Extend NZ/NZEXT101/Learning Journal

“	Writing in a journal reminds you of your goals, and of your learning in life. It offers a place where you can hold a deliberate, thoughtful conversation with yourself.	”
—Robin Sharma

Learning Journal

Introduction

As you work through this module, you may want to note down your thoughts, ideas, and reflections. This can help you assess your learning progress and consolidate new insights, both for your own use and potentially for collaborating with others.

You will also need to capture your responses to various learning activities, as evidence towards your digital badge. There is a broad range of ways to achieve this, including word-processing software, digital notebooks, presentation software, diaries, blogs, and/or e-portfolios. If you prefer to keep your responses and thoughts private, then we recommend that you use a word-processed document rather than writing a blog post or using an open forum.

Word-processing document learning journal

Using a word processing document is an easy way to create a learning journal, if you are not familiar with blogging or e-portfolios.

When submitting evidence towards your digital badge, you may choose to upload the document itself (on completion of an activity) or, if saving to the cloud, you will need to share the link to the document.

Blog learning journal

You may wish to publish your work openly for others to see and comment on. Blogs (or 'web logs') are particularly useful for this purpose. Have a look at this resource on how to use a blog. You can use any blogging platform/tool which allows you to tag or label posts for your learning journal (we can search for and share posts which are tagged or labelled using the module tag). Many learners use Wordpress or Blogger.

If you already have an existing blog, you can use that, or you may prefer to set up a new dedicated learning journal blog for the Extend NZ suite. Your blog posts for this module do not have to be visible to the world (unless you want them to be!).

Here's how you control their visibility in Wordpress and Blogger (look half way down the page).

Here is an overview of the steps to set up your own learning journal blog:

Actions	Additional resources
Create a blog account	Create account on Wordpress.com or Create account on Blogger.com
Configure your blog	Customise preferences (including settings for comments) and personalise the layout of your blog: Help resources for Blogger Help resources for Wordpress
Register your blog url	If you wish to share your learning journal blog with fellow learners, please register your blog url on the Extend NZ site by clicking on the user icon () in the site menu and filling out the url for your blog. Tips: Be sure to submit the url for the published view of your blog post, and not the url used for editing. Remember to tag or label your post using the module tag. The tag for this module is #NZEXT101.

E-portfolio

Another option is to use an e-portfolio. These are often popular with learners who like having more visual design choices over how their content is presented. As long as you can share a link to your work, any option that works for you is suitable.