Eco-Literacy 2014: Instructions for Preparing your Portfolio

Concluding, Dffracting, and Assessing Your Work in the Eco-Literacy 360°, Spring 2014 "reflection only displaces the same elsewhere ....What we need  is...to diffract...so that we get more promising interference patterns" (Donna Harraway). This process invites you to "diffract" on all the work you have done for this 360°, to chronicle what has happened in your evolution as a listener, speaker, writer, artist, connector and agent for change in the group. Your self-evaluation will assist us with our assessments, as we reflect on your engagements and accomplishments across all the dimensions of the 360°.

You've already created a number of products, both written and artistic. You will also now
(seniors—by 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 10; everyone else—by noon on Friday, May 16):

I. Report on the action you have taken to follow up on the Story Slam: How are you carrying on the work we have done?  What bridge have you built with others who are not in our 360°?  Post this report in the Google Docs folder, Following Up On Our Story Slam (so only our 360° community will have access); PLEASE LABEL THIS REPORT WITH YOUR NAME. Explain what you did and why you chose to do it. Then assess what happened in light of the discussions we’ve been having throughout the 360°: how will your action contribute to some form of eco-literate social change?

II. Schedule a final conference with Anne; write and post your fourth 5-pp. webpaper for her class.

III. Review the e-portfolio that Serendip has created of much of your work.

When you log on to Serendip, you’ll see “my portfolio” in the bar across the top of the page; clicking on that will call up all of your posts to Serendip and any comments on them.

Take some time to review all this material, along with the papers and midterms you completed in "Working with Economic Data," the lesson plans you designed for the students in Camden, and the creative projects you completed in reaction to our field trips. What do notice as you revisit your whole semester's work?

IV. Write a 5-8 pp. essay "diffracting" where you were when we began this process, where you are now, and what’s been happening in between. How have you been learning? What have you been learning? Where do you think the edges of your learning now lie?

In order to do this, be specific and descriptive, but also evaluative. 

In this process, consider each of the courses as a distinct place of learning and engagement. Address each class, as well as the creative work, independently in your self-assessment, while also acknowledging ways in which your learning overlapped in each of these spaces.

Please follow these steps:

* Complete the Eco-Literacy 360° checklist.

* Review your participation in our group work in the classroom and beyond: how present-and-contributing have you been in our class discussions, both large and small? What role have you assumed in our group dynamics, in-class, on-line, and in the other spaces relevant to our 360° (including our field trips, dinners, individual conferences, and artistic collaborations)? How much of your class work was focused on your own learning? In what ways have you been contributing to the learning of others?

* Re-consider your reading for the cluster: What were your joys-and-pleasures? What were your challenges? What were the ways that you grew as a reader? Where are your learning edges as a reader?

* Review your written work: How much of your on-line writing was "stand-alone," how much written in response to others' reflections? What on-line response did you garner from your classmates? How much effort have you put into the web postings and each of your web events and other papers? What can you say about the quality of these productions? What have you learned about your writing and thinking processes in this 360°? Where have you "moved"?

* How much progress have you made in answering the questions or meeting the learning goals set at the beginning of the semester?
Jody: re-imagining ecological literacy and environmental education
more deeply and fruitfully with and for diverse students and communities;
David: mastering analytical tools, using them for effective communication, understanding environmental challenges;
Anne: increasing awareness of the limits and possibilities of all forms of representation,
as well as the opposite: considering what might be imagined that has not yet been experienced!

* Also describe the degree of your critical, active engagement with the creative portion of the class. How did our field trips influence your creative thinking and endeavors? How much time and energy did you spend on that work?  How satisfied were you with your level of engagement and the result?  How has your creative work grown, changed, developed over the course of the semester?  Consider what you’ve learned about ‘process’ and ‘material,' about other eco-artists, and about Ava’s work and studio practices: in what ways has the creative component aside from your own creative work impacted, transformed, or made you look at the world differently? 

V. Complete the Serendip Self-Evaluation form with the material you've written above. Refresh your browser, then check to make sure that the self-evaluation has shown up @ the bottom of your portfolio (which you can access, again, from the list along the top of the page). Note that this means that your evaluation, as part of your portfolio, will be publicly available on the web (you are also welcome to e-mail us any comments that you do not want to be public).

VI. Upload a banner image to illustrate a central theme in your work (it's one of the options in "My account"--> "public profile settings"; see the portfolio images Agatha and Jessica used last semester for illustrations of what this might look like). If Serendip can't seem to upload your image, it may be that the height and width of your
image are too large (the width should not exceed 1024). You can manually resize it with a photo editor (if you don't have ready access to one, try using http://www.picresize.com/ ).

In our responses to this portfolio, we'll be giving you grades not just for the quality of your written work, but also for class participation and process. We very much look forward to seeing what you come up with, as well as what you have to say about it.

Thanks for joining in the exploratory journey we've taken together this semester. 
We've enjoyed it very much, and learned a lot--

Jody, David, Ava and Anne