Explore the variety of tools that you might use to create an eportfolio. Educators use many different web-based tools to house their portfolio thinking, including blogs, wikis, websites and proprietary eportfolio platforms. For this play-testing assignment, please do not select blog sites to explore because you play-tested that technology last week. Select and play around with other technologies this week; however, you may consider how blogs could be used to create an eportfolio in this week’s reflection post. Please post your TechPlay 2 reflection on the blog you created last week. You do not need to re-submit your blog link.
You can and should explore the many free tools available as you make a decision about where you will host your own eportfolio. We’ve listed a few of many options:
Wikis – A wiki is a website that many people can edit. Most have controls so that the owner of the wiki can determine who can edit the page and who can just view the page. Many free wikis can be found through a Google search. Some are free to educators and their students.
Websites – You can use any of a broad array of creation and hosting tools that fit into this category. Free sites, such as Weebly or Google Sites, can do both. These online tools offer point-and-click design templates and content creation. However, some might have ads or unwanted content. Those of you with more technical proficiency might prefer to obtain your own domain and an HTML editor such as Dreamweaver or code your site with HTML to create your eportfolio.
Proprietary tools – eportfolio vendors (developers and sellers of proprietary software specifically for eportfolio creation, dissemination, and collection) often provide free trials to allow for play or tutorial videos that describe the wondrous capabilities of their tools (recognize that there’s some bias in their descriptions); these can be found with a Google search.