Week 2

In the lecture, Greg spoke to us about ePortfolios and their potential use in classrooms and for our own personal use in applying for jobs. I can see how ePortfolios could be very useful for students to present what they believe is important or valuable from their schooling to their parents and also to keep a record of their achievements. I think it is important that they are designed and implemented by the students themselves rather than just their teacher. As part of this process of students creating their own portfolios, students should be encouraged to evaluate their own work and justify why they have selected certain pieces to be placed into their ePortfolio. Teachers should also try to promote a culture of sharing student work and ePortfolios are a tool that can help in this, which is something I will definitely endeavour to do.

In the workshop this week we played around with creating a brochure in Microsoft Publisher. Below is one page that I made for a holiday to Zion Wildlife Gardens in New Zealand.

I formatted the background, practiced print screening and copy and paste. I also modified the text font, size, colour and position. I have had lots of experience with publisher before and made brochures like this during my own schooling. I think this is something that is great for children to do as they learn lots of different formating skills and can develop their extracting information skills. Like Greg said in the workshop, this is something that is much more beneficial for children than just talking/writing about what they did on the holidays.

After this we discussed ePortfolios and began creating our own in publisher. Below you can find the beginnings of mine (although I'm yet to add any information or pictures!). This is something I'll work on and add to.

As you can see it needs a bit of work! But I think it's a good idea and is something that I can continually add to and update.

Here's an update to my ePortfolio.