ePortfolio Construction: What a Rush!

As the last few days of our ePortfolio class are coming to a close, I am in awe of the progress I’ve made over the last ten weeks. The process of building an online portfolio has been both challenging and exhilarating at the same time. What a fantastic journey it has been! From experimenting with various tools, to reading about the educational theory behind the use of ePortfolios, to the creation of Evidence of Learning artifacts one, two, three, and four: my professional growth is rapidly evolving, and quite honestly, I hate for the class to end.

As a classroom teacher, the hands-on experimentation with different technology applications is something I rarely have time for, and at times, the experience has made me feel like a kid in a candy store. I loved having the chance to try everything out and think about how I might use each tool in my lesson planning at school. There are so many things out there that I either didn’t know about or didn’t realize have been drastically improved and become more education friendly. Products I wasn’t crazy about five years ago actually look seamless enough to bring into a session without fear of having the dreaded “lesson plan gone wrong.” I look forward to trying out some new and innovative tools with my students as our year progresses.

As far as my ePortfolio is concerned, I am pleased with the framework I have created and can’t wait to add more meat to my pages. In looking through some of the example portfolios from students who are further along in the program, it is apparent that we will enhance our sites more and more as we move through our required courses, but personally, I will not limit my additions to the portfolio to ones required by my instructors. My goal is to document and photograph all new hands-on application use on my blog page to give potential employers a feel for my experiences with technology integration in the classroom. When interviewing for new positions, being able to talk to the talk is important, but I believe the ability to display an electronic collection of my work will make me much more marketable. It will be exciting to see where my new learning takes me!