{"id":851,"date":"2006-05-31T13:18:01","date_gmt":"2006-05-31T13:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/e-portfolio-e-journal-some-thoughts\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T22:05:04","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T03:05:04","slug":"e-portfolio-e-journal-some-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/e-portfolio-e-journal-some-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"e-portfolio, e-journal:  some thoughts . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was recently asked if I knew of any &quot;e-portfolio&quot; solutions.  I consider this site to be a sort of e-portfolio that contains and organizes my thoughts on technology and instructional design, including my submitted course work in my Masters program.  I find it very valuable to maintain my site as a sort of working journal. <\/p>\n<p>However, people also create e-portfolios as final &quot;presentation&quot; sites to demonstrate their work.  The difference appears to be in the audience focus.  For now, my audience focus is me (finding ways to design my e-portfolio to meet my current information collection and organization needs).  Yet, I envision a day when that focus will shift when I want to use the site as a demonstration (or presentation) site of my work.  Do I want this to be something I create as a working journal with &quot;me&quot; as the primary audience?  Or do I want this to be something to showcase my work for &quot;others&quot; to see?  You can likely do both, but a working journal is likely more on the fly and &quot;messy&quot; whereas a presentation site is more tailored and &quot;clean&quot;.  Therefore, it is important to keep in mind ways to easily slice and dice the material to edit content presentation depending on the desired audience (see more on this below).<\/p>\n<p>While I could have kept a similar &quot;journal&quot; on my desktop, I enjoy being able to share my ideas and create what will one day be a &quot;portfolio&quot; of my experiences.  What I ultimately do with this portfolio, I&#39;m not sure.  It is likely too raw to share it for interview purposes (again, different audience focus), but it does provide insight into where I am in my learning process. <\/p>\n<p>Here are some of my reflections on what an e-portfolio (again online journal) means to me.  I have also included some sources that I have found to be of value.<\/p>\n<p>Important Features (to me):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Accessible via the web:  Ability to add \/ read content from any Internet enabled device (not just my home computer)<\/li>\n<li>Tags: Ability to quickly categorize content<\/li>\n<li>RSS feeds:  Ability to share content (down to tag level)<\/li>\n<li>Print functionality:  Ability to quickly print large blocks of content in a &quot;readable&quot; format.<\/li>\n<li>Multiple Content Modes:  Ability to add pictures \/ audio \/ video \/ text \/ attachments of most file types<\/li>\n<li>Multiple Content Presentation:  (From above) Ability to slice and dice content delivery based on audience.<\/li>\n<li>WYSIWYG:  Ability to add content in an EASY format (no HTML required) &#8211; with Spell Check \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<li>Integration with other (outside) sites &#8211; either by adding links or HTML cut and paste snippets (i.e. Flickr)<\/li>\n<li>Ability to accept reader &quot;comments&quot;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My current solution:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Drupal enabled web site which accommodates my tags, RSS feeds, print functionality (nice set up in the &quot;book&quot; feature), multiple content modes, WYSIWYG functionality via tinymce module.<\/li>\n<li>I add most blog posts via the Performancing extension (in Firefox only) with spell check via the Spell Bound extension (also in Firefox only)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Things that annoy me about my current set up:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Browser specific things (Performancing and Spell Bound in Firefox only)<\/li>\n<li>It is far easier to type a blog post in Performancing than in Drupal itself, but I nearly always have to edit again in Drupal to correct tags and complete spell check.<\/li>\n<li>For now, I have not considered multiple ways to display content (i.e. to limit, tailor or restrict based on audience).  This is in the back of my mind, but I haven&#39;t spent the time to test out my thoughts.  It will likely be in the form of site ID&#39;s and permission settings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Creating an e-portfolio:  Here are the two main ways to approach it:<\/p>\n<p>1).  Hosted:  Your site is &quot;hosted&quot; by some other 3rd party for free or for fee.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Pros:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Usually, more user friendly<\/li>\n<li>Usually, easier to start<\/li>\n<li>No major site maintenance required on your part<\/li>\n<li>Often free (for at least the basic storage amounts)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em><strong>Cons:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Subject to &quot;whims&quot; of site &#8211; they can go out of business or just close the site<\/li>\n<li>Usually, little ability to customize the site beyond the features they offer<\/li>\n<li>May have to deal with banner ads, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Usually fairly limited storage options<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>2). Your own site:<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Pros:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Make it whatever you want &#8211; Customize away \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<li>You own it as long as you pay annual fees to web host (I use <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bluehost.com\/\">Blue Host<\/a> as my host and they support Fantastico which makes the initial install of content very easy)<\/li>\n<li>Large storage capacity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em><strong>Cons:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Often very large learning curve as you create and customize the site<\/li>\n<li>All site maintenance done by you<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>_______<\/p>\n<p>Options:  Options can come in the form of (easiest to hardest learning curve)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>blogs: usually can embed audio, video, pictures and &#8211; of course &#8211; written word into &quot;posts&quot; <\/li>\n<li>wikis: wysiwyg page editing that is also good for collaboration with others<\/li>\n<li>Content Management Systems (CMS): ranging from hosted social networking sites like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/\">Flickr <\/a>or <a href=\"http:\/\/myspace.com\/\">Myspace<\/a> all the way to more robust sites like Elgg &#8211; or Drupal, Joomla, and Mambo that you would most likely host yourself on your own site.  However, there are many &quot;providers&quot; who will help you get a site up and running for a fee (such as <a href=\"http:\/\/lullabot.com\/\">lullabot.com<\/a>).<\/li>\n<li>Start from scratch HTML (not my cup of tea as I would rather spend my learning curve time on content creation vs. site management) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here are just a some representative samples of the gazillions of examples for you to consider:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Blog (hosted): <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/start\">Blogger<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Wiki (hosted): <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jot.com\/\">Jotspot<\/a><\/li>\n<li>CMS: <a href=\"http:\/\/drupal.org\/\">Drupal<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.joomla.org\/\">Joomla<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mamboserver.com\/\">Mambo<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/elgg.net\/\"><\/a><\/li>\n<li>CMS (hosted): <a href=\"http:\/\/elgg.net\/\">Elgg<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/elgg.net\/\"><br \/><\/a><\/li>\n<li>CMS (hosted) Best for Pictures, Audio or Video Content: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.carbonmade.com\/\">Carbonmade<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.odeo.com\/\">Odeo<\/a>,  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/\">Flickr<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was recently asked if I knew of any &quot;e-portfolio&quot; solutions. I consider this site to be a sort of e-portfolio that contains and organizes my thoughts on technology and instructional design, including my submitted course work in my Masters program. I find it very valuable to maintain my site as a sort of working&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[194,188],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-e-portfolio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3220,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions\/3220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}