Nowadays, some students place too much attention on credentials that they may even forget what the real purpose of education is. We are supposed to gain some useful knowledge which is beneficial for our future through education. We need to have knowledge so that we are capable of making contributions to our society. Education is supposed to do good to the upbringing of our personality. However, being in an education system in which students are evaluated by a punch of standardized tests and examinations, some of the students may become too grade-conscious that they forget the genuine purpose behind the tests and exams. Tests and exams are tools for measuring and evaluating how well we have grasped the knowledge imparted to us. However, some of the students may go beyond the extreme think they have taken the purpose of tests and exams to be getting a high score and top grade in those tests and exams which are just tools for tools for education. This may be due to the keen competition in our society and too much stress of academic excellence. This keen competition and strong focus on academic results make us forget the true aim and intention of learning. Thus, students sometimes may focus more on exam skills instead of really learning the knowledge that they should get.

I think that this poor situation can be improves if ePortfolio can be successfully implemented because ePortfolio emphasizes on revealing the talents and potentials. I believe this can somehow alleviate the strong bias on the importance of academic success.

I started to collect materials to build up my ePortfolio this week. Meanwhile, I found that I get to know more about myself. When I start to sort out and edit the work I have done in the past, I can see my improvement over time. I can see that I have got rid of some of the weaknesses that I had in the past. On the other hand, I also spot some mistakes that I failed to notive before. When I really get down to write my goal statement for my electronic portfolio, I remind myself the destination  I am heading to. I am now more sure of my own goal and make sure that I am on my way there. When I look back at the accomplishment that I have made over the years, I can see where my talents thrive. I predict that I can get more reflection after getting comments from people around me.

After I have started establsihing the ePortfolio, I discover that building a portfolio that can fully reveal myself can actually get me to understand myself better and deeper. I hope the by the time I finish my work, I can really have a great ePortfolio which can represent my true self.

I have already registered for my classes for Spring quarter today owing to priority registration. After registering for classes, I suddenly felt a little bit excited, yet worried. I felt excited because I will be soon graduating from Foothill College with an AS degree in Mathematics. I feel that I am half way to my goal already. On the other hand,  I also felt worried because my future is so unclear right now. I don't know where I am going to tranfer to. Although I know that the results will be all out in April and May, I am still feeling a bit axious because I am sure that I have to have a lot of challenges after transferring regardless of where I go. I have to get adapted to a new environment and try to get along with the people around me. Being an international student, I actually took more than a year to get adapted to the life and neighborhood in Mountain View.But I will have to leave here and go to another new place very soon. I cannot help but wonder how long it is going to take me to adjust to the new life. However, I know that I can't escape because facing new challenges is actaully part of life. We learn something everytime after we have successfully overcome some hardship. This makes me think of my ePortfolio. We can incoporate our intellectual grwoth gained from our daily life experiences into it.

When I know that I am going to receive a certificate for my AS degree at the end of Spring, I was actaully kind of excited. Talking about cetificate, I think of the question "Wthat can a certificate tell us?" . A certificate is a proof that You have successfully accomplished something. However, everyone who has successfully finished the task can get the same certificate. Hence, a certificate cannot really tell us how  good a person is in a certain area. This is why ePortfolio is so important and useful because it actually tells more than the certificate which every student works so hard to get it.

Nowadays, some students place too much attention on credentials that they may even forget what the real purpose of education is. We are supposed to gain some useful knowledge which is beneficial for our future through education. We need to have knowledge so that we are capable of making contributions to our society. Education is supposed to do good to the upbringing of our personality. However, being in an education system in which students are evaluated by a punch of standardized tests and examinations, some of the students may become too grade-conscious that they forget the genuine purpose behind the tests and exams. Tests and exams are tools for measuring and evaluating how well we have grasped the knowledge imparted to us. However, some of the students may go beyond the extreme think they have taken the purpose of tests and exams to be getting a high score and top grade in those tests and exams which are just tools for tools for education. This may be due to the keen competition in our society and too much stress of academic excellence. This keen competition and strong focus on academic results make us forget the true aim and intention of learning. Thus, students sometimes may focus more on exam skills instead of really learning the knowledge that they should get.

I think that this poor situation can be improves if ePortfolio can be successfully implemented because ePortfolio emphasizes on revealing the talents and potentials. I believe this can somehow alleviate the strong bias on the importance of academic success.

Multiple Intelligences

I¡¦m taking an Honors public speaking class this quarter. We talked about the subject of multiple intelligences. According to Howard Gardner, intelligence can be divided into eight categories. They are linguistic intelligence (word smart), logical/mathematical intelligence (logic smart), spatial intelligence (picture smart), interpersonal intelligence (people smart), intrapersonal (inner self smart), kinesthetic intelligence (body smart), musical intelligence (music smart), and natural intelligence. Everyone has a different stress on different kinds of intelligences. However, our traditional British styled education system only focuses on two categories which are the linguistic and logical intelligences. It has long been our social norm to classify those students with high linguistic and logical intelligences as smart. We have neglected the importance of the other six kinds of intelligences. We think that they are just some kinds of special talents. Just think about all those popular standardized examinations we have take during our course of education such as the SAT, TOEFL, IELTS, and so on, they are all focused on the language and mathematical skills. Students who have high intelligences in other areas may not have to chance to make full use of their potential. Being in such an education system, some of them may not even notice that they have high intelligence in other areas. Different people have different kinds of intelligences and so they learn best in different ways. Hence, there should be at least eight different ways to teach in education system. Nevertheless, we can hardly achieve this in the traditional classroom environment. Nevertheless, I believe that ePortfolio can help us identify the kind of intelligence that a student has and then design the best way for them to learn because the ePorfolio can reveal the true abilities and intelligences of the student.