Materials for Your Teaching Portfolio

Over the course of your teacher preparation program, you will create and collect many materials that you may wish to include in your teacher portfolio as evidence of your knowledge, skills, and attitudes for teaching. These materials should show that you meet the standards for new teachers developed by INTASC, the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium. The INTASC standards are available at http://www.ccsso.org/intascst.html#draft.

To help you begin developing materials for your portfolio, complete one or more of the following activities.

1. Identify a key concept from a subject discipline you hope to teach. Describe (or, if you have the technical skills, create a demonstration of) how you would incorporate computer technology into a project, activity, or lesson to help students learn that concept. (INTASC Principles 1, 4, and 6)
2. Develop and demonstrate your technical skills by beginning an electronic teaching portfolio, a collection of your portfolio materials presented digitally, as a website or CD. Scan or digitize photos and other materials and save digital copies of documents you create for this class. Choose some of your favorites and learn how to create an effective presentation for them. Your campus media or computer center may be able to help you learn technical skills or provide access to equipment. There are also many resources on the Internet to teach teachers how to create web sites. One good place to start is Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators at the Discovery School. Her links to Internet Stuff and Educational Resources will help you find many tutorial and resource sites. (INTASC Principles 4, and 9)
3. Write your current technology of education philosophy. Choose any or all of the following questions to guide you as you reflect on your ideas about the use of technology in school, or create your own guiding questions.
   • At what ages do you believe children are best able to begin using which technology? Why?
   • How can you use computer technology to individualize instruction for students' ability levels and learning styles?
   • Which information in your subject discipline can be best conveyed using computer technology? Which information is ill-suited to computer technology? Why?
   • This chapter of your textbook describes several technological cognitive tools and their uses in certain subject disciplines. These are summarized in Table 6.1. Which of these tools do you believe you can use most effectively as a teacher? Why?
   • What are your beliefs and attitudes toward constructivist teaching and its relationship to technology?
   • How can you, as a teacher, respond effectively to "digital divides" among students, including differences in computer access and proficiency based on family income, gender, and other factors?
   • What role do you expect students' families to play in their use of technology for school?
   • What is the best way for teachers to acquire and maintain technical skills? (INTASC Principles 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, and 10)