Princess Brides and Little Princes....

"Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up."

In the line above from 1987's classic film The Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya is speaking of all the events leading up to his impending attempt to storm a heavily fortified castle. The sentiment holds true for this reflection on the end of the second class in my DLL program, so I'll go with it.

Over the past 5 weeks in the EDLD 5303 course, I've been building and revising my ePortfolio, in order to reflect on and demonstrate what I've learned and am learning.

What's In A Name?

Spent some time last week before the opening of the new school year thinking about this tweet from @thel0rdbyr0n:

Friendly reminder for teachers starting school this week to have your students say their names to you first so that the pronunciation comes from them, and also don't settle for "close enough", you can get their name right

— Nate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (@thel0rdbyr0n) September 2, 2018

This practice is something that I've followed for years, although, I confess, not always explicitly for the reasons that Nate and others in the thread put forth. (Give the thread a read--it's worth your time.)

Why Use An ePortfolio?

As a performer and a performing arts educator, the idea of doing things with an audience runs through my classroom and my life. I often tell my colleagues who teach what we in VA call "SOL" subjects (Standards of Learning, do folks elsewhere use the same terminology?) that those of us in the performing arts have SOL tests just like they do, but we take ours in front of a crowd and need at least a 95% to pass. What that means is that Kolb's learning cycle of experience, reflection, abstraction, and active testing (referenced in Barrett and Richter's "Why Reflect?" article on their Reflection4Learning site) happens rapidly and repeatedly. We just sneakily call it "rehearsal." We reflect to ourselves or within our own small circle of performers, and this is our "process," and after a lot of processing, we go on stage and present our "product." For what its worth, arts educators spend a LOT of time talking about "process vs. product," the importance of the former, and the outsized significance the wider world places on the latter.