The role of Voice in the ePortfolio

My voice and perspectives as an educator and leader are unique to me. By incorporating things I have learned into my reflections, I have made my ePortfolio more than just a collection of my graduate work but a narrative of my personal and professional journey while documenting things along the way. Being authentic and raw allows readers to connect with me and find my content relatable to their lives. I plan to use my site to inspire others and share helpful resources as I discover them along the way. 

Keeping a clear vision of my goal will help keep the site uniform and consistent. It will give visitors the opportunity to navigate through it easily. By creating an eportoflio, I am able to communicate my educational philosophy and vision for teaching and personal learning effectively. This will help me communicate my goals and aspirations effectively. It serves as a guiding principle, shaping not only how I present myself but also how I approach my professional development.

When we look at the engagement of our eportfolio and our audience we need to make sure we are hyper aware of what the purpose of our site is. The content we write about needs to be engaging and enticing. We need to stay relevant and thoughtful about our content. Keeping the goal at the forefront will help maintain the course and keep things engaging for others.

My tone and writing style reflect my passion and enthusiasm for teaching and sharing my content, which helps engage my audience. My audience is teachers, teachers nationwide, and classmates I work with in my ADL program or potential employers. I want to keep my voice and approach to topics easy to navigate and understand yet informative, inspiring, and helpful.

I can also utilize my ePortfolio to become a strategic digital leader. In order to do this, I will need to plan regularly about what I blog about and post. Reflecting on new experiences and how I dealt with them can help others and help keep me aligned with my goals while still refining my voice.

I can also showcase leadership initiatives by taking on my more leadership roles on campus and document those and share them on my site. This will not only demonstrate my growth but also inspire others to engage in similar efforts and encourage them to take chances. 

One of the things we learned about in EDLD 5302 was networking and the importance of it. I wrote a blog post about it here. The assignment was to “join three learning networks (at least two of which are in your field and one that is technology-based), then participate in a discussion with your colleagues.” (Harrison, 2024). The three that I listed were TCEA, Applied Digital Learning, and K-12 Resource Center. I chose these three because they offer a wide variety of information and knowledge to help educators. TCEA itself is centered around just that: sharing information to help others grow. 

When I look at my blog posts, the post with the most views is the one about Digital Resources. I can see why, too. People want to stay up to date with the latest trends and find solutions that will help their lives. Why work harder when you can work smarter? That’s also why teachers subscribe to other teachers' social media accounts. What works for one grade level might be able to be adapted to another. Several times, I have seen things that teachers create and build at the elementary school for their classes, and with just a few tweaks, it would work for my class as well. 

Several years ago, I was able to attend TCEA. It was the first time I had ever been, and it was amazing!!!! I could see the potential in it and how wonderful it was to develop and grow as an educator. I sat in a presentation called Shake Up Learning by Kasey Bell. I just sat there in awwwww… She was what I wanted to be when I “got older.” I loved that she had so much knowledge. She was put together well and just rolled with it. I knew that was my calling. She had so many fantastic tips and tricks and information to share. I wanted to do that too, but I was younger then and didn’t have the resources like her or know where to start. It still baffles me where they get their information, and I would love to be able to share things like that. Maybe one day I’ll be able to transition into that kind of roll.

References

Harrison, G. (2024). The Benefit of Networking. Fall 2024 Concepts of Educational Technology (EDLD-5302-D31).

Google. (2024). Applied digital skills. Retrieved from https://applieddigitalskills.withgoogle.com/s/en/resources

K-12 Resource Center. (2024). Career technical education. Retrieved from https://k12irc.org/topics/career-technical-education-cte/

K-12 Resource Center. (2024). Education networks organization. Education Networks Organization. Retrieved from https://k12irc.org/topics/education-networks-organization

Shake Up Learning. (2025). Shake up learning. Retrieved from https://shakeuplearning.com/

TCEA. (2024). Membership. Retrieved from https://tcea.org/membership/