Greg Sherman

This chapter presents an overview of current electronic portfolio options available to practicing educators, emphasizing the different roles portfolios play within the professional development process. Available features within a variety of free and subscription web-based portfolio services are compared and the use of specific portfolio options within different professional development environments such as university graduate programs are profiled. Using a case study-like approach, the chapter details the use of the National Science Teachers Association’s (NSTA) Learning Center, a collection of resources available to teachers that includes a web-based professional development plan and portfolio tool. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the different ways in which professional organization resources like the NSTA’s PD Plan and Portfolio Tool can be used in the near future to continually improve the professional practice of educators.

Over the last decade a growing number of social studieseducators have mirrored Berson's contention that interactivetechnologies hold a great deal of potential for transforming theteaching and learning of social studies (Braun, Jr. & Risinger,1999; Diem, 1999, 1997; Martorella, 1998, 1997; ...

A software review procedure developed by the authors is described. The procedure centers around a form that extends the functionality of traditional software evaluation forms by enhancing the use of the computer software in the early childhood classroom. The form encourages teachers to discover ways a piece of software can be integrated across disciplines and used as an anchor for instruction. Users of the review form are also encouraged to examine ways the software motivates the user to remain engaged in its use ...

This study reports on a sequence of iterative redesigns of a graduate-level foreign language teacher education course. The study describes the interplay between technology and pedagogy that resulted in important curricular changes, from a focus on individual to social and then holistic reflection. Using a team-based design model, instructional experts worked collaboratively over multiple redesigns, sparked by the unique affordances of emerging technologies such as video, video editing, and electronic portfolios, as well as shifts in pedagogical approaches and changes in course goals.

Recognizing the importance of meaningful reflective writing as an integral component to the portfolios used in the first-year program (FYP), faculty questioned whether a newly developed electronic portfolio offered any pedagogical benefits over the existing traditional paper portfolio. Of particular interest for this work was whether the use of ePortfolios might positively impact students' metacognitive skills. A study conducted with students and faculty in the FYP evaluated student understanding of purpose, significance, and relevancy in their reflective writings. Findings indicate that while both types of portfolios, electronic and traditional paper, contribute positively to students' learning related to "connections to the course," students completing an ePortfolio show heightened levels of metacognition in relation to "connections to learning" and "connections to career or personal goals."

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of verbal interaction cues and ability grouping within a cooperative learning computer-based program. We blocked 231 eighth graders in a required science class by ability and randomly assigned them to homogeneous lower-ability, homogeneous higher-ability, or heterogeneous mixed-ability dyads. Each dyad was randomly assigned to a computer program that either did

This chapter presents an overview of 11 different ways in which electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) can support the teaching and learning process. Too often, discussion about the general instructional nature of ePortfolios only focuses on two distinct roles: portfolios as a means of assessing specific student performance, and portfolios as a showcase for outstanding student accomplishments. This chapter summarizes how ePortfolios can contribute to the design and implementation of effective instruction in many different ways by assuming a variety of roles that go beyond a traditional approach to portfolio use in the classroom. These roles include artifact creation as meaningful context, goal-setting, practice with a purpose, examples and non-examples, assessment, reflection, communication, instructor planning and management tool, learner organization tool, interdisciplinary teaching and learning, and historical records/stories as role models. Examples of portfolio requirements and assessment strategies from a higher education teacher preparation program are used to illustrate these different roles.