameraman or other Screen Recording Software PDF Conversion Programs: PrintToPDF (http://www.jwwalker.com/pages/pdf.html) (Macintosh only) $20 shareware single user Win2PDF http://www.daneprairie.com/ (Windows NT or 2000) free for non-commercial use, $35 single user license fee 5D PDF Creator http://www.pdfstore.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=216&pdfsproductid=1057 (Windows or Mac) $99 PDF Converter http://www.amyuni.com/pdfpd.htm (Windows 3.1/95/98/2000/NT) $129 single user PDF Driver 4.0 http://www.zeon.com.tw/pdfdrive.htm (Windows 95/98/NT/2000) $12.50 Education Version
Audio and Video Recording Hardware *Optional*:	Scanners Video cameras (digital preferred) Video digitizing board and VCR (without DV camera) Digital still cameras Computer Microphones

**Workshop Outline**
Day 1 Morning "Why?"	Participants will: Become aware of the various strategies for authoring electronic portfolios Become aware of the electronic portfolio development process, which is a combination of the multimedia development process and the portfolio development process (1.5 hours) Install Acrobat and learn to Edit PDF files with Adobe Acrobat Exchange. (1+ hour)
Afternoon "How?" "What?"	Go through the Stages of Electronic Portfolio Development Stage 1: Design their own personal electronic teaching portfolio: decide on goals of portfolio (based on learner outcomes that are based on standards and evaluation rubrics) describe the audience for the portfolio decide on content of portfolio decide which software tools are most appropriate Stage 2: Create the Working Portfolio, using one of a variety of applications gather multimedia materials which represent learner's achievement convert to PDF discuss adding Audio and Video artifacts to the portfolio create an outline or storyboard with PowerPoint, Word, or Inspiration OR Create a portfolio matrix (artifacts to standards) with Word table or Excel spreadsheet Stage 3: Begin recording self-reflection on work and achievement of goals Microsoft Word (1 hour)
Overnight Assignment:	Continue writing reflections Begin an online portfolio scavenger hunt in teams. Participants will look for online portfolios on the Internet, and select certain portfolios to present and evaluate at several age/developmental levels: early childhood (ages 4-8), middle level (ages 9-12), adolescent (ages 13-17), college students (ages 18-22+), and adult, professional portfolios. (optional) Create a short digital video clip to introduce your portfolio, or record audio file.
Day 2 Morning "So What?"	Stage 3 (cont.): Transfer self-reflection on work and achievement of goals to other software tools: Database (i.e., Access or FileMaker Pro) (1 + hours) Microsoft PowerPoint (1 hour) HyperStudio (only for student portfolios) All of these activities are based on my Tutorial for creating an Electronic Portfolio (http://transition.alaska.edu/www/portfolios/howto/index.html) Create a Table of Contents for the Portfolio from the Outline/Storyboard/Matrix Stage 4: Convert all reflection documents to Portable Document Format from a variety of applications (i.e., word processing, database, presentation/slide show, web pages) Organize with hypertext links between standards/rubrics/goals, student work samples, rubrics, and assessment In Acrobat, create bookmarks and thumbnails (1.5 hours) (optional) Insert video clips or record audio to accompany still images. Present team results of scavenger hunt, (at different student development levels) posted to a web server. Review over lunch
Afternoon "Now What?"	Tips and tricks with Adobe Acrobat editing (1+ hour) Stage 5: Present portfolio draft to participant audience (Portfolio Show and Tell) Evaluate the effectiveness of the portfolio presentation Discuss portfolio evaluation rubrics Discuss publishing options, including CD-R and WWW server. (1 hour) Demo CD recording and burn those that are ready during final discussion Discuss applicability of this process to K-12 education (at different age levels) Discuss support needed for this process with teachers and administrators. Planning for implementation with teachers and students. (1 hour) Summarize the process and Workshop Evaluation.
After the Workshop	Finalize portfolios and publish on WWW or CD-R and share URL with other participants or upload to common server. Do not link from publically-accessible Internet web site without permission of portfolio developer. Evaluate ePortfolios based on rubrics.