Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Becoming a Tutor
With the creation of my eportfolio there were many questions I had along with lots of confusion along the way. Fortunately for me, I had Leah, to assist in the process of beginning my eportfolio. Using iweb was a completely foreign concept for me and the last time I had created a portfolio was about three years ago and did not remember how I had gone about that as it was a great difficulty for me to accomplish as well. Upon opening iweb Leah was there to guide me through it, showing me how to open new files, templates, and hyperlinking external, internal webpages, as well as files. Once I navigated my way through iweb I had to take into consideration thing I needed to accomplish. I began with a rocky start and had many questions, but I knew I should use trial and error before consulting Leah so I could figure things out on my own and tutor others in the future.
There were times, however, when I could not figure things out. First off was inserting links because I had used it only when opening it the first time and had to consult Leah on where to go and she patiently showed me which tool bar to go to, but left it up to me to figure it out from there and only answered yes or no when I was making sure things were correct, which was extremely beneficial to me because I was forced to work it out on my own and remember where I had gone to insert hyperlinks. Another issue I faced, though small, was a big deal to me. I originally chose a blank white template, but was unsatisfied with the appearance of it and asked Leah where I could go to change the background and she showed me her webpages and how I could choose different templates offered that I did not realize were there before. Upon completing this I had to transfer everything over to the new templates, which proved time consuming, but worth the change.
When we had to do role-playing as a tutor and student, Daniel and I were partnered up and I was uncertain that I would be at all able to help him because he is always so confident and knowledgeable with his webpages and how to figure things out through his own processes of elimination as well as always seeming to know what he's doing. So, I thought there was no way I could help him out, but I was able to because he was having trouble coming up with content for his webpages and I showed him what I had done with my own webpages and asked him what his interests were and made suggestions to input his own interests as webpages and doing a creative based page that way.
While I do not have much experience in the creation of webpages I feel as though my strengths will be drawing from various other sources of classes and experience in research and writings to help other students come up with ideas and since I worked on my webpages from scratch with only asking for help to the point where I had tried everything I could I feel that I have figured a lot out on my own and can help other students in this way when they get stuck on their own webpages. In addition to this, as I have done peer education with my Health 497 Creative Inquiry class I feel I can draw from this and be more comfortable around fellow students with questions about their portfolios.
In being in the shoes of the student with Daniel I originally believed it would not be possible for him to help me because I had tried everything I knew how to do to get powerpoint running in .html format, consulted Leah, and emailed a computer professional, with negative results. Daniel, though, was more than willing to help throughout the process and attempt different ways of getting it to work. He looked at the webpage address itself, tried saving it on his computer in two different ways, and sending it to me to no avail. Finally though, he looked on the mac website (which I had not even thought about) and read that powerpoint had to be saved on a pc to get it to run in .html format. With this information, Daniel suggested we save my powerpoints on a flash-drive, transfer it to the pc, then run it on there to create the .html. This was a huge plus! It worked and I was able to show my powerpoint on my webpage as a .html file.
Going from an empty site on iweb to what I have today has been a major learning experience and has provided me with the opportunity to look over what I have done to achieve my accomplishments. Looking back I never would have thought to overcome some of the hurdles that I did and in doing so is quite empowering and rewarding. Keeping this in mind, I feel that I can now successfully help a fellow student with any questions they may have even if I do not have an answer for them immediately. ~Jessica Johnson
# posted by Jessica Johnson @ 8:04 AM 
