Let’s just say this week of exploring possible eportfolio
tools has been a roller coaster – lots of ups and lots of downs! But also like a roller coaster, just when you
think you can’t take anymore and you want off the ride, it gets super exciting
and you realize you are actually having a good time. I started my exploration by searching for wikis. I had absolutely no experience with wikis so everything about them was completely new to me. I attempted to start a few like Bloomfire but was turned off by the free trial period. I finally found Wikia, which seems to be 100% free. The setup was simple enough, fill in information here and there and voila I had my very own wiki. But after the setup, simplicity was quickly replaced with confusion and frustration. There were many buttons that looked familiar (bold, add link, etc.), but I was at a total loss as to how to create my page(s). After playing around on it for a while, I decided that a wiki was not going to be my eportfolio tool and I was going to leave it at that. But not so fast! After talking to some teachers who teach in my desired school district, they said that wikis are currently a requirement for teachers. So even though my decision to not use the wiki as my eportfolio still stands, I now realize that it would really be in my best interest to learn more about them and try to have one to share in my eportfolio. I discovered some tutorials and have been viewing them to get a better handle on wikis, but I know I still have a long way to go. So for now, here is the link to my “wiki in progress”: http://outside-the-blocks.wikia.com/wiki/Ideas_for_My_Wiki
Websites were the next tools on
my list, which I was super excited about.
I had created my very first website with Wix for a Summer 1 class, and I
really enjoyed it, but I wanted to try out some different options. Weebly was one site that I was very
interested in exploring so I created an account and began looking through their
themes. They had so many it was almost
overwhelming, but I ended up picking two that I really liked. I really liked
the simplicity of the dragging and dropping of text and pictures, but I felt a
little restricted regarding positioning these items on the page. I also tried Portfolio Village because it
seemed to be geared towards students and teaching, but again with this site I
felt restricted by their templates. So I
went back to the tried and true, Wix. I
actually tried a Wix template too and had the same results as the other two
sites, but with Wix you have the option of choosing “Top Navigation HTML”,
which is basically a blank slate where each page can be as long or short as you
want it to be. This was the freedom that
I was craving and as they say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I finally had a contender to be my eportfolio
tool: http://froggy1128.wix.com/mljportfolio
The final tools on my list were the proprietary tools. This search was the most difficult. I found
numerous eportfolio sites that charged money for their services (Digication,
Pebble Pad, Chalk & Wire) but very few that were free. I am sure that the pay-for sites offer a lot
of really cool things, but at this particular juncture in my life I need a free
one. Then I found Foliotek. I was surprised at how much I liked the
simplicity of it. I also found the reflection
questions very helpful and the sharing options (publicly, privately, etc.) as a
major advantage. Unfortunately, the sharing options turned out to be the
downfall…to share I must pay, and like I said before, right now I just can’t
afford to pay. (So sorry I can’t post a link to share. Sob! Sob!)
So the winner is my Wix.com website eportfolio!
And that was just the beginning. Then I started thinking about which artifacts
I wanted to share and how to describe my teaching philosophy and how much
information I want to include (this was about the time that I felt like I
wanted to get off the eportfolio roller coaster.) I took an ice cream break with my kids and by
the time I came back to the computer that evening I was feeling excited about
it all again. Most of the work I have
done since then has been offline so as of now there isn’t a whole lot to show,
but I know in the end I will have a life-long and life-wide eportfolio that I
will not only be proud of, but will also hopefully land me the job of my dreams
(as long as I can figure that wiki out!)
A final thought since I am doing all of this to become a
teacher, is to consider what tool I would want my students to use to create
their own e-portfolios. Part of me
thinks that a website would be beneficial to students because of all of the creative
possibilities it allows students, but there is another part of me that really
was drawn to the proprietary tools, especially one called Epsilen that seemed
to have a lot of amazing tools available, but of course, at a price. So I guess it really just depends on the school
district. If they are paying for some
amazing proprietary tool I would definitely be on board, but if they aren’t then
I think websites (or even blogs) would be my eportfolio tool of choice for students.
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