Blog as Eportfolio: Part 3-Advantages and Disadvantages « Education with Technology Harry G. Tuttle

Blog as Eportfolio: Part 3-Advantages and Disadvantages

The advantage of a blog eportfolio is that it is easy to put up a blog. Most students have their own email so they can set up a blog quickly. They can individualize the appearance by selecting from many existing templates. A blog is a good tool for an eportfolio with much text.

There ae some disadvantages. The eportfolio can contain images. However, often those images are limited. Many blog programs do not allow video. Some allow audio with special programming. The student has to be shown how to set up the blog to limit access to it if it is a school eportfolio.

The student has to be more creative in showing improvements in their work such as their growth in their comparison writing. One way is for the student to write notes in parentheses such as ( ) to show the changes. For example,

Don Quixote’s love for Dulcinea is a fantasy love. He devotes all of his actions to her even though there is no real woman with the name of Dulcinea. (I added the “even though…” part to prove the fantasy concept). When he tells people he has saved to go to her town and praise her, he gives them the name of a town. El Toboso, that does exist. He describes her great beauty to others although the woman on whom he bases Dulcinea is not beautiful. (I decide to use the same pattern in each sentence to help the reader see the difference between the fantasy and reality.)

Most blogs do not allow for double column entries with one column being the original document and the other column being the students’ comments on their growth.

If the eportfolio blog is a private blog with limited access to invited people, the teachers can make comments on the students eportfolio.

What other advantages or disadvantages do you see in using blogs for academic eportfolios?

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7 Responses to “Blog as Eportfolio: Part 3-Advantages and Disadvantages”

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1 realstrings February 7, 2007 at 6:23 am

I was very interested to find your blog as I’m trying to get my head round eportfolios for FE music students. They have been building up portfolios in Moodle (online text assignments) but when they leave our institution they leave their work behind (unless they do a big copy and paste job), which is far from ideal.
The journal-based structure of blogs doesn’t suit the traditional models of researched presentations, though the ‘pages’ in blogs are perhaps more useful. I’m thinking of the pages being the presentation and the blog being the on-going notes and commentary. Am I anywhere near the mark? I came across a neat feature at FutureOfTheBook that allows for comments against individual paragraphs – more like inline comments or annotations on paper-based essays.
Certainly embedding video and audio are important – that’s one of the key selling points for an eportfolio, particularly for musicians. Edublogs.org and learner blogs.org allow this,
You’re in my feed and I look forward to reading more. http://pwhitfield.edublogs.org

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2 hgtuttle February 7, 2007 at 12:29 pm

You have raised a critical issue about what happens after they graduate in terms of their eportfolios. Some institutions want an exit eportfolio with the idea that the student will only want the information in that one format after they graduate.

We are using SAKAI/OSP (Open Source Portfolio) and have modified it to not only have the course management but also the eportfolio/blogging aspect. We can use a goal aware aspect to rate any proficiency and have a reporting tool that can produce the ratings of all faculty for a particular proficiency.

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3 Pete February 9, 2007 at 3:55 pm

There are some other interesting free tools as well. One that I’ve used is http://www.digication.com. You can create portfolios that are much better organized than blogs, and is also free.

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4 Ben Werdmuller April 2, 2007 at 2:55 pm

It’s worth noting that Elgg now has the presentation tool plugin; together, the mix of functionality allows for any kind of content, with a space for comments about the student’s growth, comments from tutors and peers, and so on. It’s also incredibly easy to use, which can’t be said of many eportfolio tools. check our blog for more information.

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5 Nganda Aidah Trevelynn April 7, 2009 at 5:08 am

I have liked the consistence you have shown while posting articles on your blog. This is very evident on your blog archives where you have articles on a monthly basis ever since you started up this blog in 2005.

This is still my challege as i try to use a blog for the assessment of my improvement process as i persue my masters of Vocational pedagogy.

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1 Blog as Eportfolio: Using Tags « Education with Technology Trackback on April 11, 2007 at 12:05 am
2 Setting up your blog « Mr.D's Blog Trackback on October 8, 2009 at 11:57 am

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Education with Technology Harry G. Tuttle