Reflection #3

After reading the article"Electronic Portfolios as Digital Stories of Deep Learning". I realized that the authors thinking about education is much in sync with my own. She brings about a comparison of things like checking the" assessment OF learning vs. the assessment FOR learning." This strongly correlates with my belief that it is more important that we teach our kids how to learn, than what to learn. Granted I respect the standardized testing as an important check for teachers, making sure we are capable of our jobs but it does have downsides. When we teach to the test, and it is all we are judged on we can get lazy. Critical thinking skills are lacking as well as the ability for children (and adults) to understand complex concepts as a whole, as opposed to a single blip of information completely separate to all others. To rectify thinking like this the author brings up the idea of grading through portfolios, and I like to think I took this idea a ran with it. With the use of the portfolio we can see how a student progresses, and what kind of tutelage presents the greatest change from week to week. I think if properly use, although it may take a lot of work from both parties, portfolio could provide, learning on a deep intrinsic level as apposed to surface learning mention, enabling students to finally make connections between their blips of knowledge. Hopefully with the development of this blog, through out the semester I can check my self. Find the items that enabled me to learn faster, and deeper, as well as find ways to make my career in education more efficient and useful, for myself, my school, and my students. I'm starting to come up with ideas, for my future students, that without a class like this I would have thought impossible. I'm very excited about the premise of my wiki and hope to use it sooner than later.