My Teaching Future

It's always been kind of difficult for me to answer questions or talk in class about what we are doing in this class and what we are doing in our schools/teaching. To keep it simple, my situation at work is much less than desirable. Things that can be even loosely called normal in other schools are way out of the ball park in my school and I will not be working there in the fall. Anyone need me?

How does what we are studying affect me and my work? Hard to say at this point. We'll have to see what I find.

About this week's Google Sites assignment? I wouldn't mind making something that I could actually use but I'm not inclined to make much of it because I know that once this program is done I will no longer have access to it/my wolfmail account. As of now to my knowledge, there is no simple one click method to download or change ownership to a different Google account for any of the wolfmail/Google services / documents. In regular Google accounts you can transfer ownership of documents and sites but with a Google Apps account like Wolfmail, you can only transfer ownership to someone in the same domain.

This brings me to think about the future. I see coming up a few courses down the road we will be creating an ePortfolio (I've already found the template). Here is an excerpt from a discussion/homework post I did on the subject from last week about ePortfolios in case you didn't read that post.

"There are a multitude of options for creating ePortfolios and learning to create them can address many technology learning standards. For elementary through middle grades the creation of ePortfolios may be created and published in a closed system such as a dedicated school portal, eLearning system or the like where teachers may have a bit more control over the process, technology and content. However, for high school students, it is recommended that they create an ePortfolio independent of a closed system. The reasons for this is that if a student changes schools, her/his portfolio will not be lost since the portfolio is not on a system they will no longer have access to but has been created using the web 2.0/cloud tools of choice. And for the same reason, when a student graduates from high school they will still have access to it and can control who has access to it (or parts of it) for future employment and/or education."

Will we be able to create these ePortfolios using a service of our choice? I don't even mind using Google sites but I'd rather do it with my personal account. I won't feel like putting in the 110% making if I know that once my Wolfmail is gone, I won't be able to access it or have others be able to access it for it's intended purpose.

I've already started/played around with an online ePortfoilio at VisualCV because it may prove useful for my current job search. VisualCV is a pretty straightforward resume site that also lets you add portfolio and other items in a sidebar.  

When this program is done, I'd like to be able to use the ePortfolio we will be creating for this program for real. I've already emailed a message to Louis a message similar to this asking about this. 

As the textbook says, allow your students choices in how they may complete a given task/project.