Introduction

=**Introduction**=

====In this Eportfolio, I have chosen to display a number of artifacts from my graduate school work as a second year student in the Masters in the Arts of Teaching Second Languages program at Bennington College. These artifacts are samples of work that I have created in interaction with my cohort. The portfolio includes blogs about my thinking, tweets, writing samples and personal reflections. I have set out to provide examples of my thinking in community about digital literacy and second language teaching and learning.====

**Purpose:**
The purpose in assembling this portfolio is to demonstrate evidence of how I have accomplished my "true north" and to compile my learning processes and products into a single portfolio which highlights the development and transformation of my thinking.

My personal understanding of "true north" is based on the following definition:

//Full participation in and on communities of thinkers at multiple levels; that is, producing, shaping, conceptualizing, and transforming practices constituting communities of thinkers at multiple levels: individual, group, classroom, cohort, college, and where possible, beyond). Emphasis is on thinking and rethinking the role of technologies, digital and otherwise, in foreign language education, conceived of as fundamentally concerned with language learning as a literate, communicative and languacultural phenomenon. (Jones, 2011)//

**Preview of Findings:**
I will describe how my thinking has transformed in relation to languacultures and digital literacies. My accomplishments include the development of the ability to integrate my understandings of the different subject areas I am studying. For example, I will explain how my developed understandings in technology and action research classes have pushed my thinking in Spanish classes, especially in relation to curricular design. I will also share how I engaged in dialogue with researchers from the field in order to refine and revise my own thinking.

**Contents:**
1) Introduction 2) Blog Full - a link to my full blog about thinking in community 3) Blog Selections - specific blogs that I have chosen to highlight because they best represent my true north 4) Twitter - a link to my twitter page which documents class conversations that represent the use of multiliteracies 5) Twitter Selections - specific sequences of digital conversations that I have chosen because they represent dialogic thinking in community 6) Webquest - blog about my analysis of Webquest as an affordance and link to a particular Webquest I have chosen to analyze 7) Flickr - a link to my Flickr page, which shows photos, comments, group discussions and galleries that I have created 8) Other Artifacts - additional evidence of my true north - a) excerpt from class notes b) excerpts of moodle forums from Spanish content class 9) Project Understanding - Spanish lesson plans design based on the themes of identity, expression, silence and voice b) Rationale for Project Understanding based on three meta principles; smarttech, scaffolding and community of thinkers 10) Conclusion