I must make a confession. I’ve never quite “gotten” ePortfolios. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great idea to give students a webspace in which they can collect work, reflect on their learning, and present themselves. What has always thrown me is why we need a whole new set of specialized applications, standards, and procedures forced onto users. Looking at the first generation of ePortfolio tools out there, and skimming the mainstream literature on the subject, it sounded like all of the mistakes that were made with the “Learning Object Economy” (ignoring users, ignoring what the rest of the Web was doing, raising the adoption bar with arcane standards, specialised tools that constrain individual creativity) were being made all over again.
When asked if I wanted to develop an ePortfolio for myself, I tactfully (I hope) demurred. My weblog was my personal portfolio, I said (and believed), and I collected my public works in an easily updated wiki page in the unlikely event somebody wanted to know more about what I’ve done.
I knew that my weblog had its shortcoming as a portfolio. Someone looking at my page for the past couple weeks would conclude that I spend my time in a catatonic depression over the endless technical difficulties that are driving my projects into the ground. In reality, that is only partly true. I also enjoy posting on issues not strictly related to my job, such as remix culture, my son, my sleep-deprivation hobby and what I had for lunch. If someone wanted to get a sense of how truly incompetent I am, they would be forced to do a bit of digging through my links — and that assumes a certain comfort by the reader with the weblog format (which simply cannot be assumed).
UBC’s ePortfolio Coordinator Kele Fleming had been intrigued by the notion of “Blogfolios” (which people such as David Tosh, Alan Levine, and others have been batting about for some time). So for a UBC event on ePortfolios late last year, I worked with Michelle Chua to develop one of my own. Michelle did some really impressive conceptual and programming work with Movable Type, and my resulting online portfolio can be viewed at: http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/weblogs/brianlamb/.
I could improve things greatly by revising the content I rammed in there, but nonetheless I think there are some advantages to this approach to the online portfolio.
* It puts my main professional activities right up front — so it’s undoubtedly a better introduction to my work than my weblog is…
* I am able to manage it using my existing MT login account, and didn’t have to learn a new ePortfolio system.
* I am using Feed2JS to push my Abject Learning content over to the notebook section, so it will display relatively fresh content without me having to post it there.
* No additional licensing or infrastucture costs. All the money spent was on local development and customisation.
I wish I could take credit for this Blogfolio, but all the really clever work was done by Michelle, who did a student Blogfolio of her own. The reaction at the ePortfolio conference was very positive — and we had a number of immediate requests from attendees who wanted one for themselves… The existing Blogfolios were prototypes, really, so it will be interesting to learn if this approach is scalable. Michelle is working on it.
Michelle, Kele and I are on tap to co-present a workshop on creating professional Blogfolios this Thursday — hopefully we will learn more then. If this sucker flies, we will look into ways to share what we’ve done.
Inspiring stuff.
Have we talked about Errol Morris yet? FC&OOC is in my Top Five Ever. FWIW.
Hi Brian,
That’s pretty cute but, and call me a cynic here, isn’t thi sjust the same as me adding a few pages to my wordpress blog and then linking to them?
What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that as I reread Cluetrain I’m becoming increasingly aware of the amount of time we spend trying to flex the web to fix old mediums (in this case the static portfolio) where in fact the very thing the web allows us to do is to converse in a different way, to reinvent the portfolio model… so, while I think that it’s essential to have an ‘about’ page and a good idea to have a ‘portfolio’ page… making the portfolio the front-end (and revisiting our pre-determined ideas of what portfolios are) is probably what makes you uncomfortable with them in the first place.
‘cos you know it doesn’t work.
BTW I think the design work is very cool and I’d love to be able to fashion that kinda thing myself but for me it’s the concept that’s the problem.
Hi Brian,
That’s pretty cute but, and call me a cynic here, isn’t thi sjust the same as me adding a few pages to my wordpress blog and then linking to them?
What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that as I reread Cluetrain I’m becoming increasingly aware of the amount of time we spend trying to flex the web to fix old mediums (in this case the static portfolio) where in fact the very thing the web allows us to do is to converse in a different way, to reinvent the portfolio model… so, while I think that it’s essential to have an ‘about’ page and a good idea to have a ‘portfolio’ page… making the portfolio the front-end (and revisiting our pre-determined ideas of what portfolios are) is probably what makes you uncomfortable with them in the first place.
‘cos you know it doesn’t work.
BTW I think the design work is very cool and I’d love to be able to fashion that kinda thing myself but for me it’s the concept that’s the problem.
I have always endorsed this concept, but as hinted at by James, the issues boil back to a 49 shades of meaning about what a portfolio is. The ideal is something with an interface as simple and elegant as flickr for contruction that might make the kind of output Brian shared. For that matter, the good old fashioned HTML home page might be an eP as well.
On another note, Brian, I tweaked the Feed2JS so it would maintain the line break / paragraph breaks in your fed content:
though I am stumped why the preview on our site shows correct dates (see example) compared to your notebook
I may have to dig some more.
I have always endorsed this concept, but as hinted at by James, the issues boil back to a 49 shades of meaning about what a portfolio is. The ideal is something with an interface as simple and elegant as flickr for contruction that might make the kind of output Brian shared. For that matter, the good old fashioned HTML home page might be an eP as well.
On another note, Brian, I tweaked the Feed2JS so it would maintain the line break / paragraph breaks in your fed content:
James, I don’t pretend that this is technically groundbreaking stuff (though Michelle did some pretty elegant stuff with MT behind the scenes), and I agree that Portfolios are something of a vestigal technology. But the fact is that we are in a transitional culture phase right now, and people tend to feel comfortable with existing concepts (like desktop, folders, files) to make sense of the digital domain. I think the concept will evolve as more people move more openly into digital environments — and agree with you that some re-intion is needed (and I would suggest, inevitable.)
Alan — the type of interface you envision would be sweet — and believe me, we are very far from that here. (And thanks so much for tweaking Feed2JS!)
I was going to leave a comment, but then it just got really long, so I posted my replies and thoughts in my blog. Tried pinging your entry, Brian, but it doesn’t seem to like me. 🙁
Anyway, have a go at it:
http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/weblogs/mitch/archives/010316.php
You might also find some interest in what Nils over at WSU is doing….
http://pbj.ctlt.wsu.edu/nils_peterson/
https://my.wsu.edu/portal/page?_pageid=365,238429&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
I share some of these same thoughts and have been wondering about these separate applications, etc. for portfolios. I’ve had my own blogfolio at http://www.educationaltechnology.ca/couros for a while now, totally powered by MT. Easy to setup, easy to update.