Digication ePortfolio :: AACU Generative Reflections 2011

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

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DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Power of social reflection

Audio Reflection (~1 min 30 sec)

MY GOALS FOR THE DAY

I am here to find out whether one can get the motivation to reflect without being "required" to do so. Personally, I find that it takes a tremendous amount of self discipline to continue to reflect. In fact, it is often easy for me to fall off the "reflection wagon". Sometimes I think that I am doing the reflection in my head and that is enough. But whenever I care to document my reflection, whether it be in writing or in a visual / audio format, it creates a whole new experience for me.

WHAT I NOTICED & LEARNED:

At Melissa Peet's morning keynote, she presented much of her research and background on generative knowledge. I have always been very engaged by the topic, and have had some prior experiences with it through other generative knowledge workshops I attended.

At the end of the keynote, everyone was handed a rubber bracelet that says "Ask - Retrieve - Record". We were given five different ways to reflect throughout the day: text, voice, twitter, facebook, and google doc. I was really interested in how it will work with 400 conference attendees.

I notice that I was not one of the first who started to do reflections. I was more interested in seeing whether other people would be reflecting first. So I went on to twitter and facebook. I started to see tweets and facebook messages pouring in. It was exciting. I immediately joined in the conversation and recorded some of my thoughts and experiences. What was interesting to me was that I did not text, leave a voicemail, or write in Google Docs.

This session made me think about the reasons behind my choice to reflect only in certain modes:

I am a firm believer of reflection. But it usually take me quite a bit of effort to sit down and do it. So I don't "formally" do it very often.
I have all then necessary technical skills and technology with me to do the reflections (iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air with a Verizon MiFi). So I can technically reflect via any of these methods conveniently.
Yet I didn't start to reflect until I see that others are doing it already. This is interesting. I think I would have done it without seeing how the community reacts. But it would have taken me more efforts. I would have needed to find myself a special time in the day to sit down and do the reflection (my preferred way of procrastination). The community and social aspect of everyone else reflecting makes me want to do it right away.
I did not text or leave voicemail because I did not have an easy way to see or hear reflections from others.
I did not reflect in google docs because I felt like it was too formal, and would require paragraphs and full sentences. Also, I got the gut feeling that most people will not have access to google docs given the poor wifi connectivity.

WHAT I AM TAKING HOME WITH ME:

Based upon what I've learned today, I will be thinking about the role of learning community differently. I will be working to introduce a more robust feature set into our e-Portfolio tools on Digication. I have already shared results with our engineers and we are all quite excited to develop some new features on the mobile platform.

PORTFOLIO SCHOLARS