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ePortfolios have two primary components. The "presentational" component is the visible, shiny product of the ePortfolio process. It is a website, or a presentation, or a set of media produced to document and communicate a concept or event.

But, just as importantly, an ePortfolio has a cognitive component. The individual crafting their ePortfolio should be reflecting on their practice of teaching and learning, critiquing what they've done – what worked? what didn't work? what would they do differently? This cognitive or reflective component is crucial, as it allows the individual (and their peers) to learn from both success and failure.

Dossier vs. "Live Document"

Dossiers

Some traditional ePortfolio projects approach the ePort as a solution to an HR problem – to document capabilities of employees and students in order to streamline institutional business processes. That may be an important and valid goal, but it is not the sole (or even the primary) purpose of an ePortfolio.

Photograph by swanksalot

"Live Document" – dynamic stream/flow

If viewed separately from any institutional context, an ePortfolio is a live document that represents an individual (or, perhaps a group of individuals). A successful ePortfolio project may enable these individuals to document their practice of teaching and learning, and to record snapshots of personal and professional development. It is not a fill-in-the-blanks templated document, as each ePortfolio must be as unique as the individual it represents.

The most dynamic example of a "live document" ePortfolio is the "blogfolio" – using simple weblog publishing systems to allow individuals to easily document and share information, which is then categorized as belonging to the ongoing portfolio. This form of ePortfolio is the least rigid style, as it allows the individual to reuse bits of content already published to their weblog, in the context of an ePortfolio. As an example, all weblog posts tagged with "Noteworthy" on D'Arcy Norman's weblog

The structure of a live flow can be directed, but it is able to adjust to easily conditions (both internal and external) without arbitrary constraints (such as those imposed by an HR department).

Photograph by Mortalcoil

Background Information

The Teaching & Learning Centre has been involved with some ePortfolio-related projects, most notably a pilot project conducted by the Faculty of Education's Master of Teaching Program. This pilot was designed to evaluate the technical and pedagogical implications of an online ePortfolio, as well as a community website, as part of the MT curriculum.

We have also been fortunate to play a lead role in the development of the Pachyderm interactive presentation authoring software, which was used to create the published ePortfolios in the MT pilot project.

What is an ePortfolio?

Some of the issues regarding the description, creation, and use of portfolios are outlined below…

I have been tweaking some of the Drupal -powered sites used at the Teaching & Learning Centre, and in the process have updated the copy of TinyMCE that provides the WYSIWYG editor. While downloading the fresh library, I noticed a spellchecker plugin , so I grabbed a copy of that while I was there.

It seems to work great! It provides a new button in the editor, and clicking that triggers a call to the Google spelling service . Any mistakes are highlighted automatically and alternate spellings for these are provided by clicking on the highlighted word(s).

Very handy stuff. I've enabled it on some of our sites already, and will be rolling it out for the rest of them ASAP. Here's a screenshot of it in action:

The FlickrStickr module for Drupal adds the handy Flock-like Flickr Photo Browser, making it easy peasy to add photos from Flickr to content in Drupal. But, the module uses the PHP fopen() command, which is disabled on Dreamhost's servers for security reasons.

So, with some really quick hackery (more like copy-and-pastery, following this example) I ported the module to use curl instead, and it works great. It doesn't seem to be able to insert images into the TinyMCE editor, so you have to toggle back to text mode to insert an image (oh, the irony!)

Basically, the "port" involved changing this:

   $fp= fopen("http://www.flickr.com/services/...reallylongurltruncatedhere...", "r");
   while (!feof($fp)) {
      $buffer= fgets($fp, 4096);
      echo $buffer;
   }

to this:

   $curler = curl_init();
   $urlToCurl = "http://www.flickr.com/services/...reallylongurltruncatedhere...");
   curl_setopt($curler, CURLOPT_URL, $urlToCurl);
   curl_exec($curler);
   curl_close($curler);

There were 2 locations that needed changing. Just search for "fopen" and you'll find them. Use the same pattern of changes for both, and test before deploying.

Another quick test of drag and drop. This time, from a regular old page in Flickr , in a separate window, dragging an image directly into the TinyMCE editor in Drupal. It didn't automatically add the hyperlink, but that's still pretty easy…

 

Just kicking the tires of the latest milestone build of Flock. How 'bout some Flickr integration?

Yup Flickricious. Not quite as simple as the Flickr plugin for WordPress – have to keep 2 windows handy and drag-and-drop between them, but pretty cool.

The final penultimate test of any blog publishing app appears to be whether or not keywords/categories are applied. I'll try adding this to "flock" and "testing". If it's posted under "General" or without categories, you know the score… [OK. failed miserably at that. no idea why. could be a Flock thing, could be a Drupal thing...]

The final test off a blog publishing app is publishing edits to existing posts… [OK. That worked great.]

Since moving from WordPress to Drupal, my WordPress-integrated photo album is offline. In the meantime, please visit my Flickr account .

This page lists all of the images that are being used in the banner area of this weblog. I'm using a script to automatically and randomly select one of the images each time a page is loaded (but that may behave differently, depending on browser or caching). They are listed in chronological order, in the order they were added to the rotation pool – not the order they were taken. I'll be updating this page as I have time, to provide more information about each image – when/where/why was it taken? Why did I add it to the rotation pool?

Alcatraz and San Francisco Sunset

Took this during WWDC 2003, when I was doing some tourist stuff with Trevor. This was taken from the end of Pier 39, and shows Alcatraz and the north end of The Bay.

Backyard Panorama

This was taken from the back door of my house. It's an Autostitch panorama of 5 other images. It shows the portion of 12 Mile Coulee that runs behind my house, as well as Evan's stuff in the yard. Taken in the summer of 2005.

Kananaskis – Banff Gate

Taken on my Dad's 70th birthday, from their timeshare just outside of Canmore/Banff.

Kananaskis – Banff Gate 2

Taken on my Dad's 70th birthday, from their timeshare just outside of Canmore/Banff.

Kananaskis – Banff Gate 3

Taken on my Dad's 70th birthday, from their timeshare just outside of Canmore/Banff.

Mountains over Bearspaw

Taken from 12 Mile Coulee Road (about half a kilometer from my house), looking west to the Rocky Mountains.

Bearspaw Pano Oct 2005

Taken from 12 Mile Coulee Road (about half a kilometer from my house), looking west to the Rocky Mountains. An autostitch pano of several shots.

Bow Valley

Taken at Banff Gate, near Canmore.

Downtown Calgary Pano

An autostitch pano of several shots taken from the observation deck of the Calgary Tower.

Circus Bigtops

Taken before entering the 2005 Al Azhar Shrine Circus, held at Canada Olympic Park, in actual circus tents. My dad's a shriner, and is a clown, so he was working the circus.

Cochrane Hill Fence

Taken the day I got my Fujifilm camera, and I wanted to test it out a bit by taking a bunch of sunset shots from the top of the big hill in Cochrane. There's a bit transmission tower on top of the hill, and this was just beside that, looking north along the barbed wire fence. The sunset cast everything in this funky red/orange glow…

SF Coit Transamerica

Taken from the 36th floor lounge of the Grand Hyatt. The sun was reflecting perfectly off of the windows of the TA tower.

DeYoung New Guinea Masks

Taken at the DeYoung Museum's New Guinea collection, during the Pachyderm Year 2 Wrapup meetings in San Francisco, November 2005.

San Francisco De Young pano

Autostitch pano of photos taken from the observation deck of the DeYoung Museum's education tower. Looking north, over Golden Gate park toward the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands. Taken during the first day of the Pachyderm Year 2 Wrapup meetings in November 2005.

Diamondhead Waikiki Pano

After NMC2005, we hiked to the top of Diamondhead. I was carrying a 35 pound boy on my shoulders most of the way up (and down) so got an awesome workout. The view was totally worth it. This is another Autostitch pano of half a dozen other images. We were staying in a condo at the Ilikai – the blotch of blue building at the far west end of Waikiki.

Diamondhead from Waikiki

Taken from the lagoon at the Hilton, next to the Ilikai – looking over Waikiki toward Diamondhead.

Downtown Calgary – 2002

This was taken just hours before Evan was born, from the room he was born in. I wanted to capture what downtown Calgary looked like on that day, so he could look back in a decade or three and see what's changed…

Elbow Falls Pano

Another Autostitch pano, taken in the summer of 2005 at Elbow Falls, just west of Calgary, near Kananaskis Country. This is where we took Evan camping for the first time.

Exploratorium Foyer

Took this shot during a Pachyderm developer's weeklong meeting at Sonoma State University. We had an evening excursion to the Exploratorium in SF. This piece is in the main entrance foyer – a series of pillars carved to form an optical illusion. Not the best photo of it, but I thought it was pretty cool.

Grampa & Grandson

Taken in Oct 2005, at the Al Azhar Shrine Centre in Calgary.

Hanauma Bay

Taken after the NMC 2005 Summer Conference in Honolulu. We hopped on The Bus to go snorkling at Hanauma Bay. Pretty amazing place.

San Francisco Sutro Sunset

Taken on the last day of the Pachyderm year 2 wrapup meetings in San Francisco, November 2005. From the restaurant on the 36th floor of the Grand Hyatt San Francisco. Looking west, toward Sutro Tower, sunset and the Golden Gate Bridge. I liked how the lights of the city were just becoming visible, and the details of the buildings were still there. And the apocalypse in the west…

iPod Doom

My iPod, playing the iPodLinux port of Doom!

Magen's Bay – 1997

We got married on this spot on Magen's Bay, St. Thomas USVI in 1997. Must. Go back. Now…

U of C Prairie Chicken

This is a landmark on the U of C campus. I've been seeing this damned thing since 1987, so added it as a banner image as a token Image From Calgary

SF Hyatt Fountain map

Just outside the Grand Hyatt entrance, there is a cool fountain with an amazing relief map of the city. Don't know how old it is, but the details were pretty interesting.

SF Downtown Pano

Autostitch pano, again from the lounge on the 36th floor of the Grand Hyatt, during a Pachyderm meeting.

SFMOMA from Metreon

Taken during WWDC2005, from the patio of the Metreon. I loved how the reflecting pool caught bits of the Yerba Buena Center, and SFMOMA.

SFMOMA Second Floor Foyer

Taken outside the Koret Visitor Education Center at SFMOMA, during the second day of the Pachyderm Year 2 Wrapup meetings in November 2005. The museum was closed to the public, and this shot just jumped out at me as I was stretching my legs during a break in the meetings.

Solar Challenge 2005

The 2005 Solar Challenge finish line was at the University of Calgary. This photo is a close shot of the solar panels on top of one of the cars.

Stanley Park Pano

Taken from Stanley Park, Vancouver, during the NMC 2004 Summer Conference. We all had a blast hanging around in Vancouver (even if the boy didn't like the drive over the mountains very much)

Sulphur Mountain Pano 2

Another shot taken during the hike at the top of the gondola, overlooking Banff. This one is an Autostitch pano, showing the visitor centre on top of the mountain. I think one of the Bond villains actually lives here in the off season.

Sulphur Mountain Pano

Another Autostitch pano, taken from the top of the Sulpur Mountain gondola, looking down over Banff. Another hike where I had a large boy strapped to my shoulders

San Francisco Sunset

Taken from the restaurant on the 36th floor of the Grand Hyatt, overlooking Sutro Tower, towards the Golden Gate Bridge.

U of C Olympic Oval Torch Statue

Taken at the finish line for the Solar Challenge 2005. Shows the Olympic Torch and statue outside the main entrance to the Olympic Oval skating venue on campus.

Sunset over Utah

Taken from the Bombardier CRJ-700 on a flight back home from San Francisco.

Waikiki from Diamondhead

View of Waikiki Beach from the top of Diamondhead.

Waikiki Sunset

Yet another shot from Hawaii. The family was walking along Waikiki on a Saturday afternoon/eveneing, and near the east end (closest to the zoo), they have this food festival and movie right on the beach at sunset. We hung around for that, and I got this great shot of the sunset from the beach end of the pier.

Latitude XML Menu

Taken at Latitude's, in Rohnert Park, during a week long Pachyderm development meeting at Sonoma State University. The menu wasn't actually in XML, but Larry Johnson was using it as a prop to demonstrate some of the principles of XML parsing. He's a geek at heart

Yerba Buena Gardens Pano

Taken during WWDC2005, from the patio of the Metreon. I loved how the reflecting pool caught bits of the Yerba Buena Center, and SFMOMA. Autostitch pano of 4 other images.

Zoo Lights 2005

Some of the christmas light display at the Calgary Zoo.

Waikiki from Chuck's Grill

An awesome view from the patio of this restaurant. Best view in Waikiki.

Galleria Aquarium

In Honolulu, the Galleria Mall has a giant aquarium on one side of the building. Pretty impressive – especially for a mall.

Modules enabled on this copy of Drupal:

The colophon is a list of Drupal modules used to run this site. It’s generated by calling the module_list() method, and iterating over the output, so it’s a live reflection of what’s running right now.

$modulelist = module_list( FALSE, TRUE, TRUE, NULL);

echo '

‘;
foreach ($modulelist as $amodule) {
echo ‘
• ‘.$amodule.’

‘;
}
echo ‘

‘

/**
// Get current list of modules
$files = system_listing(’\.module$’, ‘modules’, ‘name’, 0);

// Extract current files from database.
system_get_files_database($files, ‘module’);

ksort($files);

foreach ($files as $filename => $file) {
if ($file -> status) {
drupal_get_filename(’module’, $file->name, $file->filename);
drupal_load(’module’, $file->name);

$file->description = module_invoke($file->name, ‘help’, ‘admin/modules#description’);

echo ‘

• ‘.$file->name.’: ‘.$file->description.’

‘;
}
}
*/
?>

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