1. Reflections on: My Purpose and Goals for a Digital Portfolio
I have followed my initial purpose and goals for my web-based portfolio (See my Portfolio Rational Design). I found the process quite challenging but also rewarding as I watched the linked website and blog grow in complexity and variety of content. I rather like having ‘a presence’ on the web!
Although the website pages are following my original intent to “design a portfolio in which to plan, record, share, reflect, and document my professional growth as a teacher,” I struggled with the placement, uploading, and effective operation of several of the offered tools. I chose to use an online web design tool but, although paying for a slight upgrade, have found it fairly restrictive despite its obvious conveniences. It is not simple, for example, to delete an item after it is posted on the site but it is easy to upload, say, images and videos. I imagine I may change this part of my portfolio quite substantially on my actual return to teaching and will include more education related content and concerns. I will use an alternate web design application at that time. Having said that, I have certainly learned much about the use of such tools and how to ‘tinker’ within the context to solve initial challenges.
On the other hand the collaborative wikis included in the portfolio have been a wonderful platform for working and sharing with my group. I am certainly an advocate for their use when I return to my own teaching situation. As a group we have become more adventurous and exploratory in using these sharing tools for our project as we added Skype conversations and 'alert' emails to our discourse methods! I am determined to continue using a blogging tool as I continue in my career. I enjoy sharing ideas and questions with (I hope one day) an interested audience who may add their perspectives to the offered discourse. It has also encouraged me to explore the many applications freely available on the Internet and allowed me to experiment a little with their use. I certainly have more awareness of the web community. As I stated in my original rational, I hope that these explorations will help me to “better understand the potential, possibilities, and pitfalls in utilizing various digital learning technologies for myself and for my students.”
Another challenging aspect has been the need to remain aware of who will be viewing my web postings, thoughts, and images. It is certainly very easy to post for oneself and to forget that this is indeed a very public space. Several times I recognized the need to revise the way I expressed something or decided to remove an image/video/comment, just in case it is not received in the way I intended.
2. Reflections on: Content to Include in the Web-Based Portfolio
I followed my original intent in this area. I posted an introductory page, a statement about my educational philosophy and beliefs, plus a brief résumé and outline of my professional experiences so far. I do think I will revisit and revise much of this content in the near future. For example, I have yet to give an outline of my recent professional development experiences and a record of particular courses. In addition, I have yet to provide explanations around the student project examples given. I need to decide what is actually appropriate, safe, and of relevance to share in this public space. I wonder how much detail is enough? I am concerned that some information may need password protection, such as details around my education. Am I sharing too much personal information online? This thought has restricted which elements of my previous students' work I deem reasonable and fair for me to share. I certainly selected only those artifacts that did not contain students’ images, which is rather sad in a way. I linked my Web site to my blogs and to my group's wikis and project items. I plan to link to the blogs of some of my peers who may grapple with similar issues to myself and therefore we can learn from each other.
3. Reflections on: Elements of Interface Design
Although I began with a rough concept map of the navigational structure I hoped to design for my portfolio, I am still making changes as I go along. Either I decide something is superfluous to my intent, or, I have yet to learn how to include it at this point. For example, Jakob Nielsen suggests that a search function should be included on the website and, at this time, I have not discovered how to actually include it!
I revised my ‘Homepage’ in response to guidelines from Design Guidelines for Homepage Usability. Here Nielsen states that this page is “the face to the world” and should make clear who I am, what I do, and what this site is about. Originally I had not included a ‘Tagline’ in association with the title. I have since added this in order to summarize, as best as I can, why this site exists. I also changed the content included on this page and moved the ‘About Me’ to a separate link, again as Nielsen suggests.
Sadly, I still have not discovered how to include an ‘Archives’ section or a ‘Recent Features’ component as Nielsen also proposes. Perhaps I need to design my website in software such as Dreamweaver which may allow more options and control over the features I can include? The eBlogger site compiles my blogs into an archive but I cannot discover how to do this using Webs for my website.
I aimed to use meaningful graphics, especially as part of my blogs. This afforded me the opportunity to try out other creative digital tools and sharing platforms. I hope I actualized the guidelines, recognizing, as Nielsen states,
When you use graphics to purposefully illustrate content, you can greatly enhance a homepage. On the other hand, graphics can weigh down the design in visual clutter and slow download times, so it's important to use them judiciously and edit them for the Web.
In addition, as explained in The Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines , I was deliberate in arranging navigation around each section of the web-based portfolio as a simple and intuitive process (Ch.1, p. 3). I focused on maintaining balance in the amount of ‘white space’ occurring between paragraphs, images, and videos. I agree with those users who prefer a moderate amount of such space. It is much easier to read a lot of text online when built in ‘eye breaks’ are provided (Ch.6, p. 55). One of my goals was to provide guiding titles for web pages and blog postings in order to garner interest and point to the possible content. This follows the suggestion to “Put a descriptive, unique, concise, and meaningfully different title on each Web page” (Ch. 9, p. 78).
My family was, and is, my user testing group of five. They initially helped to decide on color contrasts for text and backgrounds and the size and style of text for ease of reading. Even though the unofficial suggested colors are black text on white background, my family and I think our choices are both effective and pleasant to view (Ch.11). Finally, I attempted to use an engaging writing style given the public arena of the Web, and to act on the writing guidelines as detailed in The Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines (Ch 15) because “Content is the most important part of a web site” (Ch. 15, p. 158).
4. End Note Restated
Whilst this project represents a fair amount of time to be invested and much ongoing work, I do hope that I will be able to continue its development and effective use as I continue in my graduate courses and ultimately return to my own teaching context.
