Sunday, February 20, 2005

When is a blog not a blog? When it's a portfolio!

In a comment to my previous post, Aaron raised the issue of my teaching portfolio not being a blog anymore. And I guess I should be ashamed to admit it, but I don't think that matters to me. I wouldn't necesarily want anyone to comment on my portfolio in my portfolio.

But I think his suggestion that each document have a separate blogger account might be a good one. I guess I feel bad about opening so many accounts, but that is probably foolinsh. Blogger probably doesn't care and might actually be happy to be able to boast of five more blogs. But it seems inefficient somehow.

What I was looking to do was set up something like Julie Lindsay has without my own website. I don't know that I need such a thing, but I wanted to try to develop one. If nothing else, it gives me access to my CV, for instance, anywhere in the world at any time. It is conveivable to me that I might someday be glad for that. I move around a lot, and I probably won't have the same ISP three months from now, so I can't just upload files there and expect to access them next year. I need something extremely portable. A website of my own or a blog-turned-portfolio would allow me to have that stuff out there no matter where I am.

I also think that if I keep this portfolio basically the way it is, it needs to have another post on that main page that gives some instructions or I need to include them in the post that's there. And I need to include some kind of contact information. I am, not done with this portfolio yet. Not by a long shot!

4 comments:

Guy Jean said...

Thanks, Nancy. Thought-provoking post, and I especially like the Julie Lindsay link. I'm also examining portfolios (not just e-ones) so it's all grist to the mill for me right now.

There's much that is "clunky" about blogging technology. Aaron's suggestion is not bad, but surely there's a smoother, cooler way to do this? Of course, I'm only seeing blogging thru the eyes of Blogger.com (and the freebie version at that). I think "trackback", for instance could be useful... if I could only figure out how it works (or what it really does)!
A tip: you mentioned changing ISPs, but this impermanence can be countered by having your own DOMAIN. This will remain the same, even tho your ISP may change.

Nathan Lowell said...

The clunky-ness of blogger is just a symptom of trying to use the environment. The problem is that blogger is tuned for blogging and not for eportfolio creation.

My personal portfolio of on Durandus is built on a TextPattern blog engine. It's specifically tuned for ePortfolio use with special templates for various sections.

There's probably a middle ground -- Helen Barret has some great insights.

Elizabeth H-S said...

Nancy--
I would so like to be able to add pages and edit my Webpage site at blogger--but I can't seem to find any way back into it. I can look but I can't edit.

Any help with how you edit those nice e-portofolio pages would be most welcome. I like your design also.

Thanks--Elizabeth

Nancy A. McKeand said...

Elizabeth,

The secret is that they aren't webpages. That is the whole point. I don't have a webpage or a domain or anything, so I don't have a permanent place online to house my stuff. What I did was make blog entries and then edit the template to make it look less blog-like.

I haven't had a chance yet to look into Nathan's portfolio ideas. That may solve some of our problems.

If you have any specific questions that I might be able to answer, please let me know.