Month: April 2021

I believe that using an e-Portfolio will be beneficial for us.  Having these e-Portfolios will allow us to present our knowledge of the course in a unique way which will open doors for collaboration with our peers.  I feel that creating these e-Portfolios is a small piece of the big picture.  I feel that the big takeaways are going to be the collaboration and reflections.  By collaborating with our peers, we will be able to gain insight on our work, which in turn will allow us to reflect on how we can improve, and then fix it. 

E-Portfolios is a way for us to take control of our learning.  Just like Dwayne Harapnuik (2019) outlines in his article, we are able to learn on a much deeper level when we are actively engaged.  I also like the part about the teacher sees the learning through the student’s eyes.  This will be beneficial for our students as well.  There are many different types of learners out there and I feel that if a student can display their learning by creating an e-Portfolio, their creativity shines. 

I just finished up a six-week project with my Pre AP-Algebra 2 students where they had to draw a picture in a computer program by using nothing but equations.  Some of their creativity shined.  I would never have known some of them were artistic if it was not for this project.  I also have them write me a half page reflection over the project and a lot of them stated the reason why they enjoyed doing their project was because they had control over which picture they drew and how they could draw it.  It was the ownership that they liked.  I guess, by reading these articles and reflecting over the project, I can see where e-Portfolios would be a huge benefit for us but for our students as well.

Reference

Harapnuik, D. (2019). Why use an ePortfolio. Retrieved April 22, 2021, from http://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6063

At this point in time, I am feeling overwhelmed, because like many, I have not yet had the 5302 course and I feel that I am light-years behind.  I found myself reading each of the above articles and then clicking on the links to see where they would bring me.  I enjoyed exploring all of these articles, but a few of them caught my eye.  The first article, “Love of learning is the key to success in the jobless future” made me think about jobs in the future.  I just mentioned in my Introduction post that as educators, we are preparing kids for jobs that have not yet been created.  This article made mention that in the past, careers were something that lasted twenty plus years and now with the way everything is evolving, a career will last an average of ten years and in the future this number will decrease to five years to eventually being no careers (Harapnuik, 2015).  This is crazy and shows just how fast things are evolving. 

Another article I enjoyed was “New study highlights the benefits of ePortfolios in engineering education.”  This article, done at the University of Notre Dame, focuses on how ePortfolios can help professors see if a student is going to be successful or not in their intro courses by gauging how much the student is engaged in the class (Harapnuik, 2015).  It also talked about since these ePortfolios are the students’ creations, that giving a numeric grade would not be right.  Instead, it would either be a “Pass” or “Needs to Improve.”  As a teacher, I particularly do not like giving out numeric grades.  I do not think this grade is a true reflection of the true level of a student.  I want to explore this topic more to see how I can utilize this in my classroom and bring out COVA for my students. 

References

Harapnuik D., EDLD 5303 Getting Started Tips, 2015

Over the past several years I have found myself wanting to integrate technology into my classroom. Since I am a high school math teacher, I always find myself navigating towards the latest and greatest in technology. My problem is with all of these great innovative ways to incorporate digital learning, I feel like I am drowning. I have many tools in my toolbox, I just do not have the time nor the energy to get them going.

How can I fix this? I decided at the beginning of this school year to go back to school to get my Master’s degree. I know, crazy, right? I picked a Master of Education in Technology Leadership. I guess since the word Technology was in the name, that is why I gravitated to it. I am currently in my sixth class, which just so happens to be the first technology class. What I envisioned and what I am currently doing are two completely different things. Our assignment is to design an ePortfolio where I have to document my learning through blogging. I will be honest, all of this is extremely new to me. For starters, I have never developed a website and two, I have never thought about blogging. I can definitely say that I am in uncharted territories right now.

Developing this site has been a struggle. I worry about how this will be perceived by others and what they will think. I need to keep reminding myself that this site is ultimately for me and it is my creation. I am charting my course and I do not need to worry about what others will think. So here is to clicking the launch button and hoping everything comes together alright.

Do you like collaborating, do your students like collaborating? Have you been in a meeting with your peers, to have one person do all of the talking and not listen to anyone else’s point of view? If you said yes to the above questions, then you are with me. If done right, the collaboration process works well, but if done wrong, people tend to not like it and will not enjoy the process.

We watched a video that was provided to us by our professor and I will say this, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it. Margaret Heffernan talked about why it is important to forget the pecking order at work. MIT performed a study that groups volunteers together and gave them extremely hard problems to solve. They found that the best performing groups were not the groups that had the highest IQ’s. They found that three characteristics were prominent throughout the groups that performed superior. The first thing is that the groups showed a high degree of social sensitivity to each other. Second, the successful groups gave equal time for each member to contribute to the discussion. In my classroom, I have grouped my students according to ability level. I have paired an above-average student with an average and a below average student. The hopes were for the above average student to help pull up the below average student, but what I witnessed was not this. In fact, it was the average student that helped the below average student out more. I saw that the above average student was only worried about themselves, and did not show empathy towards the other two students. Often times, the above average student will ask to work by themselves. I use this as a teaching moment and try to get the above average student to understand the bigger picture. The third was that the more successful groups had more women in them. I chuckled at this, honestly. They were not sure if it was due to the fact that women show more empathy or if the women bring more diversity.

For collaboration to work well, remember all persons have a voice. No one dominates the conversation and no one is a passenger. Everyone contributes equally. Groups must have social cohesion. Let me hear from you about your thoughts on collaboration.