Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Establishing Expectations- Danielle Silva

                The word portfolio has seem to pop in and out of my mind throughout my past scholar experiences.  In high school I was exposed to a few different types of portfolios.  As a part of my schools graduation requirements each student was to graduate with an electronic portfolio.  Assignments throughout our high school career were taken to display in a portfolio and a reflection to go along with each task.  In addition to this, a senior project was to be put together and presented.  With the senior project, students were to put together a portfolio of different writing assignments and a research paper about the topic they had chosen for the graduation requirement.  Even though I have had some experience with portfolio making I feel as though the type of portfolio for this class will be a bit different.  I think my minor experience may help, however I may struggle at times also.
                After looking through the syllabus, it seems as though there are many different types of writing involved.  I believe I do better on writing assignments that involve reflections rather than research papers.  The “process blog” and the “post writes” seem the most enjoyable to me.  I believe I will be more familiar with writing these types of tasks.  In addition, I think I will enjoy putting the portfolio together because I take pleasure in keeping myself organized and being able to go through and look back on work in an ordered manor.  I’m not sure that there is a specific assignment I think will be difficult for me.  As a whole, I am not the strongest writer and therefore I believe that every writing piece will be somewhat of a struggle for me.  In the past, I have dealt with writing many reflections about my work and I feel as though this makes me a little bit more confident about the course.  On the other hand, I have not had many challenging writing tasks come my way throughout my history, which makes me feel a bit hesitant.  Overall, I am excited to see how my writing skills improve and what this course will entail.