I had the opportunity to watch presentations for EDTEC 360 for the Fall 2007 semester. This is a course that I took during the Fall 2006 semester where Portfolio +4 was born. As part of the internship course I took this past semester, I developed support materials and training services for students and faculty in using RapidWeaver for digital portfolio creation. As any part of a development process, especially when developing training services, is administering the training and then taking the feedback and improving the training based upon that feedback. Dr. Stuve's EDTEC 360 this past Fall was one of the first groups I trained. Some of the students in the class revamped their portfolio using RapidWeaver. Other students used RapidWeaver to develop their major projects for the course. Those that didn't use RapidWeaver used Dreamweaver instead. I was impressed with the projects that students had created and felt a little bit of pride with those who had used RapidWeaver. It was interesting to see how those students had used RapidWeaver to easily create great-looking websites.

Below is a list of the individual projects for you to check out:

• Podcasting As An Instructional Tool (Katie Craig)
• Technology Use In School (Kevin Harlan and Jane Goodin)
• Building A Classroom Website (Megan Hughes)
• Capturing Storytime (Julie Biddle)
• Interactive Website for Park Hall (Mandy Stump and Bill Caulton)
• Inspiration Support at Ball State (Leslie Edwards)

Tags: technology, professional practice

While this comic is humorous it is interesting to think about this becoming a reality. I have gone through school as computers were introduced and implemented. When I started kindergarten, computers were mainly used by administrators for the purposes of record keeping and data processing. But now computers are in every classroom with many schools beginning to implement one-to-one computer initiatives. As this comic illustrates, future students may be surprised at the "dated technology" of the chalkboard. The computer is becoming such a transparent technology that many of us wonder how we ever survived without the Internet and email. I believe that computers have a valuable place in education I don't think they can or should replace traditional methods of instruction. Sometimes a chalkboard and a lecture may be the best way to teach a topic. I see computers not as a complete replacement of traditional instruction but as a tool in which we can exploit its strengths to provide students with a better learning experience. Computers should be used as a way to enhance and increase the opportunities available for students to learn in ways that are meaningful to them.

Tags: technology, computers, professional practice

This is a humorous comic because it is so true for some people. I remember in elementary school when I would try this same "technique" to complete my homework. If the truth be known, I still try this little trick, even as a senior in college. I found this comic funny and I thought I would share it with all of you.

Apple, Inc. sponsored an event today for faculty from various colleges of education to learn about Teachers College's digital portfolio and one-to-one laptop initiatives. Joe Ault and I, were invited to present our Portfolio +4 digital white paper at the student and faculty showcase. We have been working on a digital white paper which examines the current model of portfolio creation for teacher education majors at Ball State. In this digital white paper, Joe Ault and I, look at what improvements need to be made to the current model. This project is in no way complete. It is in fact, starting to pick up steam which is very exciting.

As students in the teacher education program, Joe and I are required to produce and maintain a web-based digital portfolio throughout our preservice educator program. We both understand the reasons and rationale behind the portfolio. Most undergraduate students, however, do not. What Joe and I are looking to do is make the process of portfolio creation and maintenance a smoother and easier one. This is why we are evaluating two different applications to possibly be implemented in the teacher education program. iWeb (Apple, Inc.) and RapidWeaver (RealMac Software) are both excellent applications for quickly producing media-rich and great-looking websites with virtually no knowledge of web coding languages.

During the showcase today, we were able to share our findings and recommendations with Apple employees as well as other teacher educator faculty from various colleges of education. Being able to talk one on one with Apple representatives was a great experience. They heard first hand what we were advocating and why we believe it is important. All the people that listened to our presentation were very supportive and impressed with what we were trying to accomplish. It is also encouraging to know that others outside the Ball State University Teachers College support the ideas we are focusing on.

As part of the course work for Immersion 360, my professor, a fellow classmate, and I traveled to Carroll High School to present BookPod, a project created by Sam and Van Hnem in EdTec 485, as a system to engage students in active reading and analysis of books they read. In Immersion 360, the class worked to refine and polish the concept behind BookPod with the intent to bring it closer to implementation in a school. While Carroll High School is mainly interested in exploring the blogging concept as a tool for learning, BookPod uses this core technique as its foundational technology. We met with the assistant principal and received some useful insight into the things that they were looking for and possible issues with this kind of solution. Since BookPod is built on the technique of blogging, we focused on that aspect. But we wanted to get away from the notion that blogging as a whole is bad. In this case, the blog provides a way for students to interact through a medium that they are comfortable with and able to teach themselves how to produce the content and put it on the web. The concept behind BookPod is strong and given the opportunity could become a very useful and powerful learning tool.