I am just about finished with the “Exploring Your Digital Portfolio” class. It was not as easy as I had originally thought (lol). What did I expect? What was it really like? Was it useful?
I was not really sure what this class would be all about. As a matter of fact, I have not been in school in over 25 years. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what this class would be all about. To be honest, I thought it would be a “walk in the park”. I live on a mini farm and am used to making short videos and taking pictures of all kinds of funny things happening around the farm. I was even able to post it all on social media like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. In short, I thought I was pretty “cool” and knew enough to “get by “. After my first introduction assignment, I was still pretty confident that I would have “smooth sailing”.
However, things got very interesting and challenging pretty fast! With each new blog or smackdown, I realized that I knew pretty much nothing about anything or at least only a little bit about something. I could blame myself that I am in my fifties and I have not been in school for so long but never mind the reason- what really matters is that it became a challenge and I am not one to give up easily.
I can state with confidence that thanks to this class I have learned more about the use of tools in social media than I ever dreamed of. Little did I know that there are so many not only practical but also fun tools out there that one can use professionally, for education, or just privately. It is mind-blowing how many different apps are out there yet some of us, including myself, get so comfortable using the same app and stick with it. Again, if it was not for this class, I would have never looked past the few apps I had been using and I would have never widened my "social media app" horizon.
While many of the social apps seem to have the same purpose and are equally useful, there were several that I had either never heard of before or never bothered to use. Take the app. "Grammarly", for example. I had never heard of it and knew nothing about it. Until Mary Kupp, one of my fellow students in this class, introduced it. This app would have made my life so much easier had I known about it. I am German and the German grammar is very different from English. It can be quite a challenge to write at times. This Grammarly app is an amazing tool for professional use, school assignments, or private use. It will proofread and fix words to make whatever you write sound more fluent and grammatically correct. Just what I need!
Another example of a tool that I have enjoyed learning about is the Animoto video maker. If it was not for this class, I would have never explored other options/tools for my hobby farm video making. The Animoto video maker is so easy to use. For one of my class assignments, I used it to put together a video with a slide show of pictures of my son Nicholas. I finished this particular assignment on the day of my son's 24th birthday. The Animoto video maker made it easy and fun and I will most definitely use it in the future to make more videos of that sort.
As I mentioned before, this portfolio class was more challenging than I expected but I was able to learn so much from it that I am glad I took it. The teacher makes you comment on other class mate's assignments which encourages you to not only explore a new app/ tool for yourself but also learn about the tools other classmates found interesting or useful.
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