Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers: How Portfoliogen.com, an e-portfolio web tool, can be used to promote Judaic instruction and to mentor/train Jewish educators

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

How Portfoliogen.com, an e-portfolio web tool, can be used to promote Judaic instruction and to mentor/train Jewish educators

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices, and demonstrate how these best practices can be applied in the real (i.e. physical) and virtual (i.e. online) classroom for both teaching and teacher training. The combination of face to face instruction in a physical setting and online learning is called blended learning. In this section of the blog we will describe how the internet can serve as a supplemental resource for instruction and the mentoring of pre-service and in-service Jewish educators. In this post we will discuss how Portfoliogen.com, an e-portfolio web tool, can be used to promote Judaic instruction and to mentor/train Jewish educators.

But what is an e-portfolio?

What is an E-portfolio?

An e-portfolio or electronic portfolio is a collection of selected digitized artifacts (i.e. pictures, documents, articles, honors, work experience, files, etc.) that describe your interests, hobbies, personal and professional goals. Instead of curating these artifacts and placing them in a physical collection (e.g. album, or scrapbook) they can be located online. Judaic Studies students would want to create their own e-portfolios for the following reasons:

To document, demonstrate and measure knowledge acquisition, and skills
To collect artifacts of learning over a period of time (i.e. elementary school, high school, etc.)
To provide a job interviewer with a digital portfolio of work experience, knowledge and skills
To celebrate the wealth of experience, honors, knowledge and skills your have accumulated
To assess the strengths and limitations of your experiences, knowledge and skills

For more information on e-portfolios click onto this link: http://electronicportfolios.org/

Assumption: The teacher or mentor teacher has an interactive white board (i.e. SMART Board, Promethean, etc.), a Tablet PC (also called a Slate or Blade), a computer presenter or computer with internet access attached to an LCD projector in the classroom. It would be ideal if students or mentees had access to their own laptop computers or Ipads. Given parental and school approval, and the development of specific guidelines, smartphones can be used to enhance instruction as well.

Note: Although Portfoliogen.com can be applied in the Judaic Studies blended learning classroom, it can be also be used for training pre-service and in-service Jewish educators for professional or staff development. It is our hope that Jewish educators around the globe will form an online community of practice, a CoP, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession, to enhance the delivery of instruction and training of Jewish educators. For example, here is a CoP you might want to join.

Note: Portfoliogen.com can be used in a face to face and virtual classroom.

Where is Portfoliogen.com located on the internet?