New Insights for Me

After attending and participating in the regional event 1 which was all about PLE (Personal Learning Environments) and e-portfolios I have had some thoughts. -LOL I know!!!-

Some of these thoughts centre around us as a team (all people in the knowledge era really) taking responsibility for our learning and maintaining our 'personalised' approach to where we are heading, wherever that may be. You may remember in one of our conversations in adobe connect that I mentioned a peculiar feeling that I have had as a member of this team. The feeling being "Oh this is what its like to be a learner in a new space" A bit lost, tentative and without much confidance or vision to make sense of my learning.

This feeling led me to decide that as a person I WOULD be adaptable and THINK for myself. Not BY myself but FOR myself. As I started to do this other ideas began to grow inside me and have come together (for the moment).

My thought for the moment is that there is something that e-learning does to us as teachers\practioners\facilitators that is subversive to our natural state of teacher/being. That makes it difficult for us to use our belief in the strengths of our students, that makes it difficult to focus on the very reason that we became teachers in the first place eg to uplift students,young people,disenfranchised groups etc etc.

I believe that as a field we are letting the newness\vastness\worklife integrationess\ of e learning take us away from the debate and praxis of maintaining our focus on our student groups. Surely teaching is NOTHING new. Developing and maintaining relationships is NOTHING new. If you are good at it you are good at it. If you believe in it then you believe in it. The only thing that is new is EVERY day. If a new day brings a new useful tool use it. If it doesnt bring a new tool or you dont like the one that appears so what?? Lets not let that get in the way of continuing to focus our strengths, which I believe are :
- identifying the strengths of others
-instilling in others a belief in thier on personal worth and ability.

What has this got to do with e-portfolios? You tell me??

Lud