Composing an Identity: How Eportfolios Can Help
Defining ourselves as learners and as teachers
- students-composing themselves as learners
- teachers-composing themselves as learners and as professionals
Based on the book Good Work: Identity, Mission, and Standards
by Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and William Damon
They play off the the term "good work" as both a comment and as a descriptor of work, both becoming good as in complimented and good as in helpful
Identity is our personal sense of ourselves, our integrity, and our values.
What would it be like to live a community where everyone was like me? Think about it.
Talking with people in different communities helps people learn more about themselves (specifically in terms of teaching ... talk with different disciplines).
"we are engaged in a day-to-day process of self-invention--not discovery, for what we search for does not exist until we find it."
Mary Catherine Bateson
composing a life
p. 28
when we move between the everyday, we created something new.
Composing an eportfolio is one way of composing a life, of establishing an identity.
An eportfolio can be a way of compising an identity through tracing and reflecting upon our learning process, progress, and outcomes.
In an eportfolio we select, reflect upon, and desgin presesntations of artifacts that create identities for specific purposes. In an imporvisatory way we continue to create ourselves in new ways.
Networked self: connects in the present
- values local connection making
- creates new relationships within ourselves
- makes independent choices about which connections to make and why they are important
- puts pieces together in new ways
Symphonic self: integrity of the whole
Networked self: folio thinking/reflection-in-action
Symphonic self: unfieid theory/larger frame
the stillness of the room was broken briefly by tissues being filled snot, hands sneaking into half-full chip bags, and men coughing for no other reason than to do something to stay awake. The sterile white screen of the white room that lacks the black curtains that Cream promised, but makes up for it with a large planted tree. The tables are filled with cans and boxes, papers and elbows. The speaker continues to speak as eye lids droop.
A full belly makes it hard to concentrate. My stomach tells me it is nap time. Even on school days, after lunch, unless lunch was especially full of laughter, it feels like naptime. Today is Saturday and my body fully expects the opportunity to nap. It wishes to spread out on one of these white-gray tables, barely wide enough to cradle my body, and sleep for an hour.
Have you ever noticed that when you are tired, there are just some voices that have the same effect of a lullabye. The pauses and intonations are so lyricals that you can see the notes on the page rise and fall like bay waves on a breezy spring day. I just feel I'm laying in a hammock swaying in the breeze, arms goosebumpy from the chill, yet warm and safe under the sun.
But I am not under the sun, nor can I nap. I must sit here awake, looking attentive, even though I obviously am not.
Now I think enviously of Kelly and Nicky, both girls so nonchalant about dropping their heads in class and sleeping, not because they are disrespectful, but because they are tired. They act merely to fulfil their Maslowe-ian needs. I wish to fulfill mine. Give me sunlight, soft grass, and time. I shall sleep in the open immune to the bad things that can happen to young women who engage in this practice in strange places.
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