Educational Technology Investigations

These are some of the proprietary tools and websites I investigated for my graduate level educational technology class and my thoughts regarding each of them as potential hosting sites for an eportfolio.

Evernote is a virtual notebook that could be used as an eportfolio. It can be taken anywhere someone could take a real notebook or portfolio. Data can be conglomerated and shared with others. Like many other sites, the platform offered some advanced options with a paid premium service ($5 per month or $45 per year) - which are necessary if data is going to be shared or photo and video content saved. There is a degree of protection of data within the system, however, as with all electronic media a person would do well to have backup copies of everything. It does require a person to download the software and the software is compatible with many operating systems, even mobile devices. Evernote does reserve the right to change their software at any time, of course, potentially causing problems for those who wish to use this tool. On one hand I did not particularly like the selling point of dependence upon evernote for all my information. Security concerns are an issue for me plus I prefer to keep much of my data private. On the other hand, I do like the central nature of this site, especially for organizationally challenged students - who seem to perpetually lose everything I hand them. Digital copies that would allow them to edit and save work would help them keep track of things. I imagine that some are using similar mobile apps already. Evernote does synchronize across devices.

Digication was a proprietary site I investigated and the cost to host an eportfolio is reasonable for a teacher at $34.95 per year. It was advertised as providing unlimited storage space and looked like a potential contender but I did not sign up for the demo. It operates in a protected environment that could potentially used by students. One drawback to me was that it seems plain and not really as customizable as some of the other sites such as weebly, wix, or sites.google.com. It was also not free.I cannot see very many of my students using this tool because it is somewhat lacking in what I think would be visually appealing to them.

Yola is another free site that could accommodate an eportfolio. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. Free = 2 choices of design styles and limit of 3 pages total. Upgrade options ranged from $5.95 to 24.95 per month with data limitations of 5MB on the low end and 150MB on the high end. I would venture that most teachers would not want to pay $300 per year to showcase a portfolio, even for the purpose of finding a job. They might pay $72, but I doubt it since there are other free sites for professionals that offer more choices and do not require such fees. The stock design choice was very disappointing, especially compared to wix and weebly(which I investigated last week and posted about in my blog already). Affordance for uploading images, video, and written content was much more straightforward with yola than some of the other websites and I was disappointed that I was going to have to pay if I wanted more options. I really liked the minimalistic clean look of this site, but not the limited number of choices in design. I do not think my students would pay to get more options, especially when free sites offer similar services.

Sites.google.com was a platform I addressed briefly in my blog last week. It could host an eportfolio as well. I played with the tool again and I was reminded of why I dismantled a previous website I hosted for my students. The interface is still not user friendly and I tried for hours to put together a site that was taking me just minutes on other platforms.  Ugh! No.Just No.

The hosting site I eventually chose for my eportfolio was wix.com. If I were going to ask my students to create a portfolio I would request that they strongly consider this site as a host service for their creations. First of all, it is free. Second, it is very user friendly and can be made into whatever you need - a business website, an eportfolio, a vlog, etc . It can be upgraded if necessary, however; the many free options would probably be ample for the novice website owner, student, or education professional in need of a hosting site for their eportfolio.

What I like most about wix is the unlimited number of pages and subpages that I can craft. My site looks customized even though I selected from one of the hundreds of stock templates as a starting point. There are more than adequate numbers of color schemes and backgrounds already provided or I can upload and create my own. The font selections are more limited but still agreeable. There were clear instructions for adding text, pictures, video content and apps. All of the icons I mouse over tell me exactly what they do - user friendly! The editing tools for the text are similar to the ones in the Microsoft Office suite, with which most people are familiar. All in all, the platform looks professional and unique, like I crafted it myself from code that I wrote. The biggest bonus is that for absolutely no cost it helped me create something that I would be pleased to call my own and it did not require me to know html to do so! 

Here is the beginning of my eportfolio site: http://shonamck.wix.com/foodforthought 

It is live, but it is also a work in progress and I do not have any artifacts loaded yet. Please share your thoughts  and experiences with eportfolios, I would love to hear about them!