Documenting my progress in the learning journal
November 9, 2006
I have really struggled with this portfolio, mostly because I don't seem to have a good focus or metaphor. It's hard to do a rationale for including an item if one doesn't know what the whole thing is about. It's like trying to group items in a box which is yet unlabled. If the box is labeled first, it's easier to find things to put in, and it's easy to give good reasons why items are in the box based on the label. With an unlabeled box, items may go in because they seem important, but searching for a good label at the end becomes the hard part. It may just end up as a jumble of items with no label, and that would be a disaster! : )
To date I have digitized three artifacts and mostly written the rationale and reflection for two of them. It's been a slow process because my rationale and reflection for each one is so long. However, I have been writing the rationale based on the metaphor of a "personal toolbox", where each item in the portfolio represents a concrete tool that I can use to help me teach better, whether it gives me a better understanding of how students learn or leads me to a new technique for organizing the learning environment.
Last week I received some feedback from Gaby, who read my ETEC 512 theory to practice paper, and I have been excited by a potential shift in my focus/metaphor. She noticed that I use a lot of references to seeing or light. Some of the examples in my writing include "I love the moment when I see the light dawn in the student's eyes"; and I am "on the watch" for ways to help students learn better. I know that I am a very visual learner with a preference for text rather than graphic images (words stick in my mind, but diagrams don't). As such, the school system, with its emphasis on books and text, has served me well. However, I have really grown as a teacher, right from my undergraduate teaching practicums through to the MET program, in my understanding that not all students learn in the same way. The further I have gotten in the MET program, the more my quest has become to understand how people learn, and to try to find as many ways to structure the learning environment as possible so that I can reach as many students as possible. This means going beyond my comfort zone as a visual learner and trying to reach students in other ways, and this has spurred me to provide a multi-sensory and multi-modal experience for my students.
Because of my personal focus on visual text-based learning, and now
because my own ideas about good learning environments include more than
this, I am strongly considering changing my focus and the title of my
ePortfolio to "A Vision for Learning". This will reflect my own
personal learning style, but will also examine my quest to broaden my
vision to include other types of learning and teaching.
In this quest, over the past several weeks I have been doing the "grunt work" of trying to find a suitable web-page template and pictures to represent my links. I have been thinking about pictures of dawn, and lightbulbs for the links, and I have been searching through open-source web design pages and pictures in Flickr to see what I can find. The picture hunt has been more successful than the web page hunt as I haven't found anything that jumps out at me yet. I really want to have almost everything done by the end of this weekend, so I'm preparing myself for a marathon session.
November 11, 2006
The form of the portfolio has really come together between last night and today. I finally found a web site template that I could live with on Open Source Web Design - thanks to Mike from the Isle of Man for the Pogo template. I found the photos that I needed on both Flickr and the Microsoft Office website. Although I'm not overly fond of Microsoft, I'm not too proud to use their products when I have to! Technically speaking, I've been trying to use CSS when I can. I was disappointed with myself for having to resort to a table for the picture links on the main page, but I decided, after I had spent 45 minutes trying to do it with CSS, that it was not worth it. I feel that I often spend too much time on the form of a project to the detriment of the content, so I am trying to leave enough time to do the rest of the writing.
I think that I will be mostly finished with the "skin" of the portfolio by the end of today and then the hard part starts again - the actual writing (and rewriting). The writing should go much faster now that I have my metaphor in place. It's amazing how paralyzed I felt by not having a proper focus.
November 22, 2006
While at work tonight I took a few minutes to look at my ePortfolio. I was horrified! I had forgotten to test my site with Internet Explorer because I use Firefox at home. What a difference! In Firefox my pages were centred, but with IE they were left-aligned. My links were way up, and there was a gap in the banner. It took me almost an hour to fix the problems, but I'm glad I looked at it now rather than next week.
November 26, 2006
Gaby has given me some additional feedback about my ePortfolio which I will try to incorporate. She mentioned that I should direct the reader toward specific parts of my artifacts in my reflections, and I think it's a good idea. Not only will this help me bring a focus to my reflections, but since both my artifacts and reflections are long in most cases, it will help bring some clarity to the reflections without the reader necessarily having to read through the whole artifact.
She also noted that the ePortfolio is very text heavy, which bothers me. I know that I am a very visual, text-oriented learner, but I have come to know that not everyone else is, and that is the very essence of my ePortfolio: being able to recognize and respond to learners with varying learning styles. And yet here I am falling into the same old trap - "teaching" (or in this case, constructing my ePortfolio) how I was taught! Since mulling over this comment, I have made some changes to my site, including adding some screenshots of my drill and tutorial and some links with video and interactive games or activities. I am still debating about recording some audio as well, but can't really decide on a good reason to do so. (Never use technology just because you can!) I am determined to change, but I must be constantly vigilant in looking for opportunities to do so!
I am a little concerned about my timeline at this point. My presentation is in five days, and I have a rough week ahead of me both at work and at home. I have a long list of things still to do, including finishing up two reflections and creating my tour guide and Powerpoint slides. However, the good thing is that the end is in sight!
November 27, 2006
This will be my last entry, unless I have any more sudden revelations between now and Friday! I feel that I am now on the home stretch - finishing and polishing my reflective pieces and adding more links to my resources page from the bookmarks on my home computer. On Wednesday and Thursday I will do my Tour Guide and Powerpoint slides which I then must email in for my presentation on Friday. It seems like a tight schedule, but unfortunately I have found that I work best when under a bit of pressure : ).
I was thinking about what I had become, or what had changed for me as a result of the MET program. First, I have become almost passionately interested in learning theories and how they can assist us in becoming better teachers. Second, I have become more technically proficient as a result of the choices I have made for completing projects required within the program. Third, I have reaffirmed my interest in mathematics. Although I have a degree in math and really enjoy teaching math whenever I get the chance, I have never been a "math teacher". With a wide variety of interests such as these, I am really excited to see what the future brings for me after we move back to Canada!