Digital Portfolio – Reflection Badge

Virtual Identity & Audience:

Creating a digital portfolio of my work was intimidating at first.  I am a fairly private person when it comes to my virtual identity, so I did want to use a pseudonym.  I created the username EloiseThree from my favorite children’s literature character and favorite number. Putting myself and ideas out there under this nickname gave me a sense of security and privacy. 

Eloise at the Plaza (clipped to polyvore.com)

Looking back on starting this blog, I feel that I have always been true to the audience I hoped to reach.  In my profile, I state that I am a 6th grade language arts teacher looking for ways to incorporate digital texts and New Literacies into my classroom.  The blog was intended to highlight my studies during grad school but also, hopefully, be a registry of ideas and concepts I want to employ in my classroom.  Therefore, I wrote each post or page with a public audience and myself in mind.  The duel audience did mean I needed to create a readable page with breaks in the texts.  Unlike an essay that requires paragraphs, digital writing can become a stream of conscientiousness.  While this might be okay if the work was solely for myself, however, if I want my portfolio of work to be a resource for others, I need to ensure it is searchable.  For this reason, I began labeling posts by either class or project, broke blog posts into headings, titled each post clearly, and, when appropriate, amassed posts into one page.  I believe this kind of organization makes the blog very accessible to a public audience but also for my own reference.

Reflection on artifacts and documents:

Reflecting on our own work is so important! And, if we don’t do it ourselves, how can we ask our students to? So, in looking over my work for LLED 7940 I believe the two following posts represent my best work because they will be the most beneficial to my instruction moving forward.

- The first is Elective Badge #2 -Assessmentof Multimodal Composition.  Throughout all of my coursework, multimodal compositions have been in the forefront.  In addition, the key points and connections I made tie my established practices with the material I gathered in graduate school.  That is that all parts of literacy are connected, and to be proficient in one requires competence in another.  So if I believe in using digital literacy in my classroom to reach my students, I need them to use multimodal compositions to demonstrate their learning.  Plus, this badge is also a reminder for me to teach my students how to prepare and write with hyperlinks, which I still can’t believe I haven’t incorporated yet!

- The second is Elective Badge #3 - OnlineComprehension.

For this badge, I really developed some strong ideas for the classroom, specifically with Survey Monkey. As with hyperlinks, I am embarrassed to admit that most of my assessments have remained very traditional.  It is not because I don’t want to find other ways to evaluate my students, it is because I really wasn’t sure how to.  Therefore, this post and badge show how I have taken my work in the class, and my graduate program, and put it to use. 

I have also learned from my peers.  The following two posts stayed with me because of the resources they provided within each.

- The first is Kemper’s post Elective Badge #2 Assessmentof Multimodal Composition.

Within her post she included the app Popplet.  In the past I have used software similar to the functions of Popplet but was always frustrated by it.  I have played around on Popplet, and it is easy to use to organize students’ thoughts and ideas, which can be difficult for dyslexic students. 

-The second is Megan’s post Elective Badge #1 MultimodalComposition (Do you see a trend in my reflection?)

Megan provided me a link to the app, Animoto.  In the past, I have created movies for my students using iMovie as it was always difficult for me to teach them how to use the application. This may be because I am not comfortable with all of the features, but Animoto appears to be user friendly and appropriate for middle school students who don’t have familiarity with other movie-making apps.

Learning Outcomes:

As I worked on my digital portfolio and earned badges, I feel that certain course objectives and technology standards were reflected in that work.  My work shows that I “will be able to incorporate and assess multimedia work samples in an electronic portfolio in K-12 literacy instruction” (Noguerón-Liu & Crawley, 2015).  This can be seen through the ideas I generated for my classroom, specifically those for assessmentfor multimodal composition, online comprehension, and assessment of digital citizenship. This course objective and my work also aligns with The International Society for Technology in Education’s second standard, “design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments” (ISTE, 2015).

In addition, I liked the flexibility of choosing our own elective badges. As the course objective stated, ‘Students will explore specific e-assessment topics aligned with their current teaching needs, interests, and areas of professional development” (Noguerón-Liu & Crawley, 2015).  The fourth elective badge I worked on, assessmentof digital citizenship, really connected with this objective and International Literacy Association Standard2, specifically, the assumption, “Comprehensive reading programs provide a wide variety of traditional print, digital, and online resources to meet the needs of diverse students” (ILA, 2010).  I feel this is true because teachers need to know when to incorporate technology to reach students, not just use it to use it in the classroom.

Next steps for professional learning:

LLED 7940 is my last class.  With its completion, I hope to graduate with a M.Ed. in Education Reading New and Digital Literacies. I am thrilled to be so close to the end of this journey however I am going to miss the opportunities to take classes and learn.  So, I have decided to join our technology committee at school, which is tasked with fully integrating technology into the classroom and merge the Orton-Gillingham approach we use for remediation with modern views of literacy.  Also, I began following numerous authors on Twitter such as Ian O’Bryne, Troy Hicks, Donna Alvermann, and Matt Renwick.  These are people who have given me great ideas about incorporating multimodalities and digital literacies in my classroom.  Through Twitter, I hope to stay relevant on their work. 

Since I am graduating, I have also composed a multimodal project as my final examination.  I wanted to include a link for your viewing pleasure! Within the Thinglink you will find tags that show my philosophy on literacy prior to beginning my course work, major developments I acknowledge making, and a list of references that shaped those developments.  Please feel free to leave comments and feedback. 

References:

Common Sense Education. (2015). Digital Citizenship; Scope and Sequence. Retrieved from: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/scope-and-sequence.

International Literacy Association. (2010). Standards for reading professionals. Newark, Delaware: Authors. Retrieved from: http://www.reading.org/General/CurrentResearch/Standards/ProfessionalStandards2010.aspx.

The International Society for Technology in Teaching. (2015). Standards for Teachers. Arlington, VA: Authors. Retrieved from: http://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards/standards-for-teachers.

Noguerón-Liu, S. & Crawley, A. (2015). LLED 7940E: Electronic Assessment of Literacy Education; Syllabus. Retrieved from: http://summer7940e.wikispaces.com/Course+Overview.

Thompson, K. (1969). Eloise; A book for precocious grown ups. New York: Simon & Schuster.