Portfolio Reflection for 5303

Honestly, I was surprised by how frustrating building a website became because I've built sites on Wordpress before.  I thought I would breeze through the development phase, but I hit roadblock after roadblock as I mentioned in my first blog post as well as "Crash and Burn."  Essentially I went from Wordpress.com (Automattic Inc., n.d.) to Wordpress.org (WordPress Foundation, n.d.) hosted on Bluehost.org (Bluehost Inc., n.d.) to Wix.com (Wix.com, Inc., n.d.) to Google Sites.  When I landed on Wix I thought it was going to be great, but I wasn't impressed at all.  It was slow and I couldn't use my district laptop so I was always relying on my daughter's laptop.  Those two factors drove me to Google Sites, which I  had sworn I wouldn't use.  However, I realized that I could use my laptop while all the other sites were blocked by my district, sites moves and edits much faster, and really the look isn't much different.  You have less options, but my Wix site didn't look much different from a Google Site as it stood.  The only tricky thing is the blog since Sites doesn't have a blog feature, but it didn't take me long to create a workaround.  I built my site in Google in a fraction of the time it took in Wix.  You can move easily from page to page and the editor doesn't bog down. In the end, I’m much happier with my current set up and feel that I’ve laid a solid foundation that I can build on.

I feel this is a great way for me to synthesize my learning and create a record that will always help me remember what I’ve done. If I were to just tuck these assignments away in the annals of my Google Drive I would probably never look at them again. Instead, I’m turning my knowledge into something useful and presentable. I think the process of arranging and presenting the content brings another layer to my own understanding as well. “Students that develop an ePortfolio will see benefits... from the process. They will discover a valuable exercise in self-assessment through the reflection process” (Barnstable, 2010). Overall, I can see that the more I invest in this portfolio the more likely I am going to use it longterm.