Interviews and ePortfolios

Today we talked about going for interviews at Primary schools once we come to the end of our DipEd. This made me feel excited, but also made everything we have been learning for the past 4 weeks suddenly become ‘real’. Greg was very helpful in telling us what to expect in an interview, and I’m so grateful for his own personal reflections on not only being interviewed but also being the interviewer, as I feel this information will be invaluable once I start applying for teaching jobs. I was also introduced to Microsoft Publisher in this week’s workshop, where we began to work on our ePortfolios.

The process of creating my own ePortfolio makes me slightly nervous, although it is up to our own individual ideas about what we want to include, and what program we use, I still don’t feel that I have had enough experience to state my teaching philosophy, as I’m not even 100% sure what it is yet! However, I think the ePortfolio is a great idea, and when we were shown a sample one (of a student) in our lecture, I thought it was such a fantastic way to show their progress, and get the students point of view on their own work. I would imagine that this would also make it easier when it comes to writing reports, as the student’s progression through the year is all there in the ePortfolio.

Today in workshop we also played with making our own brochures in Microsoft Publisher. What a great idea for the children in class to use this program to present information they have researched in a different and exciting way. My brochure was on Ireland, and I really enjoyed experimenting with this program, although if I had more time it probably would have looked much more professional! I thoroughly enjoyed todays topics discussed in the workshop! :)