Posted by bob_irving on May 8, 2008 at 7:10pm
I'm doing some long-range planning/thinking and wondering if anyone has any ideas or suggestions for how to use Drupal for an eportfolio.
Since I'm at the beginning stages of this brainstorming, by eportfolio I mean -- an online spot where a student can blog (reflect), have rss feeds, photos, video, and display their best work. I see it as an ongoing process, so the blog will be a place where they can reflect on their work as they do it. I'm inspired by the moment by this blog post http://wpmued.org/2008/05/07/this-ain%E2%80%99t-yo-mama%E2%80%99s-e-portfolio-part-1/.
Comments
We made one last year,
We made one last year, primarily with the help of the taxonomy_access module and the buddylist module (buddies were the student's mentor and anyone else they wanted to share with). I don't think the profile I made at the time ever got to be a plugin solution, but if you're interested in going down that route I can dust it off.
Re: Drupal and eportfolios
I think there is a great deal of potential here, and the blog post you mention shows that Drupal is in the center of quite a bit of this discussion.
We've been working along similar lines, so as you brainstorm, you might find useful some of the information on our drupal based collaborative sites platform, and the associated builder's guide that we're gradually putting together. It is far from complete, but we're doing our best to document the work as we go!
The collaborative sites platform is a quick way for our instructional technology consultants to put together collaborative sites for instructors. We've used it to rapidly develop course portfolios as well as literary analysis sites and collaborative writing spaces.
If you haven't seen it already, EduGlu is also certainly worth a look, particularly if you're planning to bring student work from other sites into the e-portfolio.
Two screencasts, one on EduGlu at darcynorman.net, and a second on the Feed API + Emfield Recipe at drupal therapy were very helpful as I put together a little EduGlu proof of concept site recently.
doug
~~~
doug worsham
http://lss.wisc.edu/~doug
http://unionblend.uniblogs.org/
Portfolios and Drupal
Drupal offers a wealth of possibilities here -- we implemented eportfolios for a client at the university level back in the Dark Ages of Drupal 4.7 :) -- our solution then used both taxonomy and nodereferences, and created the nodeorder module
Our solution both mapped portfolio artifacts to standards, and included a feedback workflow on artifacts allowing instructors give feedback and to flag an artifact as approved, needing review, etc.
@Bob -- RE the eportfolio post you link to -- that post is by Jim Groom (aka the Reverend), and he blogs at Bavatuesdays -- the post you linked to is an aggregated copy -- the comment thread on his original post is well worth the read.
FWIW, if you are looking into eportfolios, you also might want to look at nodequeue -- there has been some talk about giving each user a nodequeue which could effectively be used as a portfolio.
When you are building out a portfolio app, another question to address is whether the portfolio artifacts are distinct/different than the daily work -- ie, is the portfolio effectively a blog, providing an overview of process, or is the portfolio a reflective tool, allowing for comment on selected elements over time. The second option would probably be met most effectively using taxonomy and node references, and you'd also want to make sure you are using the theming layer effectively to lay out your portfolio artifacts --
RE Eduglu/aggregation sites: they are really pretty straightforward to set up -- the feedapi is an amazing piece of work. I built out a couple sites a while back and blogged the details -- some of these sites were actually in response to other posts by Jim Groom and D'Arcy Norman, among others --
http://www.funnymonkey.com/aggregation-proof-of-concept
http://www.funnymonkey.com/aggregation-and-crow
http://www.funnymonkey.com/mini-edu-rss
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey