It's Not Just About Ideas

The ownership of the ePortfolio is important because you control what you post and learn. In today’s society, students are taught to listen to the teacher and what they think is best for the student to learn. For example if a teacher loves to give pop quizzes during the school year randomly, they might think that it forces the students to learn the material right away as quickly as they can. This is not always the best option. Students have different paces when it comes to learning how to do certain things. Throwing a pop quiz at a student with no warning might have a negative impact on the student because they might get overly stressed or their mind will go blank on the material and end up getting a bad grade because of it.

We need to give students a voice in their learning. For example the teacher could take a survey with their students on what is the best learning technique for them. Once the results are in, they can determine what is the best method of teaching and they can incorporate all of the preferred methods in their teaching courses so all of the students can start learning how they were built to learn. If we give students a choice on how they learn, that will yield positive results from test taking and assignments. Some students are just overall bad test takers and better with projects but that is not because they are not smart, they just learn differently than others and we need to educate our facilitators on how to listen to a students ideas and all of the ways that they like to learn material.

I feel like as an Admissions Counselor I have been given a good amount of control on how to present information to the students I am teaching. When I go out to recruit at high schools, I always interact with students who are at different knowledge levels. Some students don’t know any questions to ask about the admissions process and others know exactly what they want to ask. When I talk to a student, I ask them if they have any questions and if they say yes and start listing them then I answer to the best of my ability. If they do not have any questions and do not know what to ask I usually ask them what they are interested in studying. For every student I encounter, I adjust my approach so they can learn to the best of their abilities.