May seem like an odd thing…
sort of like Alan’s comment aboout the e-portfolio job posting.. (shouldn’t people submit an e-portfolio?)
that I bring up printing as the monster under the e-portfolio bed… but it is!
The first question that faculty ask about e-portfolios — as we found in recent workshops — is “how do I print this?”. Promotion and Tenure committees don’t take electronic submissions…
We need to be able to avoid hearing this question….
“Why should I do this if I have to redo this?”
SO… what to do? I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this one. I would think that somewhere in the eportfolio universe there should be a way of outputting the portfolio as PDF file — is there a magic driver that will allow us to take different file type and merge them into a batch print job?And while I am asking for miracles… format and paginate them… automatically generate the first screen of a movie file with a printed link to the media clip…
And the whole portability thing… can we take a specific portfolio and output it as an IMS content package?
I know this is a new technology — but if we can solve this printing problem anyway … boy would it be nice…
thoughts… ideas on the printing dilemma?
Aside from saying that committees should change — we know that. But it’s not happening fast… and this barrier is one that we should be able to remove, I would think….
Note entered on April 25…
I’m looking for something akin to WebCT’s compile function (see screenshot below)… where I can select the file from a content module that I want, and print them. My idea is to extend that capability further, and be able to output any file into a PDF doc…
I know that I can output a PDF doc from a browser.. though the control level is low — that would at least be a start!
Actually, if my e-portfolio were a WebCT content module, I could actually output it as a content package…
hmm….
Not so sure this is a ‘monster,’ maybe instead just a slightly scary imp. While building a compilation tool like WebCT’s seems like a neat idea, maybe for now they could just get by with something like this program (http://www.pdf995.com/) which basically allows you to print anything you see in your web browser as a PDF. Cheers, Scott.
Cool reference, Scott, thank you! I am thinking of something like this…
Isn’t this complicated by the fact that an e-portfolio can (should?) contain artifacts of many different types? A printout of a month of blog entries will have to be printed separately (with different settings) from a PowerPoint presentation, a high-resolution digital photo, or a gallery of low-resolution pictures.
We seem to want students to include all kinds of non-printed artifacts as well: videos and audio files come to mind. I’m hoping that this “need” to print everything is just part of the difficult transition from paper to true e-portfolios.