Creative Online Teaching Portfolios

It occurred to me the other day that there is  probably a better way to present myself to possible clients/employers than to lug my presentation binders with me.  After all, I specialize in Instructional Technology, so why not take advantage of that?

Like the current battle between Kindle and books, I still like the paper aspect.  I like holding the product in my hands and I think others appreciate its simplicity.  Just whip out the portfolio and turn to the correct page.  Prospective clients/employers can pass it around and flip through it to their heart's content.  With that said though, I don't feel comfortable letting my portfolio out of my sight.  It contains originals of many artifacts and its loss would be detrimental.  So, I decided to see what online portfolios have to offer.  Here are two of my favorite ones:

I've sung the praises of Prezi before.  It's not really what you would identify as a portfolio, but I like the way that it allows me to go to any page in any order and I can include images, videos, and even PowerPoint presentations in addition to text.  I also like that the templates allow me to put some graphic design (not my strong suit) into the Prezi giving it that added touch of professionalism.  Plus, I can have an educator account that allows me to have 500 MB (in comparison to the regular free account with 100 MB), a way to make my Prezis private and I can even hold an online meeting.


I also like Wikispaces as a unique solution.  I can use a free account (with additional benefits for educators) and if I get a little creative, I can password protect it giving access to only people who I want to see my personal information.  I have all of the usual bells and whistles at my fingertips like links, images, videos,  and even code.  Plus, I can create unlimited pages up to 2GB of content to make it a one-of-a-kind way to show off my skills.

6 Ways to Strengthen Rigor in Your STEM Classroom

In recapping this series on Strengthening Rigor in STEM, we've talked about how to define rigor in the classroom.   We've discussed that rigor is not making the work harder or assigning more problems.

We've also outlined the basics on tools such as the Rigor/Relevance Framework that we can use to guide our planning and instruction to establish and maintain rigor in the classroom.

This list generated by this series is by no means exhaustive, but is a tangible list of strategies you can use to begin to building rigor into your classroom:

• Interactive Notebooks
• The Art of Questioning
• Student Portfolios
• Rubrics
• PBL Elements
• Student Menus

By using or reintroducing these strategies into your classroom,  students can begin to stretch their thinking and begin to perform in ways that will help them to grow them academically as well as help them achieve mastery and beyond.