for - Design - portfolios - Dark Matter Labs

https://kiriska.com/blog/2022/your-website-is-useless/

Some general discussion about the value of having a portfolio on your own website in a social media driven world. Touches on the ease of use and user interface problems that are out there.

e-Portfolios

Caveat emptor. A lot of these "influencer" methods are leaving 30% or far more of their value with the platforms they're using for distribution. A better path is to build and promote your own platform and have a direct relationship with one's readers (in newsletter spaces, it's about "owning"/having your reader's email address). Some other newsletter options can be found here: https://indieweb.org/newsletter as well as methods for building and owning your own technology stack across its site. If nothing else, consider having a website where you can have a portfolio/archive of your work.

Careful watchers of the newsletter space will notice that almost all of the highlight examples on these services are established big names with pre-existing platforms and audience. Where are the stories of the other 99.9% and how well they're doing? Who is actually making a full time living doing this without a significant leg up to start? As examples, look for major writers leaving the New York Times to set up newsletters, or people like Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg leaving The National Review to set up The Dispatch (as a newsletter platform)—it's a good bet that they're getting a better deal from Substack than the average person. The NiemanLab has some relatively good coverage of some of this space. (Their annual predictions series also has solid forward looking coverage of the journalism/technology space: https://www.niemanlab.org/collection/predictions-2022/.)

(Apologies for lurking... 😅, but happy to chat technology/publishing with anyone interested.)

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Profile pages of annotation are a kind of this portfolio or a contribution.

Can annotation portfolios/profile be leveraged to this end? Students have an activity page that represents their engagement with reading and with each other. Maybe ask students to reflect on their contributions.

It’s a very specific dream, but it sounds like it’s shared by a lot of people.

Useful examples. Could imagine something like Wikity, FedWiki, or other forms of content federation to work through this in a much-needed upgrade from the “Personal Home Pages” of the early Web. Do see some connections to Sandstorm and the new WordPress interface (which, despite being targeted at WordPress.com users, also works on self-hosted WordPress installs). Some of it could also be about the longstanding dream of “keeping our content” in social media. Yes, as in the reverse from Facebook. Multiple solutions exist to do exports and backups. But it can be so much more than that and it’s so much more important in educational contexts.

Drupal seems to have outstanding community building and support practices.

http://drupalladder.org/ladders<br> Drupal Core Ladder "This ladder teaches essential skills for contibuting to Drupal 8 Core." This is the first time I recall seeing an open source software project with planned pathways for potential contributors.

Contributor profiles, Jobs, and Marketplace pages.

So it all comes back to self-directed learning again. As I've begun to think about this competency in our school, I've thought about how this might be something that is intertwined with all other competencies. In plain language, this might mean that students are always pulling back holding up a mirror (or taking a snapshot) of their learning/journey.

This is the goal -- or at least I think it is -- of competency, mastery-based learning and of open badges. One thing I love about looking at Alverno's 8 Abilities like I did this morning is to see two things: First, the over-arching 8 remain more or less the same for almost 40 years. And second, there is a constant revision, re-owning, re-thinking of the skills under each ot the abilities (thus the history of the changes).

This is real, and perhaps, a bit understated. When students are doing worksheets, filling in blanks, how can we ask them use them for self-expression (sonnet), self-reflection (mirror) or for making a plan (map).

But then, does this mean that we have to spend more time on creating conditions and projects for meaningful work before working on portfolios? Probably not, but this does remind me of how much gets revealed because of portfolios.

Seeing what's not there yet -- in our own curriculum -- is a big reason why teachers resist student portfolios, I think.

The purpose of criteria is not about judgment or meeting standards, it's a precursor for conversation or interaction between teacher and student.

The obvious paradox here is that the more "explicit" and digestible (student friendly) our criteria, the more a student can be independent in assessing her own work. That's a wonderful tension between top-down criteria and bottom-up assessment.

Profile pages need to act as portfolios to do this.

And dashboards for group activity could similarly give students a sense of where they're at in relation to classmates.

Versions of these questions would be good for us to consider in our portfolio panels.

What a powerful reason for asking students to keep and develop a portfolio: because we want you to see the progress you will make/are making, or at least see the changes and development of your work.

What a bracing shift it would be to ask students to consider their portfolios as something that is an expression "worthy of their time and effort." To treat the portfolio as another presentation of their work, for a real audience, and one that matters.

How can we begin to give students experiences of this kind of presentation of self/work in small ways, not just at the end when a portfolio is due.

This would suggest that a portfolio is a means of self-expression. Students should be encouraged to show who they truly are through a portfolio.

So I was just looking at a folder of work that a seventh grader wants to use in her portfolio. She came to me asking me to "approve" of the work. "Is this good enough for my portfolio in Independent Reading?"

It wasn't easy to get her to understand that I wasn't going to give approval or disapproval, and instead I asked her in as many was as I could think of to show me how the work show us something important about her ability to "have conversations online" (as our competency states) about her reading. Or more generally, I said, "Okay, so here are three responses to short stories that you have first drafts of. You do need to finish them, and as you do, think about what you want these to show about your unique, thoughtful ways of responding to literature."

We have work to do. But Mary Diez's metaphor here reminds me of how important it is to return the power of the portfolio to the student. It's not my approval of the work that matters, it's the student's ability to recognize and articulate her own sense of why this work matters, how it shows something important about herself.

There's a lot to learn about the leadership and vision shown by these questions and this process.

1. We want to know what the burning issues are in your field, and we want to know how you are dealing with these issues in your general courses and in the advanced courses.

2. What so important in your classes that everybody needs to learn it?

3. Let's forget credits and course requirements. Instead tell us what students need to know to be successful in your department.

4. Let's assume that your work with students is one piece of a larger picture. How do you think they might connect the work in your classes with their work in other classes? Let's think about the connections, not just hope they get there.

5. We value the liberal arts and professional learning. How do you see the two interacting.

The scheduled discussions make clear that this is a self-research project. This is what we need to do in schools at all levels.