EDUC4105

What are the key features of a teachers’ e-portfolio are general information and lesson ideas. It is important to provide some general information such as teaching philosophy so that teachers are able to find other teachers with similar views and like-minded in their general approaches. This also gives the included lesson plans some context of how and why the lesson has been produced.

Of course the actual lesson activities are an essential feature of any e-portfolio, both for yourself and others,  because these are the practical ideas that will be applied in classrooms.

The benefits of social bookmarking are similarly a collaborative learning tool for teachers since teachers can find other like-minded teachers who have links of interest. Also it is a nice place to keep all of the websites you might find in one place.

The Webquest is a useful form om planning a lesson activity that involves using information presented on the internet.  As a form of lesson planning it is a good framework since teachers are guided to think comprehensively about the task, how it will work and how to assess it.

Dynamic geometry software packages such as GeoGebra and the Geometer’s Sketchpad have the distinct advantage that points and lines can be manipulated on the screen. in particular points can be moved along a curve to see what happens at every point. Not to many disadvantages that I can see.

Excel spreadsheets are a good pedagogical tool because they are so common and easy to use and access. Formulas can be inserted and assigned to cells fairly easily and to great effect. It is imperative to be aware of all shortcuts and to be very familiar with using the program, otherwise tasks can quickly become tedious.

My views on graphics calculators is that they are a great tool to use when teaching any data topic. It is relatively easy to input data and to produce a scatter-plot and other forms of data processing techniques. This is where I personally would use this technology in classrooms.

I have also been told that there are attachments that can be linked to the calculator so that continuous data can be inserted. For instance a thermometer can be connected to the graphics calculator and the heat will be automatically shown on the screen. I’m sorry about the sketchy details, but it does sound like a good idea.

The interactive whiteboard offers the benefit that objects can be moved around on the board. By manipulating the items on the board students can play around with ideas which could create a bit of interest in the information presented.

The technology merges hands on and visual learning techniques, benefiting multiple student leaning styles.