My learnings so far....

First of all, I'm using my tablet to write this post. It's fantastic! 

So far, I have found that a lot of the basic concepts on which the development of portfolios is based are reasons why I became an educator. Especially the "heart and soul of the portfolio", the reflection element. As educators, we must focus on facilitating our pupils with the skills and tools that will help them grow, both in their personal and academic levels.  Developing critical thinking abilities is one of the most important tasks we, as human beings, must do, and by reflecting on our learning process - and according to Peter Pappas model - we carry out advanced cognitive operations, like applying, analyzing, evaluating, etc.

I also liked the concept of "digital footprint", which I relate to "carbon footprint" since both are linked to one's legacy, what we would like to share with our community in terms of doing good. I think, that, although it is related to social networking, it has a more transcendent characteristic.

Not only have I learned about the conceptual foundations of e-portfolios, but also technological tools to   help my students and I to construct a story of how we become people who have a clear purpose in life. I have put in practice some of the basic tasks for using Google Drive, but I know that I have to be one step ahead my pupils in order to recommend, suggest or advice them adequately when planning their own portfolios. 

Lesson 3 - Collection

This lesson had an overwhelming amount of information regarding the Web 2.0 tools - that are available for free (or for a little fee) - that can be used to create an e-portfolio, for both "faces" (workspace and showcase).

I learned that Google Drive, formerly Google Docs (I didn't know that), is not at all difficult to use; it is quite friendly, actually. I'm concerned, however, about having time to explain to my students how its different components work. Of course, they are really technological savvy, so I just have to come up with an entertaining way to do this. I have been using Dropbox lately as a storage service, and it has been very useful; it gives me 30 GB of storage; I have it in each of my mobile devices, so I'm a happy camper. However, it does not have the other functions Google Drive offers, like creating all sorts of files.

Also interesting was not only to learn about how to create the e-portfolio using a Cloud storage service, but how to use mobile devices (really mobile, like smartphones, tablets, etc.) for each step of the process.

In the end, we have to plan very carefully before committing to one or another resource or tool. The planning is time-consuming.