Assignment #4: E-portfolio Reflection

All semester we’ve been putting together our e-portfolios. I decided to use Blogger, a Google blog-publishing service for this assignment. I’m not very tech savvy, and was a bit nervous to create my first online portfolio. Blogger proved to be a user-friendly website, and I was navigating around the site with ease.

When I first started my weekly entries, I knew that I wanted to focus on finding interesting new photographers to share with my classmates. I also wanted to keep with the themes that we were exploring in class each week, but found that to be difficult. I would often stumble on a new artist who had no link to the course curriculum, and wanted to share their work right away.

At the beginning of the semester I tried to do a write-up each week in order to keep on top of my work. As the term progressed, other assignments and classes took up my time, and I wasn’t as diligent with my weekly portfolio posts as I would have liked to be. I think that this type of project needs a lot of proper time management and self-motivation. If the write-ups were due on a weekly basis, I would have been more diligent with my posts. However, I learned a valuable lesson when I found myself playing catch-up in order to get all of the weeks accounted for.

Originally I didn’t make many connections between my writing and the readings on the Moodle website. I enjoyed writing about the interesting photographers I had discovered, and got swept away in my personal connections to the artwork. After receiving feedback halfway through the semester, I realized the importance of tying the articles to the photographers and artists I had found. By the end of the portfolio assignment, I had definitely read through almost all of the posted articles which added to my knowledge of photography.

I think that high school students would really enjoy creating portfolios online. It would allow them to collect all of their artwork in one place, and comment on and view their classmates’ work as well. “Electronic portfolios are becoming a popular alternative to traditional paper-based portfolios because they offer practitioners and peers the opportunity to review, communicate and assess portfolios in an asynchronous manner.” (Career Coaching, 2013) Parents who would want to see their children’s progress throughout the school year could also access these portfolios.

An e-portfolio is a smart way to keep all the assignments organized and tidy. I understand why you wanted us to submit our work online, and know that this was much easier than carrying all of our documents around with you in order to be graded. This process was also beneficial to me because it allowed me to stumble on new artists I might never have discovered otherwise. 

Work Cited

Career Coaching for Students, (2013). E-Portfolios – The New Resume for Students? Student Career Exploration and Planning Blog. Retrieved from http://studentcareercoach.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/e-portfolios-the-new-resume-for-students/