Creating and Sharing my ePortfolio

During this class, I felt like I struggled quite a bit with deciding which ePortfolio platform to use. Looking back, I think I wasted more time than was necessary on this concern. I have a few separate blog posts that talk about this particular struggle. While I'm still not sure that I'm 100% sure about my decision, I have made one and started moving forward. I have played around with the design and layout and while I'm not completely happy with it yet, it is getting much better the more I learn.

The blog posts for this class were something that I had to get used to. I've thought about blogging over the years, but could never commit to sustaining it so I always stopped. I learned that for me, if I was going to be successful in my blogging, I needed to bring in my life, not just my coursework, into it. I know that was the purpose all along, but sometimes it takes my mind a bit longer to get there! I spent some time blogging about how I brought blogging into my work, some new "wants" for my job, and even a reflection on my first in-person conference presentation. I have enjoyed using the blog as a way to reflect on many things and I hope that I will be able to sustain a post a week for this ePortfolio as well as for work.

Another thing I had a chance to do during this course was to bring in my past work at Lamar into my ePortfolio. Due to the fact that I had not had the ePortfolio class before, we were allowed to submit our assignments in a different way but now we need to have them in our ePortfolio. You can now find my Innovation Plan, my Growth Mindset Plan, and my Learning Manifesto. I like having everything that I've been creating in one location for easy reference.

As with previous classes, we had the opportunity to work with self-selected peer groups. This is something that we have done in each class I've had here at Lamar in this ADL program. I had a new group this class as my previous group members are in different classes now. However, I enjoyed the fact that my group members from my past courses and I still communicate in addition to my new group. It is nice to have different people to discuss topics with throughout the program. In addition to my peer groups at Lamar, I have learning networks that I am a part of in my field. I have written a blog post with more information on those learning networks.

I have enjoyed watching my ePortfolio grow over the past few courses with Lamar and the more that I am able to add to it and make it my own, the more use I see for it outside of this program. I have been working on ideas on how to merge this ePortfolio for Lamar with a website for my EdTech training and consulting business. I do believe that at some point in the future they will be one ePortfolio and if I can make that happen, it will be even more likely that I maintain this ePortfolio long after graduation.