Portfolio Assignment Criteria

The elementary education program at UVM is state-approved and one of the standards that you must demonstrate to be recommended for state licensure states that

Every Vermont educator seeking a professional license will assemble a professional portfolio...that contains multiple methods of measurement which shows how these professional standards have been met.

One way you may wish to create this portfolio is electronically, using a hypermedia program. The advantages are: it is multidimensional, which permits sound, graphic, and video components in addition to text, it facilitates connections because of its hyper linking structure, and it is easier to distribute because of its electronic nature. Final graduation portfolios can be saved to CD-ROM in both Mac and Windows'95 formats and uploaded to an internet site.

You will be starting this electronic portfolio in this course using the program Hyperstudio. In this portfolio you will showcase what you are learning by selecting products from your academic and professional courses and fieldwork experiences that you feel exemplify your competency to teach. Include papers, homework, projects, diagrams, notes, readings, etc. and explain why you selected each of those pieces. Throughout the course of your studies here at the University, you should continually modify your stack to enable you to chronicle both your experiences and reflections about your changing attitudes, beliefs, and knowledges as you learn how to become a teacher.

Hyperstudio is a program with many dimensions. It has word processing features like ClarisWorks, and will let you import documents written in other programs. It imports clip art or use the draw tools to create your own. You can import digitized and scanned pictures, and those captured from screen dumps (Apple/Shift/3) or taken off of the Internet. You can add sound with music or speech and even video or you can create your own animations.

An additional feature of Hypermedia is that it allows you to designate links between ideas, themes, and media. You can allow the audience to select the order they look at your material through the channels that you have created. Just like clicking on highlighted words in Netscape, hypermedia allows the viewers to direct their path with buttons that navigate the stack.

In this course you will start your electronic portfolio. Portfolios will be presented the last day of class. Although I encourage each to represent you and reflect your style and uniqueness, I will be grading them based upon the criteria found on the assessment rubric and information below.

Each stack should contain the following cards:

• title page-introduce yourself
• contents page with multi-links. These links might have the following paths: academic coursework, professional coursework, educational philosophy, fieldwork experiences, interests, hobbies, & extracurricula activities, computer course products, personal stuff, resume, autobio, student teaching themes, etc.
• there should be a card that tells about your philosophy of education- why you want to be a teacher and what kind of teacher you hope to become.
• It is important that you include exemplars of coursework products and an explanation of why you chose that particular product. This is a descriptive and reflective caption and should explain how it demonstrates your professional and academic learning.
• Include samples of work completed in this class and explain how they meet national technology requirements for educators. Include at least 5 of your products.

You may also want to consider placing video into your stack or linking it to a CD-ROM program Portfolios will vary in length but should probably have a total of 20 to 25 cards. (edel 11) and 25-30 cards in edss 55.

• Don't use too small a font for important information. Although it is possible to print stacks, these are mostly used for presentation. A font like Chicago 18 works pretty well.
• Don't use unusual fonts. If the machine looking at your portfolio doesn't have that font it may default to a font that doesn't fit in your text field.
• Importing as CLIP ART lets you resize the image you selected if you use the marquee. Once CLIP ART is placed it becomes part of the card and must be erased to be removed. You can draw on it and modify it. Bringing something in as a Graphic lets it float on the card so that it can be deleted at any time but it cannot be zoomed in or drawn upon.
• Hyperstudio stacks can take up lots of memory. If your stack starts getting above 10 cards it may not run well. You can create other stacks and link then to cards in your initial stack. Since the program only actually runs one stack at a time, this will reduce your memory needs.
• You may want to consider purchasing a writeable CD (CD-R- about $7) as your electronic portfolio grows. There is a writeable machine in the lab and you can copy your portfolio to a CD-ROM which generally hold about 650 MG vs. 1.4 MG in a high density disk.
• Save all your stacks with the extension (.stk) to upload it to Internet or to read in a Windows 95 machine.