My Site provides all teachers with an online workspace. We are currently exploring how this area of the portal could be expanded to include professional growth portfolios or e-portfolios. A collaborative team site is similar to a personal my site but is intended for a group of educators who require a shared workspace. The workspace lets users collaborate and organize projects in an area that can be restricted to just team members. These sites have been used by the DOE and some districts for work with curriculum writing groups, student services topic groups, and mentor groups. This year the DOE has created 62 collaborative team sites.
The teaching resource section is organized to be browsed by subject and level of instruction. These sections are further delineated by working groups of teachers who define how they are best organized for their curriculum area. Teachers have the option to search just the Educational Resources section of the Portal. This search is a web part that we have developed within the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to meet our needs. The categories (Level, Subjects, Resource Type, and Key Words) and organizational layout was developed in consultation with teachers. There are currently over 800 resources in this section.
Teachers in New Brunswick are expected to be knowledgeable about copyright issues and to follow and model correct practice with students. To that end, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development felt it was important to provide teachers with downloadable, copyright-free, curriculum based digital images for use in educational projects. To date nearly 5000 images with bilingual captions have been contributed to the image databank. We are exploring the development of an audio and video media databank in the second phase.
The framework for the Professional Development section of the NB Education Portal was developed in consultation with our teachers, who identified the PD resources they would like available online. The survey data gathered indicated teachers were looking for greater access to online learning opportunities, supported by face to face interaction. This section of the portal is organized in the following categories: Online Professional Development, Professional Growth Opportunities, Professional Growth Planning, Professional Reading and Research, and Professional Development for School Administrators. Resources to populate this section will be gathered in partnership with school districts in the second phase of the project.
