Week 2 ePortfolio

During this workshop we started to create our own personal ePortfolios. We did this in MS Publisher as a website and changed it to become a portfolio.
Information that will be included in the ePortfolio will be:

• About Me
• Educational Philosophy
• Resume
• Practicum Reports
• Achievements
• Referees
• Photograghs

Because we ran out of time in the workshop I didn't manage to get too much of it started. This e Portfolio once finished will be able to be used when applying for jobs in the interview process. It also may be sent with the job application to give the school a clearer understanding of the applicant.

Week 2 Applying for Graduate Teaching jobs

During the week 2 workshop Greg spoke about different aspects of applying for graduate teaching positions.
Firslty he focussed on writing a good application. He suggested that before you apply you should do your homework about the school. Ask to have a tour, get copies of relevant material that may be useful and try to do volunteer work with the school to help get your foot in the door.
When writing your actual application he mentioned that it is very important to address any specific school based selection criteria and that it would be better to do 2 or 3 applications really well rather than 10 with only the school name changed.
Greg spoke about how you might make your application interesting to stand out from others. Ensuring there is plenty of white space and using a clear font is a good way, also to try to motivate the reader within reading the first page is important.
Applicants should submit one hard copy as well as electronic copy when applying.
Including something about yourself is important as it gives the reader a feel of what type of person you are and if you might fit with that school. Explain how you might be an asset to the school, how you are prepared to work and learn and especially that you are willing to work as a part of a team.
Greg mentioned that it is really important to carefully choose your referees, and to choose people that have seen you in a teaching style role and can vouch for your work ethic.
Next Greg talked about the interview process. He stated that it is important to get off to a good start and so therefore you should shake each of the panelists hands. When answering questions talk to everyone not just the one asking the question. Always answer questions honeslty and if you do not know the answer state where you could go to find that information. In the interview is where a portfolio might be useful as you have evidence to back up what you are saying.
This information that Greg spoke about will be very useful when it is time to prepare applications and apply for jobs.

Reference: www.webct.latrobe.edu.au/webct
Technology accross the Curriculum
Week 2
Job application handout

Week 4 M & M's Candy Colour Chart

The second part of the workshop for this week involved investogating how you can use a MS Excell spreadsheet in a fun and engaging way.

The activity we participated in was M&M's candy coloured chart.

The activity involves puttin people into pairs and each having a packet of M&M's. you have to go through the M&M's in your packet and sort them into their colours.

Next we were to design a spreadsheet that was creative as we liked and then add in the data collected. For exmaple however many red, blue, green M&M's.

We then created a graph, which ever one we wanted and also added pictures and a heading.

This activity was fun and engaging and students would really like it becasue they are working with brightly coloured lollies. The only downfall may be that most of the lollies get eaten before the task is complete!

This activity envolves the students participating in literacy, numeracy, ICT and social skills.

The M&M's website also has aditional ideas and activites that teachers may be able to use.

www.m-ms.com.au

Week 4 Dust Echoes- Ancient Stories, New Voices

In today's workshop we looked at the website Dust Echoes- Ancient Stories, New Voices. www.abc.net.au/dustechoes

This website focussed on Aboriginal stories from the past. They have been re-created digitally and spoken by Aboriginal people. There are twelve animated dreamtime stories from Central Arnhem Land. Each story tells about stories of love, loyalty, duty to country and aboriginal custom and laws.

Each of the twelve stories come with study guides for the teacher. It has information about the story, the background of the story, photos, suggested classroom activities and worksheets. The website also includes a helpful glossary for both students and teacher's to use to clarify their understanding.

If using this website a ffew things need to be taken into consideration. The age of the students, it may not be suitable for juniour school as it has some confronting issues, also teacher's need to be aware of which videos the students are watching and ensure they are appropriate.

This website would be really great to use in the class to discover more about the Aboriginals customs and way of life.

For the workshop we were expected to use Inspration to create a concept map that retells one of the stories. You were to include the important aspects of the story including images and speech.

Week 3 Quia- Jumbled Words

Jumbled words was the next activity I mad on the Quia website. The website gives you options of what you would like to create and you just have to think of the information to put into it.

This program is really easy to follow and use and it only takes a few minutes to create something new. It will be very useful in the classroom eithor by myself as a teacher or the students.

Quia website

www.quia.com/web

Week 3 Quia- Quiz

After participating in the froggy jump task we then moved onto looking at the Quia website.

This website allows anybody to create their own educational games, quizzes, class web pages, surveys and many more activites. It also allows you to use other activities and quizzes that have been created by other teacher's and student' around the world.

The first one we had to make in the workshop was a quiz. You could choose whatever topic you wanted. I made one about Australia. The program was easy to use and fun for the person making the quiz. Student's would really enjoy participating in creating quizzes or activites and it can assist in their learing as well.

Week 3 Frog Jump

During the workshop in week 3 we started off by looking at design briefs and how they can be used as an engaging classroom activity. A design brief includes

• problem to be solved
• resources
• investigation and designing
• produce
• analyse and evaluate

The task we had at the start of the worskshop was to design a frog that jumps using:

• cardboard card
• picture of a frog
• rubber band
• sticky tape
• glue- stick
• scissors

In pairs we had to think about how we were going to achieve this and what process we were going to use. As we came up with ideas we had to complete the design brief (above) to help us achieve our goal.

As a pair we eventually came up with folding the edges of the cardboard and wrapping the rubber band around it in a figure of eight (as above). This worked as a sling shot and made the frog jump.

Once everyone was done we shared our ideas with the rest of the class. It was astonishing the amount of variences there were between the class and how they made the frog jump.

This activity was a really effective way to get the class engaged in the lesson. It would deffinatly be useful to use within a classroom as it allows for everyone's creative thinking and they all must communicate how they are going to achieve the task by using the design brief.

Week 2 Microsoft Publisher

Microsoft Publisher

This is a program used to create professional quality publications and marketing materials.

It involves a variety of different publication types including:
- Brochures
- Newsletters
- Postcards
- Greeting cards
- Email newsletters
- Websites

Publisher enbales users to create these publications with ease. It has built in templates ready to use, with font and colour themes applied. It is simple to insert graphics and information needed and users can easliy change any features or layouts without difficulty.

This program is easy to use and very engaging. Students would have no difficulty creating peices of work, advertising of publishing on this program. It has numerous different options for use so is therefore not restrictive. This is a good way for students to be involved in ICT whilst creating something unique and special. This program would be benficial in classrooms, probably more appropriate for upper primary school as may be a litle difficult for the lower levels.
Microsoft Publisher webstie is www.office.microsoft.com

This program can also be used to create ePortfolios. An ePortfolio is a portfolio that is created to reflect students work and learning. It provides examples of students work and learing that has taken place throughout their school career. Portfolios allow students to reflect on their work, identifying areas of strength and weakeness.