QUESTION: As highly interactive Web 2.0 technologies become more prominent, how do teachers present themselves as skillful and innovative technology-using educators?

The question posed above was asked by my colleagues Robert Maloy, Ruth-Ellen Verock-O’Loughlin, Sharon Edwards, and Bev Woolf (Maloy, et.al., 2011) in their book, Transforming learning with New Technologies. Their answer to this query intrigued and inspired me simultaneously. They concluded that even a veteran teacher like myself could benefit from displaying skills and knowledge electronically. This skeptical forty- year-veteran-turned-believer now realizes that creating a professional electronic portfolio did provide me an opportunity to reflect on my work, my growth, and my future plans as a teacher. . . just as my colleagues said it would.

The act of selecting artifacts (i.e. WebQuests, Blogs, On-Line Courses designs, Research Proposals) and providing rationales for their selections helped me in my reflections on the NETS-T Standards for Teachers while giving me insights into ways to improve my current and future methodology courses for prospective early childhood and elementary teachers.

In this section of my report, first, I list all of the artifacts chosen for inclusion in the report as blog entries. I also include my rationales for each artifact selected. Second, I pick one artifact that I think best represents my understanding of the NETS-T Standard I have associated with the artifact. (All of the hyperlinks associated with a particular artifact have been included in this print component of my report to give readers a sense of the hypermedia knowledge needed to develop an electronic portfolio.) Using blogging technology, I have been able to link artifacts with their rationales and both with reflections on the NETS-T Standards,

If as Kilbane and Millman (2003) claim, “a digital portfolio is a goal-driven, organized collection of artifacts that demonstrate a person’s expansion of knowledge and skills over time,” then it is my hope that my goals, organization, and knowledge have been captured in this digitized format.