Is it the Journey or the Destination? II
Portfolios, and when I say that I mean personal learning environments, should proudly show our failures and how we dealt with them. They should show our work, not just the correct answer. Portfolios should showcase the journey - the wrong turns, the tears, the sweat, the plodding along through snow, hail, rain, and blistering sun. They should show our moments of uncertainty, and what we did to resolve the issue.
If we focus solely on the destination, on rewarding the finished product, aren’t we training ourselves and our students to embrace extinction and irrelevancy? If George Siemens is right, and it’s really not about what you know but your ability to know more, then portfolios should be fluid places that are in constant flux and change.
They should showcase the meeting of competencies, but only as sign posts along the side of the way. The journey always continues.
And each portfolio or personal learning environment should be unique. Take a peek over at Jeremy Hiebert’s blog. Both his article, and the comments are well worth your time if you’re thinking about portfolios.
""Self-Directed Learning Tools" to reflect the types of tools and functions that connect these concepts above and below — although the label still sucks, this is a significant conceptual shift — we’re not talking about a PLE (or e-portfolio) as a tool itself. I’m not even sure that it can be created or designed by someone for someone else. Just as each person’s desires, abilities and past experiences are different, each person’s personal learning environment should be their own unique combination of tools, networks and methods that help them accomplish their goals. If the learning environment is truly personal, the tools and the learning are self-directed by definition." (Hiebert, 2006)
Interesting thought: portfolios that are unique, because the student is unique. I think there will be some elements of uniformity in that there are core competencies that everyone needs to learn and be able to do, but how that person reaches those goals and records them, can and should be different.
And if we do our jobs correctly, the real power of the portfolio is what happens after our students have long left our classrooms.
Success: the portfolio, or at least the act of ongoing development and learning, goes on and continues.
Failure: School’s finnished, I graduated, I passed the level = I’m done.
The Value Added Portfolio: I show my work. My audience can see the process, and how I utilized resources and connections to create solutions.
Thanks for this. I enjoyed reading yoru thoughts re portfolio and the idea of it being the recording or marking of a journey…
So much is placed on the finished product, when, as you suggest, isn’t the journey as much if not more important?
I am guilty of this…of pushing towards that finished product. The essay, for example, but isn’t the construction the important part. Sure, it is great to have a polished finished piece of work that you can hand in or toss in the recycle (probably without reading the notes from the instructor).
“Success: the portfolio, or at least the act of ongoing development and learning, goes on and continues.
Failure: School’s finnished, I graduated, I passed the level = I’m done.”
I don’t have much to add to this other than that I long for that kind of success…
thanks
jm
Comment by james matthew — February 28, 2006 @ 6:57 pm
JM,
Thanks for your comments. I totally agree with you. This ideal…a sort of utopian situation, is one I’m pushing and seeking out. I wish I could say my classes are all like how I described, where the journey is valued on equal ground with the destination, but alas…it is not.
Change, I’m learning, most often comes real slow. So slow that sometimes it looks like nothing is happening. That’s where I feel at the moment with all this. Lost in the slowness.
Comment by Aaron Nelson — February 28, 2006 @ 9:25 pm
I agree…change is slow. Painfully so, sometimes.
Someone once told me that teachers have to be satisfied with small gains…I am wondering if I am content with just those small gains… is there a way to really shake things up, get students learning, get them investing in their personal journey of learning??
I hated the ‘hoop jumping’ that teacher’s college turned into…I am wondering if my students see their assignments as just that: more hoops to jump through. Keep the teacher happy…dance when he says dance, just to get that grade, to get the heck out of here…
I came out of a censorship discussion the other day wondering if students were telling me what I wanted to hear…(after all, it was pretty clear where I was getting at with my questioning…at least to me it was, although I couldn’t tell you how far I go in endorsing free speech).
This is tough stuff. I don’t want to be just another hoop to jump through…I don’t want to be fed the answers they think I am looking for….
How do we change that system?
Scrap the hoops? Rethink them? Make them more ‘user-centric’?
My attempts at ’student centered’ assignments have shown me they just turn it into another hoop. Like they want the hoop. They want that predictability; they want to be able to stick it to you and say they are doing it because you assigned it.
My thoughts for now. A little pessimistic, I know, but you should see my office space (really, I like it, but it is dismall..)
Any ideas?
Comment by james matthew — March 2, 2006 @ 7:36 pm
I wonder if this comment will become a blog post.
I start with a few quotes. The first comes via Christopher D. Sessums: A Change Agent Mantra:
The next one via David Warlick over at 2 Cents Worth:
Yet another role to tack onto our growing list: Teachers as innovators and subversion facilitators.
Perhaps the passionate teacher will always be locked in battle with the hoops. It’s sadly like a dualism: on one hand you advocate for true student centered learning environments, but on the other hand you are required to employ the hoops. Will the day ever arrive where the rules (and sometimes they are well meaning) are in harmony with the student and self directed, life long learning?
Comment by Aaron Nelson — March 3, 2006 @ 10:48 am