It's Not Just About Ideas

This whole journey through the ePortfolio class has been one big ride. I started out for the first time in the ADL program in March and it was very overwhelming at first and I did not think I would be able to reach all of the goals for the assignments but now that I am at the end of my first two courses I see that it was all worth it in the end and that I just need to keep trying till I succeed. My first two courses in the ADL program were the ePortfolio class and the Disruptive Innovation in Tech class. I read a lot of articles and journals and posted some of them onto my website where you can locate here.

In my ePortfolio class I was tasked with creating an ePortfolio which was the main assignment all semester. I started out with WordPress because I had previously used it before to create another website, so I was a little familiar with the controls. The first thing I did was create my home page and my about page. Creating the rest of my menu labels was not easy and that was a hard journey but eventually I was able to create my main menu. Eventually I did some research and figured out how to create sub menus within my main menu. Since I had just been thrown into the ADL program for the first time, I was so overwhelmed with all the assignments so I could not think straight. Then after that I needed content. I started posting weekly blog posts on my ePortfolio and I posted my first assignment from the Disruptive Innovation class which was my Innovation Proposal. Once that was complete, I felt relief that I had turned my first assignment in, and that it went alright.

Once that was turned in, I attended one of the meetings and realized that we needed to be collaborating with other classmates. All of my classmates that I created a group with in the 5305 class were taking the ePortfolio class at the same time so we collaborated on both classes. With  Joseline Sanchez, Kimberly Meshall and Paige Shaw, we peer reviewed each others websites and gave feedback on how to improve it.

My next assignment was improving my website. I received some feedback from my ePortfolio Blog Check in Post and I went back and improved my website by changing the color, some of the menu names and made content easier to access. Once I had completed that and submitted it again and I got a better grade than I had before. During this whole process I also had to create my literature review for my next assignment. I had never built one before so I had to track down the citations and sources that I needed to create the assignment. Once I posted that on my page, it took a while to figure out how to put a pdf of the literature review on my website but eventually I figured it out after I had turned the assignment in. Once that was completed it was nearing the end of the semester and I needed to turn my final assignments in. I created my Innovation outline and posted it to my ePortfolio so I could get some feedback from my classmates, and I got a couple comments on my post so that felt good. Once I turned that in, I made it accessible on my website from many different tabs, so it was easy to find. Then came my full Innovation Plan with all of the components including a two-minute video of my plan. It took me a while to put all of the components together on a single page and design it to how I wanted it but I finally succeeded and I am very proud of my work.

Throughout these classes I find that I now understand what an ePortfolio is and how much work I need to put into my assignments to succeed in the ADL program. This has been a great lesson for me as I work to improve my participation and assignments.