She'll be blamed but feel no shame, 'cause she's stopped...she's the professional

We covered two totally different topics in class on Friday: the role of professional portfolios in our careers and the possibilities of video games with instruction.   It ended up being an interesting class (and not just because none of us are used to finding parking on North Campus) that hit some important points that actually have a major role in our future.


Our culminating project of the MAC program is a professional e-portfolio that we'll be using in our job hunt, so I want as much information as possible about portfolios.  We used weebly.com to make very basic portfolios.  Starter portfolios, if you will.  I think that having a well designed portfolio is going to be crucial in getting a job next fall.  Being able to show a hiring staff lesson plans I've made and videos of me teaching is better then me just saying I'm a good teacher.  I can show it!  I know many districts and schools have you teach a sample lesson, but having a portfolio full of my work gives that an another boost.  


I see portfolios having a huge role in the future of college admissions as well, so having my students make them would be logical step.  Kristin mentioned a few schools in the area are requiring students to make portfolios and frankly, I'm surprised more aren't.  If I was working on the admissions staff of a college, I would love to see student work in a portfolio.  In a college application, you right a brief essay.  Wouldn't' it be great to see something more then 250 words?  Wouldn't it be great to see test results from more then just the ACT or SAT?  Or for an art student...would it be great to see 250 images of work?  Or a critical analysis of their work?  Having all of the work in something like a neat, tidy url to present to people makes life easy.  When I've run auditions or auditioned for thing myself, I've had to give CDs of my work to people.  Giving a website is much easier.


I was actually surprised at how user-friendly weebly.com was to make our portfolios.  I know websites like that are created as drag and drop functions so they can be used easily by anyone, but even I was surprised by this.  It was a no brainer to create.  I really think having some kind of e-portfolio, be it one from something like weebly or some big, bad professionally designed one, is the next stage of necessities for job hunting.  It's what having an email has become.


The other half of the class was devoted to application of video games in the classroom.  A former MACer came in to show us how he used Angry Birds to teach parabolas and parametric equations in his secondary math class.  What I really like seeing was how successful the project was, even when he really had no idea about how it would go.  He took the video game, let the kids play around with it on the smart board, and then started teaching.  I loved how he made it interactive.  He actually took the kids outside and had them play a life-size version of Angry Birds he created.  The kids actually had slingshots out and were trying to knock down boxes and other obstacles.  They were actually experiencing parametric equations.  Very cool.  Doing a simulation like that gives the kids a better understanding of how to manipulate the game to their advantage and understand the math behind it.  


I also liked learning about the background he put into forming the lesson.  He showed us the variety of twitter feeds he used to get information, edubloggers he followed, and the resources he used to develop the lesson.  This stuff is out there!  We can create it, but we can also utilize what's out there.


My question, however, is one I find myself posing a lot: How do I do something that rad in social studies?  I'm not going to lie, I want to be the really awesome teacher.  I know that in the end, I'll be much happier knowing my students have learned things then being their friend or having them play a game, but I'm human.  I want to be   the one people like!


Let's finish up with something good?  The Black Keys, live at the Joe 3-3-12.  One of the best concerts I've been to in a while.