Karen M. Weber

 ePORTFOLIOS

I direct the ePortfolio initiative for the Honors College, which includes formulating the implementation plan for the program, designing learning modules on creating academic portfolios, teaching an ePortfolio course, and collaborating with staff, faculty, and IT professionals on campus in program development. I have also produced promotional and web materials for the program. 

 

   UDL
I participated in a  SOOC on Universal Design for Learning principles, which was a rewarding experience. In addition to exploring the course materials and instructional videos, I worked with Popplet, Inspiration 9, and Haiku Deck. I participated in the Google+ community, and contributed to a Google hangout on UDL principles. I enjoyed learning more about open online courses for students. Initially I underestimated the caliber of the resources and instruction available to students, but now view these open courses as worthwhile to students who are motivated to learn in this capacity.    

 

COLLABORATION

Collaboration is the heart of a 21st century skill set (DiBlasi, 2009). I work to incorporate collaboration into my professional work, and when teaching and advising students. Examples of this include creating Google+ groups for UH students, and incorporating Web 2.0 tools for collaboration when teaching on ePortfolios. I also served as a Teaching Assistant for a course entitled Integrating Technology into the Classroom. During this course, I participated in a Twitter collaboration chat. Preparing for the chat challenged me to convey information in a compact and meaningful way to adhere to the 160-character limit. During the live chat, I had to quickly respond to several conversations simultaneously, which was a dynamic way to communicate. This experience taught me to find ways to use social media effectively to share and create meaning.

 

VIDEO

During my academic and professional career, I have constructed many videos. In addition, I took a graduate course on educational uses of digital video. This course covered digitizing and capturing videos, working with audio files, filming with video cameras, and using video editing programs, such as Movie Maker, iMovie, WeVideo, and Premiere Elements. We also read about and discussed pertinent issues in the field, such as what fair use and copyright mean to educators creating multimedia products for students, and how to be effective digital storytellers.