Reflection for learning

I found the information on this particular part really interesting, especially since I´ve had many problems understanding "metacognition" in the past. At the school were I previously worked, the principals insisted a lot on this part but I was not enlightened on how to do it. 

I do realize, however that reflecting on what we have done is really important during the process because it enables us to understand why we are learning a particular topic and most relevantly, on how to use it for future purposes. Last semester, I was facilitating Advanced IV at Tec, which is mainly a writing course. During the semester, I used a lot of peer analysis, in order to provide students with several opinions rather than my own. In the beginning it was tough, due to the fact that they were not critical enough. After reading the entries on the course, I realized it was partly because I failed to provide them with a rubric or something tangible for them to follow. After working for a while, I started polishing the way they had to approach their classmates´writing by telling them in a clear way what they had to look for in the tasks and this proved to be much more fruitful.

What I liked the most about this part were the samples one of the pages provides for getting into this reflection. In my view, this is the toughest part for students get bored of doing the same type of exercise over and over. We have to search for a balance between teacher and classmates ´feedback, as well as own reflection. We also need to encourage this by providing some time in the classroom to address reflection since it will give us a better start for what we will be doing next.

Portfolio Development Process

After revising the activities, I found out that I entered the discussion group but I forgot to write my blog entry. 
When reading the article, I noticed that the first thing we need to consider is our motivation towards using e-portfolios. We need to establish our purpose because this will give our work the path to follow. There is a huge tendency on evaluating with tests going on, and we are leaving the main goal behind (Students´ learning process). In many occasions, an exam does not tell you whether the student has progressed over time or not because there are many factors that alter the results. By looking at other ways of evaluation (namely portfolios) we are able to see the real improvement in a somewhat more fruitful context. 
Before considering if we are going to develop a portfolio, we need to keep in mind the development vs presentation deal. Is our goal to assess how much our students have learnt, or do we want to show off their work? I believe we have to look for a balance in this, since both parts are important. The development (workplace) will provide us with a great deat of information and will take our students´reflection to a higher level. However, given so much work it is also important for them to present it, and by comparing their work with their classmates, a different perspective could be given from their classmates.
We also need to go through all the stages in a portfolio development, and establish in which parts we are going to intervene (as teachers). Our students are the main motif to create an e-portfolio and we do not have to loose this from sight.

Collection

After reading the tutorials, I was a bit more confused since it was too much information for my brain. I couldn´t believe there were so many features out there to help us collaborate with others. For this reason, I decided to start with Dr. Barrett´s advice and get familiarized with Google Drive since I use Gmail and I knew more about this option. I have also used Dropbox, but after comparing them I noticed that Google Apps is more complex and enables us to do more things.

I watched the tutorials which are embedded to the website, and I felt so much better since I could understand how to use it. I was also amazed by the idea of being able to work with others from different locations in real time. I also tried to create documents, share stuff and so on so as to make it more practical. That is how I learnt how to embed videos on the blog.

I feel I´ve wasted so much time because there are hundreds of tools available that I didn´t know of before we started this course. At the same time, I´m really happy to get involved in this technological era. We need to consider that many of our students are really good at these things. This means that we need to keep up with them and try to be up-to-date. I believe this is the real challenge for teachers at the moment.

Google Drive Tutorial - Sharing documents

Understanding what eportfolios are

From the readings, we can see that even though each person has his/her own view of what portfolios are, there are some common characteristics that people share. Firstly, it refers to a selection of works which reflect student´s achievement over time. Those works are selected because the learner sees them as representatives of what they have achieved. Moreover, this way of assessing enables student´s reflection and contrast between what he/she is expected to learn and what he/she actually did. I believe it is a great opportunity to leave multiple-choice behind and explore another side of evaluation. When we use traditional ways of evaluation, students are not really aware of what they learnt and they do not recognize their weaknesses and strengths. In this way, we can also foster interaction with other people and peer evaluation, instead of teacher´s opinion. 

Considering the new technological era, eportfolios allow us to collect more than just one type of work. We can enhance the process by adding videos, podcasts, audio, etc rather than just paper work. This not only enriches the experience but it also targets different types of students (visual, auditive, etc). On the other hand, it helps our students to have stuff organized instead of having it randomly stored. Another advantage of eportfolios, is the space in which you store them. It is accessible for a bigger audience since it can be shared through the internet.

I really enjoyed the readings because it helped me to understand the way a portfolio is carried out, as well as looking at the advantages it has over traditional ways of evaluation. By reflecting upon our own learning process, we can really get where we are getting at and if we are achieving our goals or not.