Final "Portfolio" Reflection #1

Well, it looks like I've written 35 or 36 posts since I began this blog back in September! Wow! Time sure has flown. And, I can't believe I've written that much. I had figured 1-2 a week for the 15-week semester, which would be about 15-30. Well, I guess it's close. (Too many "wells"? I'm still not sure if I've found my "tone" or "voice" yet!)

The first major thing that comes to mind when reviewing my posts is something Alyssa R. said to me in class a few weeks ago: "These blogs sure are public." When I asked her what she meant, she replied that someone from SlideRocket had found her blog, and her post about SlideRocket, and they had left a comment for her. Like me, I think she thought no one would find these blogs except our classmates. But someone had found hers! Then, just a day or so later, I saw a comment to my podcasting post, and Chuck Tomasi (one of the co-authors of Podcasting for Dummies) had left a comment thanking me for using and mentioning Podcasting for Dummies in my blog! Then, a few days after that, the SlideRocket people had also found my SlideRocket presentation and blog post, and had left a message as well. Of course, it's all about recognizing "product placement" and advertising, but it's also "cool" to think that these blogs are "out there, and lovin' every minute of it," as Kramer once said on Seinfeld.

My best blog post? Maybe the two posts about American Literature, and comparing my course to a course Donald Ross is currently teaching. But why are these the best? Maybe because they were not assigned for my Digital Writing class. (Which is where we want our students to also end up, eventually.) But also maybe because I'm really enjoying my sabbatical and having the time to do things like this, to take this Digital Writing course, and to sit in on another course that I enjoy teaching. So, I don't know if the two posts are necessarily "good" because of the writing itself but because I enjoyed the creation of them, the experiences which led up to them.

Likewise, my "worst" blog post ... perhaps the one(s) having to do with podcasting ... because I struggled, at first, and partly throughout, with the podcasting activity itself, with figuring out Audacity, with take after take, with finding music, with editing. But by the time I was looking for music, and editing, and using the envelope tool, I was actually starting to have a bit of fun.

So that may be the "key" for me, the criterion that I would use for evaluating my blog posts: Which activities gave me the most frustration and struggle, and which activities were fun (or even became fun as time moved along)?

Frustrations:

• Podcasting (recording and editing audio) ... the first three-quarters of it
• Vlogging (recording and editing video) ... I don't actually consider what I did to be a vlog ... OK, it's definitely NOT a vlog, I do know that ... and it took a long time ... but again, the fun came later, when I got the "hang" of iMovie ... and it was fun to use video of my cat and creatively connect it to writing ... and it was fun to actually post something to YouTube!
  

Enjoyments:

• Creating the WritingMinnesota wiki
• Bubbl.us
• Flickr SlideShow
• VoiceThread (x2)
• SlideRocket Presentation
  

These were all "new" tools for me, they were fun, I had to be somewhat creative (although I'm not creative at all), and I tried to always connect it to my teaching, although often in somewhat goofy ways. But, hey, it's a start ... and I might even have the courage to show these to my students as "rough models."

And that's what I have to keep doing: reflecting on HOW AND WHY I might have my students use these tools. Yes, I want them to have fun, to be motivated and engaged, but I also want them to be writing and to be improving their writing. And I want to be confident that these tools are indeed helping them to do that.