20090224

February 24, 2009

GUEST: MaryFriend Shepard, Coordinator, The Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership, Educational Technology, Ph.D. Specialization SKYPE: maryfriend.shepard

WOWS to be delicioused:

Sharon: http://www.edu20.org/home, http://www.kidsnetsoft.com/html/web20.html, sharetabs.com - http://www.sharetabs.com/, http://www.shmoop.com/

Cheri:

Peggy (1) World Math Day: March 4, 2009 http://www.worldmathday.com/ Unite with students and schools from around the world to set a new world record! The Challenge - to correctly answer more than 182,445,169 questions in 48 hours. The students play against each other in mental arithmetic games. Students are captivated by the fact that they are playing in real time. Each game lasts for 60 seconds, students can play as many games as they wish. The questions are appropriately leveled for different ages and abilities. Also open to school aged private individuals and homeschoolers. Once you have registered we send you an email with simple instructions for getting started. All your students need to play is internet access at home or school. The official competition runs for 48 hours. Event is FREE! World Math Day has been created for students 5-18 years old. Even teachers will want to take part! (2) Dr. Jackie Gerstein's PageFlakes site, Shifting Pedagogy: http://www.pageflakes.com/jgerst1111/ and her website on Weebly: http://jackiegerstein.weebly.com/ I want to share these sites because I will have just finished spending the day visiting Jackie's school/classroom in Sahuarita, AZ and will be connecting via Skype with you from Sahuarita for the show. Jackie is an awesome web 2.0 educator. Jackie is a lifelong learner with a passion for all aspects of authentic education. She has an Ed.D., a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction, a graduate certificate in Gifted Education, and is working on another Masters degree - this one in Technology in Education. She teaches gifted elementary students and online Masters in Education courses.. " I don't do teaching for a living, I live teaching as my doing, and technology has AMPLIFIED the passion." Jackie was a presenter at the K12 Online Conference in 2008 ([|Creative Web Tools For and By Kids]). She has created a fantastic site called WeeWebWonders for students ages 8-12 to collaborate in online projects. [|Wee Web Wonders] is an interactive site to showcase educational and creative uses of the major web tools used in the Creative Web Tools For and By Kids program. These include, but are not limited to, VoiceThread, Scratch, Podcasts, Slide Sharing, Sketchcast. Each page features a student example of the use of that web tool, widgets for visitors to rate and review the tool, a place for comments, and some fun, interactive games. Teachers can email Jackie to [|join the project]. 
 * NOTE: Jackie would be an awesome future guest for WOW2!**

MaryFriend's Sites:

Dr. MaryFriend Shepard: Faculty Insights http://alumnimag.waldenu.edu/24802_24889.htm

Presentation and related resources by MaryFriend Shephard and Joeann Hinrichs at NECC 2008: Strategies and pitfalls are discussed for using electronic portfolios as an effective strategy for assessing teacher candidates' performance of standards in teacher education programs. http://tinyurl.com/cjl63v Many State Departments of Education are requiring teacher education departments to use electronic portfolios to demonstrate that teacher candidates meet the program standards (e.g. Georgia), along with standardized tests. Teacher education faculty must find ways to engage teacher candidates in collaborative and reflective work about their programs standards. Web2.0 and social networking software provide technology that substantially improves the possible uses of electronic portfolios for student reflection and learning making them an ongoing part of the educational process. This research will provide insight into the use of electronic portfolios in teacher education programs that will help bridge the gap to new technologies, providing a tool for powerful assessment of program standards and student learning.

Shepard, M. F. & Hinrichs, J. A. (2008). Electronic Portfolios for Assessment of Program Standards in Teacher Education. Paper Presented at the National Educational Computing Conference, June 30, 2008. maryfriend.shepard@waldenu.edu or joeann.hinrichs@waldenu.edu Electronic Portfolios for Assessment of Program Standards in Teacher Education Study investigated the benefits of using electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) in teacher education programs as tools for students to assess how well they met program standards. Following the interviews of thirty-nine K12 student teachers, the benefits and obstacles in developing ePortfolios provided data about the responsibilities of education units, faculty and students to make ePortfolios a positive learning experience. A model for the use of ePortfolios for the assessment of program standards in teacher education by students, faculty and education unit was developed.

Questions for MaryFriend:

1. What has been your personal educational journey? 2. Describe what makes Walden University different from traditional "brick and mortar" universities. How do respond to the skepticism that online education is inferior in quality to traditional face-to-face instruction? 3. You have completed in-depth qualitative studies on the use of eportfolios (digital portfolios) in teacher education. Could you share with us some of the insights gained from these studies? 4. Reflection is an essential component to the use of portfolios. Can you share some of the questions or approaches you would recommend to promote reflective thinking?