Abstract

PROFESSIONAL PORTFOLIO FOR DEBORAH BERTOLUCCI

http://imet.csus.edu/imet1/hutchins/dbport/port.html

Deborah Bertolucci

The electronic portfolio represents my growth as an educator over the last eighteen months.The technology skills and instructional strategies I have learned have established a firm foundation from which I can continue to build on in my professional career. The whole concept of this program has been based on collaboration and group work and has taught me the value of networking. These experiences have helped me to become a change agent in my own district.

Process

The process portion of my electronic portfolio includes a brief description of my professional background and links to some of my students' work.

Product

Concept Attainment- Polygon activity for High School geometry

This activity reflects one of our earliest attempts to show how technology can be integrated into the curriculum. We feel that this is a good example of a simplistic approach to delivering curriculum that allowed students to use basic software tools in working on the assignment.

Digital Divide- Resistant/Reluctant Staff Development

This investigation delved into the pitfalls of staff development. Many times those of us who lead staff development sessions encounter those colleagues who see no value in attending and/or no relevance to their professional lives. We sought to obtain strategies to help with planning meaningful staff development training.

Advanced Organizer- Adolescent vs. Adult Learners in Using PowerPoint

Exploring the differences in the way adolescents and adults learn was the focus of this project. Utilizing the concept of advanced organizer as defined by David Ausebel, we developed a PowerPoint presentation explaining how both adults and adolescents learn and some techniques to consider using in teaching to both groups.

Webquest- Watching the Colors Come Alive (a 6^th grade social studies unit)

This website was created as part of our action research project to be used in a 6^th grade social studies class. It is approximately a three-week unit that meets the California State Standards for Social Studies (Ancient Civilizations) and Language Arts. The unit included Internet resources, online worksheets, assessment rubrics, teacher guide, PowerPoint tutorial and kite building material.

Landscapes- 10^th grade integrated unit

This project was developed as a way to integrate social science, science, language arts and math in a web-based environment. The primary goal is for students to discover what is involved in sending a space shuttle to Mars, utilizing Kepler’s laws. The first unit, space, will take approximately two weeks for students to complete. We’ve identified three other units: water, environment and air, which are currently under development. Eventually, we would like to develop this project into 10 units spanning a full semester.

Showcase (Action Research Project)

This section of my electronic portfolio discusses the action research plan, the relevant review of the literature and the findings of our action research.

The problem addressed in the action research revolved around grouping students into cooperative learning pods based on personality type. In general, teachers utilize various techniques for grouping students that may or may not be effective in the final analysis. In our research we hope to identify another grouping strategy that could be helpful to teachers in forming cooperative groups.

We began our research by creating a WebQuest site that would represent the curriculum used by the target group (6^th grade Social Science class). We then created a timeline, acquired a valid personality test, conducted a review of the relevant literature and initiated the WebQuest project. The data collected included completed questionnaires and surveys by the target group, interviews with the target groups and teachers and feedback from students and parents.

Partnership Statement

Deborah Bertolucci, Rob Freeman, Joe Volek and Richard Klug collaborated fully in the preparation and presentation of the Concept Attainment and Advanced Organizer projects.
Deborah Bertolucci, Fernando Nugent and Richard Klug collaborated fully in the research and development of the Landscapes project .
Deborah Bertolucci, Richard Klug and Jeff Palmrose collaborated fully in the research and development of the WebQuest project.
Deborah Bertolucci, Mark Peaty, Laverne Denyer and Cathie Pearl-Conforti collaborated fully in the research and development of the Digital Divide project. Mark Peaty constructed the webpage used in the final presentation.
Deborah Bertolucci and Richard Klug collaborated fully in the research and development of the Action Research Project. Jeff Palmrose contributed research pertaining to the personality test.