Eight weeks ago I embarked on a new journey. The journey of Graduate school. As I come to the end of my first semester, I can't help but reflect on my learning in 5303: Applying Educational Technology and how much I truly enjoyed creating my very own e-portfolio.
When I first started 5303, I had no idea what to expect. I had never heard of an e-portfolio, or had ever created one, or so I thought. After attending Dr. Bedard's live sessions and interacting with the videos and resources in the discussions, I quickly realized that although I had not called them e-portfolios, I was indeed using a version of them in my classroom with my students. Once I had that Aha! moment, I not only knew that the course was going to be extremely beneficial, but also that I was going to love creating my very own e-portfolio.
I started off by researching WIX, Weebly, and Wordpress but after careful consideration and collaboration with my core group, I decided on WIX because it appeared to be a little more user friendly. Then, I continued by creating my home page. which included a personalized title, a meaningful quote, my blogs, you tube videos that I found impactful during the semester, and I also included a way to be contacted. Slowly but surely I continued to change, add, and refine my e-portfolio. I would spend hours just in the aesthetics of my e-portfolio. I'd change the themes, colors, and fonts, based on how I was feeling at the time. Then I dove into adding my content. I added an About Me page, an ADL Pathway page, a Blog page, Work page, and more. As the weeks went by and I learned new tips and tricks from self exploration and my collaborative group, I was able to add subpages and buttons to every section of my Innovation Plan.
At the same time my collaborative group and I were also reading and learning about the COVA Approach in the e-book Choice, Ownership, and Voice through Authentic Learning Opportunities written by D. Harapnuik, T. Thibodeaux, and C. Cummings. We would each take the lead on a different section and then bring that to our discussions. We also used this valuable resource in our Literature Review and even actively started to implement it in the classroom.
To summarize, I have learned so much about the creation and purpose of e-portfolios through the COVA approach. I had the freedom of Choice when choosing my platform, my themes, fonts, colors, organization, etc., and because I had the choice in my creation, I took Ownership of my e-portfolio. This is MY creation, MY learning, MY Voice. I get to decide when and how to revisit and restructure my work. The best part is that I learned all this through an Authentic learning opportunity which involved hands on guided exploration.
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