Reflection…such a key element of my teaching style! Teachers make countless decisions every hour and with these intervening moments with students, lesson altering changes, and adjustments to the day’s agenda, there is often a cost. Time. We all know time on task is important for students, even so, the balance of our time and where we use it is just as important.

While choosing to create this digital portfolio from scratch was not a choice with an expected return of extra time, the decision was still based on time. I did not want to spend my time filling in cookie-cutter shaped layouts with images, text, and various other media elements. It would have worked to accomplish the task and show proficiency, but what would I have learned through the process? The choice of building a website was based on the desire to learn.

I, like many of my former students, do not enjoy projects that simply get turned in for a grade. Only to be forgotten and possibly useless for any other means. So, creating a digital portfolio that could be shared, immediately caught my attention as a great way to show mastery of the standards I have met through my Master’s program.

The learning curve was high, and still remains high. Having only dabbled with HTML in the past to create simple webpages (not websites), I knew I was in for a learning experience. I had no prior experience with CSS elements, either. Put those two together, and I prepared to section off a sizable portion of my brain to store some new information. Just as I would tell my students, Google is just about all I needed (and a few inquiries to my brother!). Through many hours of tutorials and how-to guides, plus using the ‘inspect elements’ tool on dozens of websites to view how they were doing their code, I designed and built this website from the ground up.

Looking back, it may not be as ‘pretty’ as some customized templates available through free website builders, but I am fine with that. A priority of mine coming into the design was for it to be mobile friendly. Using cutting-edge technology with twitter bootstrap elements, I have effectively designed a website that adjusts content on the page based on the device or platform used to view the pages. This is referred to as a responsive website. This does not mean that when viewing it on a tablet, that everything fits in the screen (just a little smaller) and you can pitch the screen to zoom in. The webpages are coded to actually adjust the content to fit your screen at their regular resolution and font size!

The quote below comes from a blog post back in 2012, during the year in which I piloted a 1:1 math classroom with iPads for each students. It sums up why I chose the portfolio exit option for my degree program and possibly explains the reason for spending extra time building one from scratch (I may just be crazy, though!).

… students will dig deeper and work harder if they not only are allowed to create, but are able to share their unique creations, as well.