Lesson 3: Blog as e-Portfolio

ID: 121566

Name: Tanaka Keita

Before you began this course, how would you show others (and yourself) evidence of what you know and what you can do?

Written version of essays and resumes were the most used evidences of what we do and what we can. I wrote some resume for the selection of scholarships last week and it took several hours to complete. In addition, we use certifications for English skills, such as TOEIC, TOEFL and IELTS as other way to show the evidences for our skills.


Explore

1. Do you need an e-portfolio? Please watch this presentation (24/31). In your own words, briefly explain what you understand an e-portfolio is.

We should spent enough time to make our own e-portfolio, because e-portfolio has several functions that help us. The functions will be explained as the video is comprehended.
First, the original word "portfolio" means collection of work you have done and what you learned and it is used when people apply for colleges and jobs. Portfolio is one of the tool to connect us to others who might leads to our next career plans. Also portfolio enables us to remember what we have done in the past and helps us to make next decisions.
Second, having an e-portfolio is much useful than only having an written version of one, because it less likely to be lost and is much easier to edit for different readers. In addition, e-portfolio is better in the sense of accessibility because people can access to e-portfolio from anywhere, anytime if they are online.

2. What content may you want to add to your e-portfolio? Think about content that will tell important things about what you know and what you can do, that you would like others to learn about you. Please make a list of your ideas.

Following the P.E.A.K.S methods in the video, I will add these following information at first

1. Personal Characteristics

• Good listener.
• Sensible and clear determination

↑I will ask someone around me to write recommendation letters or videos.

2. Experience

• 1year as a class[2~20 per a class] instructor[English, Japanese, Social Sciences and Mathematics] for elementary~high school student at "Syugaku- zemina-ru", a cram school in Yokohama.
• a half year as an editor for the free paper "kyaria-Baito[Career-part time jobs]"
• 1year member of "寮運営協議委員会[Dorm steering Comittie]" at International Christian University

↑I will put up links to our blog of the paper and upload PDF version of my article.
3. Accomplishment

• Awarded as "most diligent instructor" 2006 summer classes at the cram school
• Awarded 3rd place[Kyaria-Baito] at 2008 3rd All Japan Student Free paper competition

↑I will put up a link to the competition blog

4. Knowledge

• Well versed in modern Japanese literature[Yamamoto fumio, Okuda Hideo]

5. Skills

• Attending French and Arabic class

• Book review in papers and mail magazines

↑I will upload some of my works of book reviewing and introduce myself in French and Arabic.
Above all, so far.

3. What do you see as some of the main advantages or disadvantages in having an e-portfolio in addition to (or in place of) a traditional resume? To inform your answer, please compare and contrast the resumes below to some of the e-portfolios.

Comparing #2 resume[Athletics trainer] and #5 e-portfolio[University Student], One of the biggest differences is the amount of information. Resume contains only outstanding and specific experience and award. It is concise and accurate, but we are not sure what kind of characteristics he have and what he did in each accomplishment. In contrast, in e-portfolio, the way of writings and the taste of the word in the sentence of writer are easily recognized and we get more interested in her/his own personality. However, this e-portfolio is a little bit wordy and difficult to find where is important.


Explain

1. What are the main skills needed to use your e-Portfolio?

The most important skills needed to use an e-portfolio is the diligence and creativity.
Although most people might say that the most important is the knowledge in computing and web things,I learned in the Do part of this lesson that these knowledge can be learned a little by little if people keep on trying.
Also, there should be a plan first and the procedure is the second thing. We have to investigate what the viewer want and what we want to show. After that is confirmed, we decide what kind of web technology we use for the e-portfolio.

2. What are the affordances of your e-Portfolio (what does it make possible, what does it impede)?

Now, My e-portfolio is connected to "Google document" in some parts.
Some of the Essays and reports I wrote in the last two semester are uploaded to my Google document folder [which is online] and I put addresses for each document.Visitors can see my works by clicking the addresses.

Also, I put links to my "Facebook" page and my free paper team blog in order to show visitors what kind of projects I am working on and what kind of person I am.

However, there are some problem,

1. Google document do not accept docx. files;
I use Windows Vista now, so I change word version of files into PDF files and am uploading online. It takes time a little bit.

2. I cannot find the way to upload my works on Information technology class;
I made some web pages[easy ones] during last semester for the computing class , but I do not know how to upload that. I tried w3 server, but it is only for ICU student, so it is not appropriate for the e-portfolio server. Anyway, I am working on this now.

3. How can your e-Portfolio be used to network professionally and connect you (& other students) to learning resources?

As a thinkable option, we can put our e-portfolio addresses on signature section of our e-mail system such as Yamata, hotmail and gmail. That procedure enables the mail receivers to check senders[us] identifications easily and hopefully reduces our time to introduce ourselves when we send e-mails to people for the first time.
There is another way to use our e-portfolio in order to connect ourselves to leaning resources. In my case, my e-portfolio is connected to Google document and there will be uploaded my essays, report and other works. That means I can easily read them again for the future studies without searching for them in the computer and other stocks as USBmemories. If I find nice searching engine or brilliant document that can be used in the future, I just have to put links to my e-portfolio.

4. What skills and understandings have you learned from creating your e-Portfolio that may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?

There are a lot of skills I learned in this lesson, and the most biggest skill is the literacy in English used in the computing world. Before I took this course, only I knew "drag" and "paste" .
However, now that I start building up my own e-portfolio with FF which has got many function accompanied with English version of "Add-ons", I came to understand what the instruction says.
In addition, I came to understand that there is always a way to accomplish a thing in the digital world. Even if you find it difficult to upload your works in the docx. format, you can change that into PDF and even if you do not own server, you can have "free" file space such as Google document. It is great that if you keep on searching on the Internet, there always someone to help. Of course, paying attention to the fast evolution of digital world is necessary because nothing stays as it is now and anything disabled become something abled.