Month: May 2021

5303 Final Reflection

I made it to week 5 in my class EDLD 5303 Applying Education Technology: ePortfolio! I had my doubts as to whether or not I believed that I could do it, but I persevered and made it! Reflecting back to the first couple of weeks, I struggled with creating this site. I am one of those people that once they start on something, I need to finish it. I finally came to the realization that this project will take shape as we go through our other classes. I will be able to change things up as I go along to fit the narrative that I need. Also, I had a hard time publishing my site. Not because I did not know how to do it, but because I was afraid to put myself out on the web. I am not the type of person that likes to talk about myself or likes to be in the spotlight. I was scared that someone would find it and start critiquing it and put it down. Then when I talked to my group, they brought to my attention the realization that we were posting our sites on the world wide web and the chances of someone finding it and bashing it, for a lack of a better word, was slim to none and honestly once I published my site, I felt a huge burden lifted off of my shoulders. I also found myself actually enjoying working with my site.

I will be honest; I had not bought in fully to COVA in the first couple of weeks. I was struggling with how to do everything and was thinking that I had made the wrong decision. As I moved through the course, and watched the videos and the read the required articles it all started to make sense to me. My ePortfolio started to evolve into what it was meant to be, a true reflection of my learning. I can see how this would be beneficial to my students and how by choosing the right platform, they will be able to keep their ePortfolio even after graduation.

Students want choice in their assignments and how to do them. They want ownership in their work. Just passing out a worksheet and having them answer questions, does not give them this opportunity. Students want their voices to be heard and they want authenticity in their learning. Students are wanting to demonstrate their creativity and use this in their learning. I saw this within the projects I gave them during the fifth six weeks. They were able to choose the picture they wanted to draw and they were able to draw it however they wanted to in the program and the majority of them thanked me for letting them have a choice. They told me it was much better than just being told what they had to do.

Now that I have and will be going through these technology classes for my master degree, I am leaning towards having my students create an ePortfolio themselves to track their learning. I believe that this will be a major asset for them for after graduation.

E-Portfolios- The art of learning and growing

This week our discussion post had us reviewing over several e-Portfolios that have already been compiled. I looked through several examples in hopes of them helping me develop my e-Portfolio better. I really enjoyed looking at each of the portfolios.  It showed each person’s way of thinking through their own learning process.  I believe that this is important to not only us, but to our students.  Our students do not all learn the same and we are expected to differentiate our lessons to accommodate all of our students, and this would be amazing for them to not only showcase their learnings but their talents.  Each of the portfolios that I looked through showed the persons own creative learning style and I love this! There were many differences among the portfolios, but that is the best thing when using COVA, it brings out each person’s creativity and individuality because it puts the learning in the hands of the student.

I also dug into a few of these portfolios a little deeper to explore their sites and I liked how they were easy to navigate, and I saw a few things that I am hoping to incorporate into my portfolio.  There are some amazing portfolios!

Who Owns the E-Portfolio?

Towards the end of the school year, I generally ask for my students to fill out a survey for my class on how they feel the school year went.  I will have generic questions like, “Did you enjoy my class” and “Do you feel like you learned enough for you to be successful in future math classes?” Probably one of the most important questions I ask them is “What is the one thing that you enjoyed the most this past year and why?”  The answers generally come back stating that they enjoyed the six weeks’ project that I have them do during the fifth six weeks, and their reason for why it was the most enjoyable is because they were able to have ownership in their project.  Before taking this class, I picked up on how important ownership is, but never really understood just how important it is and now that I just wrapped up this project, I see how impactful ownership is to the students’ education.  As Harapnuik (2019) suggest, ownership of ideas and making meaningful connections both lead to deeper learning. 

My students learned!  They were able to build this project the way they wanted and they were able to make their own connections with little help from me.  They were also allowed the time to write a reflection over what they learned, which we have learned is a major component to ownership.  When one is given the time to reflect on their own work, they are involved in a learning cycle that never stops.

The one thing that I struggle with is the rubric for this project.  Rikard (2015), article discusses if the student truly owns the domain, is the ownership lost if the teacher is grading it, are the students only giving the teacher what they want?  For my rubric, I have five columns with a numeric grade at the top of each column ranging from 75 to 100.  Under each grade is the criteria that the student must meet in order to receive that grade.  Most students strive for the 100, but I do have some that are happy with a 75 or a 70 in some instances.  My battle comes when a student turns in a project and I know how hard they worked, but because they did not meet the rubric criteria for a 100, I cannot give them that.  In the past, before the rubric, I gave everyone a 100, most deserved it, and some did not, but all-in-all, the projects were good.  I only created the rubric to stay fair and consistent with grading since it is a Pre-AP class.  I want to be more like Opra and give everyone a 100, but I also feel like if I do this, quality of the work will go down.  I am open to suggestions to this dilemma, if anyone has any.

Resources

Harapnuik, D. (n.d.). Who Owns the ePortfolio. Retrieved April 26, 2021, from http://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6050

Rikard, A. (2015). Do I Own My Domain If You Grade It? Retrieved April 26, 2021, from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-08-10-do-i-own-my-domain-if-you-grade-it