Expectations
Electronic portfolios are required for all act! students.
Purpose: act! students will develop an electronic portfolio to document knowledge, skills and dispositions needed by a licensed educator to teach at the 6-12 grade level. act! students will construct an electronic portfolio that documents their new knowledge, skills and/or dispositions relative to the Wisconsin Educator Standards. act! students will showcase exemplary work that highlights how they are meeting each of the ten standards in each content/developmental area over time. The portfolio process fosters professional growth as act! students reflect on the learning processes they’ve experienced throughout their life and during their time in the act! program and document the impact of that learning on their teaching. The portfolio is intended to meet a licensure requirement established by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Technology requirements: Extensive use of the website http://sites.google.com is required. Please review the electronic portfolio instructions (this should link to the instructions document) and go to https://sites.google.com/site/act2teach/ to begin creating your portfolio.
Evaluation: The electronic portfolio is Pass/Fail. To receive a passing grade, you must show that you have satisfactorily completed each standard.
Your portfolio must be constructed electronically. It should include a title page for your welcome/introduction message and table of contents, a page for your resume, a page for your teaching philosophy and future plans and a page for each of the Wisconsin Educator Standards. Each page devoted to one of the standards should include a rationale for each artifact included in that page of the portfolio.
The vast majority of the portfolio will be devoted to demonstrating how you have fulfilled each of the ten standards. To begin, carefully review the standards and then select artifacts that demonstrate your proficiency in fulfilling each standard. Be choosy when selecting your artifacts – select exemplars that reflect your best work. In general, three artifacts for each of the ten standards should be sufficient.
The next step is to write a rationale for each exemplar that you plan to include in your portfolio. Each rationale should clarify how the selected exemplar reflects your skills in fulfilling a particular standard. According to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Technology in Education (2006), the artifact rationale “is your justification or reasoning for selecting the specific files you did to demonstrate your attainment of the standards (p. 93).” An effective rationale, should answer the following questions:
- What is the artifact? Where was it used? How was it created? (a two to three sentence description of the item should be sufficient.)
- Why is this artifact a particularly appropriate choice for this standard; and how does the artifact reflect your new knowledge, skills or dispositions in fulfilling the selected standard?
- What your future learning goals are in relationship to this standard?
Each rationale, while brief, (approximately eight – ten sentences) should demonstrate careful reflection and analysis. After reading the rationales and looking at the exemplars for each standard, the electronic portfolio reviewer will determine whether or not you have demonstrated proficiency in the selected area.