Shake's+Portfolio+Page

Engaged Classroom Participant Portfolio

This portfolio has been created in connection with the Jordan School District Enhanced Classroom professional development project.

Participant Name: Matthew Shake Participant School: Ft. Herriman Middle Grade/Subject: 7th Utah Studies

My personal goals for The Engaged Classroom program: 1) To engage my mind with 21st century mass media and communication technology. 2) To continue to explore areas of knowledge that I still have much to learn about. Why? To be honest, I have never been a technology-centered individual. But as a teacher, I have become very aware that this is not how the majority of my students think about technology. Many love it. So I feel that I should get engaged with 21st century technology so that I don't fall out of touch with many of my students.

My classroom goals for The Engaged Classroom program: 1) To determine which types of technology have a substantive advantage over older methods of teaching, and which lack substantive improvement. In other words, which one's will help students to learn more in the long run? And which technology simply looks exciting, thus capturing student interest in the short term, but in the long term does little to help them learn any better than older methods of teaching? 2) To try to connect new schema in my brain that will allow me to think more creatively about how technology can be used to make a substantive impact on my student's learning. Why? From what I have seen, I believe that technology can be an extremely useful teaching tool in many cases. But I also have seen times when the medium of delivery on instruction does not matter in terms of how great of an impact there is on student learning. (For example, an assignment executed via the medium of paper and pencil can often be just as effective in terms of student learning as an assignment executed via new, cutting-edge technology.) I believe that, without critical analysis by front-line teachers, educational technology that has the potential to revolutionize education will continue to marginally affect American student's educational attainment levels (as it has since the 1980's) because in our rush to endorse "cutting-edge" technology schools will not demand quality products at reasonable prices. Public school funding will always be constricted in the US, so if we are going to invest in expensive technology we'd better invest wisely. Therefore, this program gives me an excellent vantage point from which to assess the usefulness of a new generation of educational technology. On a related note, I also realize the limitations of my own ability to discern the usefulness of technology due to my limited training and personal interest in educational technology. Thus I intend to make an earnest effort in expanding my technological horizons so that I may first somewhat understand this technology before I make a critical judgment of it's usefulness to student learning.

Below are links to pages that demonstrate my competence in several key areas.

Inspiration Software

Atomic Learning Modules Links to a few modules that I have found to be particularly helpful.

Comic Life, Picasa, Comic Life Project

Above is a Comic Life I created for practice on my own before having students use it. It is a very, very loose retelling of a Ute legend called Ghost Robs Dove.

Social Bookmarking [|my delicious.com site]

Google Docs [|A Google Doc I Created]

Blogging [|My Blog]

Digital Story Telling media type="file" key="connor the sequel gd.mov"

Above is a shrunken down version of a Great Depression film my students made. (I had to shrink it to fit on this website.) I don't know how politically correct it is, but I thought it was pretty creative.

More Comic Life

Above is one student example of a Comic Life project on the Great Depression

Lesson Plan I've Created



My Reflections

Using the Document Camera in my Class Using the Document Camera

Using the Student Response System Using the Student Response System

Reflection on My Future Plans for Engaged Classroom learning Written Reflection on Future Plans for Engaged Classroom