ePortfolios How Websites Create Student Communities
Integrative learning is a view of education that supports connectedness among life experiences, multidisciplinary formal study, and diverse perspectives. It seeks to "foster students" abilities to integrate their learning across contexts and over time. Hubert & Hutchings
ePortfolios In general, this is a digital location for organizing a student's work. In my courses, I see this as akin to a sketchbook (a digital, online sketchbook).
Learning Objective Keep ideas in play – study as inquiry and laboratory Create self-image – student/learner with agency = more responsible citizen (as an artists, this could come close to mythologizing oneself) Define learning as a Process – in a constant state of making (and revision) – S.B. Integrative – Shape their student experience as closely to what they may experience in the world
Integrated We often don't address education as is relates to actual lived experiences in the world. This may seem obvious, and whether we agree with the direction(s) we're headed culturally, our "online" lives have intertwined the personal and professional and that the overlap is sometimes very ambiguous. Question: Can we use the tools in both arenas (personal and professional) effectively and responsibly?
MAKE REVISE Sara Black's premise
Examples Digital Media Courses For these course students create digital sketchbooks – websites / blogs. These platforms service their work as students in 2 important ways: 1. a site for research and presentation of work 2. a source for sharing work prior to class This is especially helpful before critiques. Because we have been following one another's work, sharing our ideas inside and outside the classroom, students come prepared to discuss the work with a general base of prior knowledge and suggestions.
Examples As a student myself, I began using a social bookmarking during my graduate years. Before this type of bookmarking, I had been storing my bookmarks on a web browser, on a computer. Now, sharing them online made sense, but what made those bookmarks make more sense was the ability to share them and follow other ("friends") shared bookmarks. I was then able to see what and how other people were collecting/researching online. If I created a large enough network of similarly interested users (a classroom of sorts), we could thoroughly research a topic and share.
Rich Site Summary (RSS)
delicious.com
Google Reader – https://www.google.com/reader
Google Reader – https://www.feedly.com
Tumblr – http://spadoras.tumblr.com
Wordpress – http://harperdrawing1.wordpress.com
How to adopt across disciplines Sarah Kanouse, Assistant Professor of Intermedia at the University of Iowa has a concrete approach that I believe can be projected on many disciplines:
As opposed to the ‘just-in-time’ delivery of specific software skills provided by tech schools, I teach critical and contextual thinking, aesthetic awareness, and fundamental technical competencies that will endure long after the specific tools we use are obsolete. It is important to me that students know the why as well as the how of making in order to become lifelong self-learners and innovators. While teaching the standard software packages most student expect to learn, I emphasize the underlying workflow principles and interface metaphors that carry across program and platform. My students also learn skills that have nothing to do with software: social practice methods, interview techniques, research, and project development are taught in various classes. I introduce new skills throughout the semester that are practiced through exercises and further developed through projects that require greater conceptual and aesthetic sophistication as students find and refine their creative and scholarly interests.
https://drive.google.com
http://issuu.com/explore