CEDO 555 - Portfolio Week 2

This week we refined our Mission and Vision statements and chose our set of Standards.
     With the Mission statement I tried to keep it short because I've read numerous Mission statements and the lengthy ones that tend to ramble don't make as much of an impact. the long, complicated ones are hard to internalize and just end up being forgotten, even if you say it every day.
     The Vision statement needed a little more in depth analysis. This needs to provide some insight into the future direction of the individual. Writing statements like these is not a skill of mine but I felt confident that the statements that I wrote were pretty solid.
     The standards I chose were originally the Wisconsin Model Academic Standards but over the years I have adopted the NETS by ISTE. They are more current and much more encompassing than the standards from the DPI. Sometimes I wonder if the DPI just kept pushing back any major changes with the knowledge that the adoption of Common Core Standards was looming on the horizon.
     The article about Web Based Portfolios(WBPs) was interesting. I definitely agree that it would be an excellent benefit to students to take ownership of their learning in the form of an online portflio. The author makes many valid points. The one thing we disagree about is having students take complete ownership of the blog. UNLESS this student-owned portfolio is another way to showcase the students' progress in addition to other ways. I mean, what kind of examples of their own learning are you going to get from a 3rd grader? Even if a 3rd grader totally grasps the concept of a blog, its structure, and its purpose - the idea of documenting artifacts to show one's own academic progress is going to be extremely difficult to understand. I don't see a fully student-owned blog portfolio working except for maybe an extremely advanced student who has been extensively trained in its use.