The mid-term portfolio will be due March 16th before class. You may want to begin working on it early and you can submit it any time. Here are the instructions for submitting the mid-term portfolio of your work.

First, a bit about the goals of the portfolio. The portfolio serves two main purposes: 1.) to drive continued revision of your projects, and 2.) to promote reflection on what you have learned as a writer and thinker in the class. To demonstrate your strengths in these areas, you'll need to compose reflections about all of the materials that you submit. 

And you will write a cover letter that reflects on the entire body of your work and on your progression as a thinker and writer for the class. The audience for your cover letter can be our class or a person from outside of our class that you will ask to look at your work. For the portfolio letter, you should know that portfolios work well at demonstrating learning, growth, effort, and excellence in the final products of your work. Your letter, then, can serve to educate your reader about the materials you have collected in terms of these kinds of criteria.

Finally, since the portfolio serves as a hub that leads to a collection of other materials, you will want to ensure that the materials that you link to are cleaned up and contain all the necesseary elements for each assignment--lists of sources, short descriptions, links to all revisions, etc.

To submit your portfolio, follow these steps. First, you may want to look at some of the portfolios from other classes. These portfolios represent the final work that has been turned in, so they include more items, but they should give you an idea of what a portfolio can look like. I have posted a portfolio that I composed for a course last year. You can look over my portfolio, and embedded within that portfolio you can find links to projects and to some other portfolios that you can use as models. The portfolio is at http://www.teachmix.com/litcast/node/155.

As part of the writing process of your portfolio, you will need to revise your earlier work. Here is a breakdown of what you can submit for now:

Revise and resubmit your playlist. Begin by looking over the playlists of your peers and getting a sense of what makes a list excellent. Think about what will make yours stronger, and then revise your work. The Web site will keep track of your revisions.

Revise your podcast. Listen to the podcasts of your classmates. Think about what will make your own podcast stronger. Rework the podcast. You can create a new podcast entry, or post your revised version on your own Web site. You will link to both the draft and revision in the portfolio.

Continue working on your personal/professional Web site. You may want to begin moving some of your revised projects to the Web site--the podcast, for instance.

Find the postings or comments to the blog that you have made for every week and link to them--use the Track option under My Account and note that these can also include comments that you have made about the work of others. Once you have revised the projects and collected the blog postings, you are ready to work on the portfolio.

Go to the create content option and select portfolio. You can then compose reflections in the posting while creating links to your materials. In the message, make links to your podcast, playlist, and Web site. For these major assignments, you will want to create a significant write up. Write about what you learned related to the subject of the project. Think about what you learned related to writing and communication. What did you learn personally from the project? Think about how this item fits with the larger message you want to get across in your portfolio. Add any other thoughts on the project. Also discuss any revisions you have made and why you made them.

Next, make links to your blog postings, and then write a few sentences reflecting on these postings. Finally write the cover letter reflecting on the portfolio that you are submitting. What would you like to say about the entire body of work that you are submitting? What thoughts do you have about writing so far this semester. What have you learned about entrepreneurship? What goals might you have for the rest of the semester? What else can you say about your work? What can you say about the learning processes you have experienced? Think about the goals for the portfolio--demonstrating effort, learning, growth, and excellence. Also think about what can be said about your work in terms of the concerns of our course. When you have collected and reflected on everything, submit the posting--you will want to submit it as you work several times to save your thoughts.