MODULE 2 – Draft your website – (May 23-29)

Whenever you share work in this class, you will also give feedback to others (as well as receive feedback). The routine for providing this feedback is to visit Flipgrid and respond to two initial videos. Please give priority to those videos that don’t have any feedback. If there are not two videos yet (i.e., you’re the first to do the assignment), you’re off the hook for the week.

There are so many choices and alternatives available to you that sometimes this freedom can be daunting. Understand this, however: There is no right or wrong portfolio platform and no right or wrong way to make a portfolio. Each person will choose what works for them.

Even if you already know what software you plan to use, it is still important to think about issues raised by new, free, online web publishing tools.

Specific advice for specific tools

The folks over at Mashable have some specific advice about each of the major authoring platforms. Don’t discount Wix and Weebly just because they are near the end of the list, and keep in mind that this article is a few years old, which is even longer in Internet years. Read their thoughts here.

General Advice – Consider these factors in your decision

Time to learn—How long does it take you to learn a new technology? Time to learn, of course, varies enormously, but do a realistic assessment of your own learning style and time capacity. Consider Hofstadter’s Law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.” It is very easy to underestimate how long something will take and equally easy to overestimate the amount of time you have left.

Consider your context—Are you likely to be teaching others to make webpages in the future? There’s a possibility that, with your experiences in an online master’s program, you will quickly find yourself as an expert in your school. School districts are often unlikely to have money to purchase access to expensive services. Even if you personally prefer the greater control and sophistication of these services, it could be important for you to model the use of free, easy-to-learn equivalents that other teachers have readily available.

Time for substance—Similarly, weigh carefully the amount of time you can devote to creating the substance for your portfolios. That should be balanced against how much time you have available for learning new technologies and perfecting design. This is certainly not to suggest that design is not important. On the contrary, both substance and an appealing design are critical to showcasing your accomplishments as an educator and your professional aspirations for the future. Time, however, is finite. Time you spend learning software and tweaking features is time not spent adding substantive breadth and depth to your portfolio.

Hosting—A decision about which service you are going to use necessarily entails a decision about where you will host your portfolio. As the greatest objective of this course is that you create an online portfolio that will continue to be useful to you in your future professional life, think carefully about how long you will like to be wedded to a particular host (whether it’s Weebly, Wix, WordPress, etc.). Remember, it’s not hard to forward your domain name so that your website can be “http://yourname.com” – see instructions here.

Services like Wix, Weebly, and WordPress all offer free hosting along with website design. Of course, there is no guarantee how long these services will remain free or how long they will stay in business (each has been around several years so far, though).

Wherever you decide to host your site, be sure that you understand how you will be able to maintain access to your data over time. This includes making sure that graduation won’t be an obstacle—you may want to avoid signing up for hosting using an MSU account or using anything (e.g., Google Apps) hosted by MSU.

Privacy—Particularly for educators in the K-12 environment, privacy is an important consideration. Even in an age when it seems to have become the norm to share even the most mundane aspects of one’s every waking moment on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, you will want to carefully consider how publicly accessible you wish your site to be. This is especially true when it contains, as we hope it will, examples of your students’ work. In one sense, you want your professional “open for business” sign to be seen as widely as possible. But you want to also demonstrate that you respect your students’ privacy. In deciding what software to use, consider what options are available to restrict access to your site or to particular portions of your site.

Consider the past—Consider what students in recent semesters felt was most suitable for them when they faced this decision a short while ago. You can also see that all of the choices “worked” in the sense that they created fine portfolios with all the tools listed. In that sense, you will likely do fine with any of the services that others used recently.

This is an example of the importance of listening to one’s students and paying attention to data to inform decision making. We, as teachers, run the risk of recommending what worked for us, which may be outdated due to rapid changes in technology. Similarly, there is a risk of speaking with great confidence about our opinions without looking at data that could shed light on an issue. In the business world—and increasingly in education—the concept of ‘data-driven decision making’ is gaining influence. In the spirit of this little pedagogical note, consider the data below as perhaps worth more than your professor’s opinions.

Here’s the tabulation of software used by the students in the Summer 2018 Capstone Course (33 total portfolios):

• Weebly: 12
• Wix: 8
• WordPress: 5
• Google Sites: 5
• Other: 2

What do you already know how to use?—If you have already developed your skills in using any of the publishing choices we discussed previously, it is probably a good choice.

What are your sources of support?—Research on professional development and learning to use computers has shown convincingly that the most important determinant of most people’s learning is the broader context in which they work and their social support for learning to use technology. By social support, we mean a spouse, a colleague in the next room, etc. Do you have a colleague, partner, or friend who is currently using a specific tool and who would be willing to spend an hour or two helping you get started? If you are working in a school building or school district that supports and is making use of Weebly or another service, then you may want to consider learning to use that technology. On the other hand, if you have a friend or colleague who is using another service, then you already have a personal support network.

We know some services better than others—While you’re adding up your various support networks, know that we can (somewhat) support and help you with WordPress, Weebly, and Google Sites. We don’t know a lot about Wix or some of the other platforms mentioned.

What are your future goals?—People who learn to publish their ideas and work easily and confidently on the Web have advantages, such as having an online presence available to others (such as potential employers) and being able to model and share with others how to do the same, from parents and colleagues to friends and students.

However, we are all busy, and people have very different predispositions to spending time working on their websites. So take a moment and think about how you’re envisioning the longer term horizon for your Web publishing skills and your portfolio. Your views may change after you’ve done some of this Web publishing. As teachers, we need to use every tool and influence we have to encourage students to do educationally valuable work outside of the time we have them in class… after school, nights, weekends, and summer. If you teach your students that they can use free Web publishing tools and then become their family’s or neighborhood’s “webmaster,” you will have taught them a valuable lesson or lessons about productive work and lifelong learning. If you share with your students your own use of a free Web-based application like Google Sites, you will have shown them the power of self-publishing. If you aspire to be a media consultant or create a website for your business instead of being a teacher, then your choice is not influenced by what the school may have access to. In that case, you may want to consider using a platform that is more powerful and is more widely used in the world of business. However, these platforms may have a steeper learning curve and cost a fair bit of money, so ask yourself if you have the extra time to work with it.

Other vendors for educators—As teachers, you may also have access to educational prices through your school district, ISD, or other sources. If you know of other sources with better prices or service you’ve found excellent, please email the class with your recommendation. The world of software sales changes constantly. We are aware that deciding on software is not easy. The good news is that any of these choices will give you powerful tools for publishing creative webpages. By the end of the semester, you will be a confident user of whatever service you choose.

Many of you have created a portfolio for another class or have an existing professional or personal website. In taking the Capstone Portfolio Course, then, you might wonder if you have to create a new site just for this course.

We think there is good reason to integrate the capstone work into an existing site whenever possible. We don’t advocate maintaining multiple websites for no reason. That said, there may be good reasons to make a new website. Maybe you want to learn a new technology (e.g., Weebly or WordPress) and the Capstone Portfolio Course is an opportunity to help you do that. Maybe you envision a different audience for the Capstone Course than for your existing website and you want to keep them separate.

So, what should you do? The answer is simple—it’s up to you. If that means adding pages to an existing website or modifying some part of it in instances where elements of a resumé, a transcript, or something else already exist, that’s fine with us. If you want to make a new site in order to keep professional, personal, and academic lives separate, that’s okay with us, too.

When you post and reply in this course, please pay attention to the following guidelines. These guidelines also form the basis for the rubric used to grade your discussion contribution.

What makes for a good post?

It depends on the specific assignment, but the following generally apply:

• Pay attention to the prompts.
• Use a good portion of the 3 minutes allotted to you.
• Show us what you’re thinking and why you’re thinking it.
• When sharing your own work, point to some places where people who respond to you might be most helpful in giving you feedback.

What makes for a good feedback?

Good feedback is important in all design activities, including the design of portfolios. It is especially important in this class. When giving feedback, keep in mind that good feedback is:

• Thorough – Use a good portion of the 3 minutes allotted to you. Try to cover as many aspects of the assignment that you can—do not focus on only one thing. However, don’t try to cover too much, because each point you make should have some details (see next point).
• Specific – Avoid generalities like “you had a good design,” and instead be more specific, like “your headers are easy to read, clear, and helpful in breaking up text into more manageable pieces.”
• Critical – Point out what needs improving. Even if you’re looking at the best piece of work, you can give the author something to think about working towards or thinking about differently.
• Supportive – Point out what is working well. Even the earliest of drafts is the start of something good that can be highlighted as a success.

Basic Posting

On camera, make sure you start each video by saying your name. For example, “Hi, this is Matthew Koehler, and today I’m talking about …. ”

After you record your video, there are a couple of fields to fill out. Make sure you pay particular attention to how we use these fields in the capstone course:

• First Name – Put in your first name.
• Last Name – Put in your last name.
• Email – This is optional, but if you give your email address you will be able to delete or update this video by yourself without instructor intervention.
• Title – Give your video a descriptive title (e.g., “my awesome resumé page”, “need help with Weebly formatting!”, etc.).
• Link – Give the full link to the website or page you created for this assignment so that others can visit it and provide feedback to you.

App for your Phone

There is a Flipgrid app for your phone that you may wish to use instead. Visit the appropriate app store for your phone to download it.

The app may have several advantages over using your computer, in that if you wish to discuss something you see on screen, it is easy to film the screen with your phone and point to what you’re talking about.

If you do use your phone, you will be prompted to “enter a code” to get to the right Flipgrid. The code for our class is “msu_capstone”. The password is “GoSparty” (capital “G” capital “S”)

Technical Problems

Flipgrid does require Flash installed on your computer. It also requires a working camera and microphone—these are things you would need for the exhibition and tech check or office half-hours anyway. Consider using your phone if you don’t have one on your desktop. If you have problems beyond simply installing Flash, a camera, and a microphone, try the excellent Flipgrid support page, or contact us.

Deadlines. Although we say “deadlines”, the course is designed to be flexible with pacing. Our “deadlines” are firm suggestions on how to stay on track in this course. Unless stated otherwise, the “deadline” for all work in a given module is due at 11:59 PM Michigan time on the last day of the module. The only true deadline in the course is that the final online portfolio is firmly due on the last day of class with no exceptions.

Early Work. The course dates we have laid out are minimum pacing requirements. Please feel free to complete the course faster than these required dates. The only minor hiccup may be around the final exhibition (Module 11), which is scheduled during a specific week. If we have enough people wanting to finish faster, we can likely have an early exhibition (or two).

Late Work. we have worked hard to design the course around modules and due dates that keep you on pace to complete a high-quality portfolio on time. We understand that life happens—getting sick, busy times at work, technology troubles, global pandemics, just to name a few—and things don’t go according to plan. If this happens, we expect you to communicate with your instructor before you miss a due date. In this communication, let your instructor know when you will have the work completed. If you aren’t sure, communicate the uncertainty and then communicate again when you do know. We are happy to work with you, but it is your responsibility to proactively communicate.

When you contribute feedback at the end of a module, you are usually expected to provide feedback to two of your classmates.

Our Bonuses and Bummers policy describes exceptions to this expectation as follows:

• Bonus – If you’re the first person to submit your work for an assignment, you do not have to provide any feedback to anyone.
• Bonus – If you’re the second person to submit your work for an assignment, you only have to provide feedback to one person (the person who submitted first).
• Bummer – If you’re the last person to submit your work for a task or Piece of Flair, you probably won’t receive any feedback from anyone.

Equally important as giving good feedback is learning how to receive good feedback. We have a few tips for receiving feedback:

1. Take time to process the feedback. Carefully review the feedback you received and take time to go through it. We can sometimes read constructive feedback as critical feedback, but this feedback may be especially helpful to the development of your portfolio. If some of the feedback seems critical, taking time to see the value in it can be helpful.
2. Think through how the feedback applies to your portfolio. While we trust that the feedback you receive will be helpful, there are always opportunities to think through how the feedback applies to your portfolio. For example, specific feedback about how to organize a specific page may not make sense given your audience and goals, but the general idea of the feedback may still let you know that you need to organize it to be easier to navigate. Other feedback may be helpful and aligned with the rubric and assignment descriptions but not line up with your good reasons for designing a page or your portfolio in a specific way. In these cases where your design may not align with feedback you receive, please feel free to reach out to the person providing it—or us—to clarify and expand on the feedback. We are always happy to help with this in any way we can.
3. Make a plan for changes, but recognize that some may take longer than others. If portfolios are to be authentic and ongoing, everyone needs some flexibility in when they will introduce all of the changes that have been suggested. If you simply don’t have time to make a particular change to your portfolio (especially if the change isn’t a critical part of the assignment requirements), try to leave a record of the suggested change and go back to it later. Think of these as not as an “IOU” but as an “IOM,” meaning something “I Owe Myself.” Of course, you are also free to say, “My portfolio was actually perfect before the feedback and there was really nothing I learned from feedback that was worth treating seriously, so I’ve made no changes as a result of the experience.” We think that’s highly unlikely to happen, though.

• As per our un-grading policy, everyone starts with a 4.0 Grade (See Syllabus for details). You do not need to check your grades. Instead pay attention to the feedback in your Feedback Notebook and continually work at addressing this feedback.
• If your work or timeliness falls below the expected levels, we may lower your grade. If this happens we will email you and let you know what your new grade is, why it is being lowered, and what you can do to raise your grade.
• The full grading policy is detailed in the syllabus.

Here are some of the ways you can adapt the course to meet your goals:

• Differing levels of technical expertise. Several of you have never published Web pages, but there’s nothing to worry about. Many students from previous semesters also began without this expertise and did just fine. Others of you are experts in Web publishing. We will be asking all of you, especially those experienced in Web publishing, to help each other (more on this later).
• Different paces for completing work. Some of you would like to work quickly, complete your portfolios, and be done. Because this course is so strongly product oriented, our policy is to let you work ahead as far as you want and as quickly as you want: There should be nothing that requires you to “work back” to the rest of your classmates. However, most of you should have ample opportunities to provide feedback to your peers, and we expect you to take that responsibility seriously. Even if you are working ahead of the rest of your house, we encourage you to keep the communication channels open and stay involved in the feedback process.
• Different portfolios for different situations. Each student has a different background, profession, and experience. Accordingly, each student portfolio should look different. We want each of you to create a portfolio that works for you. Although we will ask each of you to create some standard pages, we will also ask you to choose some pages that best fit your needs and situation (we call these “pieces of flair“). Even on the “standard” pages that everyone creates, there is room for creativity and individuality.
• Diversity works best when others benefit from it. The power of Web-based portfolios comes from sharing good work via the Web over time with a community of learners. You will learn a lot in Module 1 because the students before you left their work up on the Web for you to see. Related to this idea is our commitment to your doing authentic work for an authentic audience. Your portfolio should be designed to best reach your fellow teachers, parents, prospective employers, etc. Our guidelines are to facilitate reflection and enhancement, not to restrict or suggest a “right” way to do anything.

There are lots of good reasons to build an online portfolio. One major reason is that your program (MAED or MAET) will use your portfolio as summative and formative assessment as you conclude your master’s degree program.

That is, you will use your portfolio to collect all of your demonstrated learning, skills, competencies, and reflections in one place. Because it is online, it’s available not only to us (the course instructors) but also to other faculty and students in the program and the College of Education. This is your chance to show everyone what you know and what you can do!

There are reasons beyond finishing your program, however, for building a portfolio. We think that a portfolio can serve you well in professional, social, and personal contexts. That is, the work you demonstrate in your portfolio is a great professional resource for communicating with colleagues and perhaps even landing a job. Your portfolio can also be a point of social connection with others, including friends and family members. This is especially true if you add social components to your site such as a blog, a Twitter feed, or photos. And finally your portfolio can have personal purposes—it can serve as a digital archive for any work that you want to share with others.

The portfolio you make in this class has several components. The first component is the technology used to create and display your online portfolio (Weebly, Wix, WordPress, Google Sites, etc.). The process of deciding what technology to use is a scaffolded choice that happens throughout Module 1, Module 2, and Module 3, although you can revisit this decision at any time.

Once you have chosen a technology, this course helps you build 7 required pages that go in your portfolio, although there can be great flexibility and individuality in how these required pages are implemented in your portfolio. These seven pages are:

• A home page (Module 3) – You create a landing page, or the first page that viewers see when visiting your online portfolio.
• A resumé / vita (Module 5) – You create a page that highlights your professional preparation, appointments, skills, and goals.
• A showcase (Module 6) – You create a page that shows examples or artifacts of your best work from your master’s program.
• An annotated transcript (Module 8) – You create a page that lists the courses and topics covered as part of your master’s program.
• Three reflective essays – You reflect upon your past, present, and future learning in the form of three essays:
  • Goal Reflection (Module 4) – You reflect upon your learning goals you had prior to entering the program.
  • Future Learning (Module 7) – You reflect upon goals you have for your learning after you leave the program.
  • Synthesis (Module 9) – You reflect upon what you learned from your master’s program.

In addition to the seven required pages, you will add three or more components that are specifically tailored to you and your portfolio. We call these Pieces of Flair, and you mix and match these components in a way that adds breadth and depth to your portfolio. You might, for example, add a page that describes your classroom (that would be one Piece of Flair), or connect to your presence on LinkedIn (that would be another Piece of Flair).

One website technology, PLUS 7 required pages, PLUS 3 (or more) pieces of flair will give you a website that will be uniquely yours and that you can be proud of.