CEDO 555 - Portfolio Week 3 - Reflecting on Creative Commons

     Earlier in this program we were introduced to Creative Commons and I have to be totally honest when I say that I had never heard of it before.  I was not alone it turned out as most people in this cohort were not aware of it either.  None of the teachers at my school were familiar with it either, including our Librarian.  My opinion at the time was that it was a noble concept but if it had not gained enough steam to make itself known to Tech Coordinators and tech savvy teachers then it probably wasn't going to catch on.  I decided to incorporate CC into my unit on Internet Safety etc anyways this school year and as I introduced it to students we were able to find more and more examples of digital media with Creative Commons licenses on them.  I have been trying to spread the word to as many professionals as I can but it still seems like I am revealing some mysterious concept to them when I tell them about CC.  Word of mouth is doing OK so far in promoting awareness but I can't help but feel there needs to be some larger push for its use.  Not sure what the answer is but something on a grander scale would help jump-start its popularity and use.
     As for incorporating its use in the classroom my plan was to have students create something of their own and then posting it to the web and going through the process of putting a Creative Commons license on it.  This year I had students search for digital media sites that housed material with CC licenses on them and then comment on the various types and give some thoughts on it but I don't think it was very effective.  I doubt those students will have much recollection of Creative Commons when we go over it again this coming year. I figure by going through the process of creating their own license on something of their own they will understand it better and have a better appreciation for people's work/property when it comes to being a responsible digital citizen.

CEDO 555 - Portfolio Week 2

This week we refined our Mission and Vision statements and chose our set of Standards.
     With the Mission statement I tried to keep it short because I've read numerous Mission statements and the lengthy ones that tend to ramble don't make as much of an impact. the long, complicated ones are hard to internalize and just end up being forgotten, even if you say it every day.
     The Vision statement needed a little more in depth analysis. This needs to provide some insight into the future direction of the individual. Writing statements like these is not a skill of mine but I felt confident that the statements that I wrote were pretty solid.
     The standards I chose were originally the Wisconsin Model Academic Standards but over the years I have adopted the NETS by ISTE. They are more current and much more encompassing than the standards from the DPI. Sometimes I wonder if the DPI just kept pushing back any major changes with the knowledge that the adoption of Common Core Standards was looming on the horizon.
     The article about Web Based Portfolios(WBPs) was interesting. I definitely agree that it would be an excellent benefit to students to take ownership of their learning in the form of an online portflio. The author makes many valid points. The one thing we disagree about is having students take complete ownership of the blog. UNLESS this student-owned portfolio is another way to showcase the students' progress in addition to other ways. I mean, what kind of examples of their own learning are you going to get from a 3rd grader? Even if a 3rd grader totally grasps the concept of a blog, its structure, and its purpose - the idea of documenting artifacts to show one's own academic progress is going to be extremely difficult to understand. I don't see a fully student-owned blog portfolio working except for maybe an extremely advanced student who has been extensively trained in its use.

CEDO 555 - Portflio Experience Week 1

     The main brunt of work during these past two weeks has really just been internalizing everything we've done in this Masters Program over the last year and a half.  The goal of this class is to create an attractive Online Portfolio in the efforts to showcase what our skills are and to gain employment(or a better job) in some of our cases.  In order to do that I've been going back through the Angel Learning System looking at some of the prior classes and highlighting the knowledge, ideas, and artifacts that might be useful when constructing my online portfolio.  We mentioned in our group meeting that it would have been beneficial if we would have been required to compile this information as an ongoing project so that we would have been better prepared for this class.
     Our first activity was to look for and review portfolios that were already on the Internet.  I was fairly surprised by what I saw.  Lots and lots of old, outdated content.  I was able to find several current portfolios with sharing capabilities and some of the more current features built in so I have a few good examples for what I want mine to look like.  I'll have to change the pink template at some point, too, haha.
     We will be using Google Sites  to create these, which works great for me because my teacher website is created using Google Sites but I can't help but wonder if there will be any guidance when it comes to web design.  There are a lot of "little" things to keep in mind when designing a website to make the experience better for the person browsing it and it is really important to work out those kinks so the prospective employer is thinking less about a poorly designed site and more about the content.