According to a post from his teacher, Dale Doubleday:

On a different note, those of you that attended the Dialog Day with Dr. Helen Barrett may remember one of the student panelists, Nestor Martinez. He is the art student that has been publishing his graphic design and painting work on his ePortfolio. His reflection on his work made him recently decide to continue to study, but in the area of painting, after he completed his AA degree in Computer Graphic Desing next month. The Phoenix College Art Department is proud to announce that Nestor received the Eric Fischl Merit Scholarship this past week. Eric Fischl came to Phoenix on Friday to personally hand out the Merit and the Eric Fischl Vangard scholarships. The Merit scholarship is $2500 award, based on academic achievement and financial need, designated to a student that is studying fine art at Phoenix College. Congratulations Nestor!

According to the college's press release, Eric Fischl is an internationally known artist who attended the college in the late 1960s.

Check out Nestor's work in his eportfolio, titled "Nestorious":
http://eport.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/published/n/ma/nmartinez/home/1/

Audree, who programs our eportfolio system available at Maricopa and her Chandler-Gilbert Community College has announced the upcoming availability of streaming media being built into the system (see latest ePortfolio enhancements, nicely published in an eport):

The (opensource) Darwin Streaming Server will be installed on all machines along with a set of opensource utilities called mpeg4ip.

The Quicktime client will be used exclusively (unfortunately, proprietary features preclude interoperability between streaming media servers and clients at this time). Quicktime is a standard player which is very easy to install.

When an ePortfolio user adds a Collection item or Document with an extension of mov,mp3,aac,mp4v,mp4,avi,mpg,mpeg, they will immediately be taken to a "Streaming ePort Page". This is similar to what happens when ePort users upload .html files  - they are immediately taken to an 'Upload Image/Reference' eport page.

(Actually Darwin is not even needed on our box since it is an Apple XServe ;-)

But there is more. Chandler-Gilbert Physics faculty David Weaver has been bitten by the podcast bug, and started asking for support for it within the eportfolio tool (more on this later, but David is using an eportfolio in lieu of a course management system!). It took Audree less than 24 hours to add the necessary RSS enclosures to the feeds produced by the eportfolio tool.

So for example, David has built a podcast collection in his eportfolio and the RSS feed has the needed tags to make it work as a podcast:
http://eport2.cgc.maricopa.edu/cgi-bin/syndicateXML.cgi?eportid=weaver.

I think David was one of the first (and always one of my favorite) faculty I met on the job here at a 1992 Ocotillo Retreat at Mormon Lake, AZ, He has always been someone to (thoughtfully, but quickly) jump into new technologies-- in 1994 after turning him onto HTML and Mosaic, it was just a matter of weeks before he was creating web pages for his students and having his students create their own web pages. But he's not just an eager techie, he is first and foremost a talented and engaging teacher. I always enjoyed hearing from him after his yearly Physics conferences where he learned of a new approach and almost on schedule he would be re-inventing his teaching strategies. Its almost like his teaching is a continued experiment in better ways to help students learn Physics- check out his eport for some of the innovative projects and approaches he has used over the years. And he in turn is helping as as co-chair of the Ocotillo ePortfolio Action Group.

I have not exhaustively researched this, but I have not heard of any eportfolio tool out there that has podcasting support built into it. This is in addition to unique tools Audree has in place, including RSS Feeds for all ePorts and the entire eport server, optional email notiifcation of any eport updates, weblog tools built into an eportfolio, a quiz/survey tool, spell checking built into every entry form, and as noted above- streaming media support. The she has built this apparently is modular enough to add new features as needed/requested.

But let's get back to podcasting in an eportfolio-- where might this lead? Why not have students post audio recorded reflections? Wouldn't this be more impactful than what one can write in words? Audio blogging? How about audio feedback from an instructor or other students to a student's portfolio items? There could be new items students can add such as examples of their work for speech, communication, foreign language courses.

Podcastin' eports! Woooooooooooooooo the the technology ride just keeps accelerating! Keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times.

One of the two major highlights, beyond Helen's expertise and storytelling weaving, was our panel discussion with 5 Maricopa students eportfolio experiences to share. Rather than summarizing, I am noting that by early next week, I will have the 50+ minute audio available as an mp3 cast (it is processing now in Audcacity). Okay, that was too easy-- here is a 12Mb audio mp3 stream of the panel:
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/dd/eport05/student_panel.mp3

I also have lots of pictures, and the progress might have been better but one of my digital camera media cards got corrupted as there were only 34 images out of 100+ I knew I took. Ouch... I knew something funky had happened when I switched out my batteries.

But a little googl-ing got me to PhotoRescue software, where the downloadable demo showed me that it could read the missing images, so after ordering it ($20), I was able to resurrect the lost images.

Another highlight was our 10 station demo session over lunch, where the 5 students plus 4 Maricopa faculty/staff and Helen gave informal demos to small groups. It was an extremely active session and we had a hard time getting folks to sit back down.

The afternoon covered the process fort faculty eport development, and we closed with a nice visioning discussion on the possible, probable, and preferable futures of eportfolios. I know this is vague, but Helen promises to soon post her presentation, and we will soon add some of the supplemental materials she provided us.

Bottom line is we have a bunch of new people energized to try their hands at eport-ing.

Whew!

The day's agenda is split-starting with a morning focus on student ePortfolios, with Helen presenting on her recent work connecting digital storytelling and eports, but the highlight (sorry Helen) hopefully will be a student panel we are assembling with 5 Maricopa students who are now or recently have been building ePortfolios. We are planning on capturing the audio of this discussion to be able to post online.

Over lunch we are planning on setting up computer stations with a collection of Maricopa ePortfolios available for viewing, as well as having the student panel members and other faculty present be on hand to share their experiences.

The afternoon shifts to discussions of faculty portfolios, with another session led by Helen plus some group activity. We are planning a followup event in mid April where those who are eager to get started can have a hands on experience with an ePortfolio system, and hopefully between now and then they will be accumulating or reflecting on what they want to bring as artifacts.

Mostly we are eager and pleased that Helen was willing to travel to Arizona in the middle of winter (!), seriously, we are fortunate to have an expert of her caliber coming here, and I know she is a dynamic speaker for faculty and students.

Out of those 1100, probably 200 are there as direct result of online reports to other electronic systems, maybe 60 are things we have entered in other people's names so we could populate web sites with content (see how the winners of the Innovation of the Year program are pumped from the MLX to its own site).

The same goes for an ePortfolio platform, developed at one of our colleges, that we have had running for more than a year. The take up for a free system has been, well sluggish, with 45 published titles sitting there (counting one of mine and one by some guy named "Biff")

So let's here it for surprises from unexpected places. A few days ago I got an email:

John Arle suggested I contact you. I am an adjunct at Phoenix College and my MGT276/Human Resources course will be fully online this coming Fall. I am interested in building a package for the MLX warehouse. John has indicated that this has many purposes including helping me market the course as it will be searchable on Google.

If you don't mind, could you reply when you get the chance and let me know what I need to do in order to get this process started? And if I need any approvals from my dept chair I can get that going as well. I'm sure she'll be supportive.

One last question. I also found something called Maricopa ePortfolio, which appears to be separate from MLX. Is that true? What are the differences, do you know? Should I build both?

I responded with some URLs for our getting started materials in both the MLX and the Maricopa eP, and let her know it was all self service.

In less than 2 days, she had already produced a nicely formed eportfolio for her class materials, and then she listed this as an item in the MLX:

I just wanted to let you know that I set up both my ePortfolio and MLX sites and to compliment you and your team. These sites are very user friendly! I couldn't believe how easy it was to set these up. And I'm very pleased with the results.

Just wanted to say "thanks" and "kudos" to you. If you have any feedback on what I've done, please feel free. I've pasted my links below.

http://eport.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/published/j/is/jiskiyan/home/1/
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/mine.php?id=585

I just have to say wow. An adjunct faculty has done more in 2 days than... well a lot of other, full time, experienced faculty.

Wow, and thank you Jill for restoring some of my faith.

Not so evident on the front page of site is a fantastic resource where she has taken the same portfolio content and used it in 22 different eportfolio systems-- this is detailed specifically at Versions of my Online Portfolios.

I am exploring different online portfolio systems, free web server space or other strategies for developing online electronic portfolios. My purpose is to find options that are most appropriate for high schools and average individuals who are not associated with a higher education institution. Below are the versions that I have developed so far. Each one includes a reflection on how I developed the original portfolio content using an Excel Spreadsheet, using comments to record my reflections on why I selected each of the 21 artifacts. I assigned them to categories, and created collections or pages for each category. Most of my online portfolio is in a text format right now, partly because of the online publishing medium and partly because I did not want to put a lot of new large graphic files online.As I try other tools, the capability to add images will be explored. Three of my artifacts are digital video clips that I have already posted online.

She not only provides the sample portfolios as links and PDFs, but also reflections, pros cons, and a feature chart. This is a must look site for anyone involved with eportfolios,

You have to respect her approach to doing this process, by first outlining the structure and artifacts for her portfolio via an Excel Spreadsheet so that the portfolio is designed first by content and purpose, not led by the technology or a particular system.

Helen truly is a gem of a resource on approaching eportfolios from an educational perspective, where the tools and technology are subsidiary to the purpose. She has some new material making a connection and overlay between eportfolios and digital storytelling.

I first met Helen at some NECC conference when I was a techie baby on the block in the 1990s, and we have crossed paths at conferences and online since then. We are very excited to be bringing her to Maricopa in February for a Dialogue Day on Electronic Portfolios.

Dale Doubleday, our Ocotillo ePortfolio Action Group co-chair, has had her ART289 (Computer Illustration) students post to their ePs examples of their work, and use the weblog feature to invite a place for commentary. See "~*~ILluStrAt!On GaLlErY~*~ ", and the commentary section this student has set up. Or Steve has a wide range of photos posted, as does Sarahi. One can see that there has been some structure suggested by the instructor, but the students take some of their own divergent means to represent their work.

A more comprehensive type of portfolio has been created as an entire overview of the Storytelling INstitute at South Mountain Community College. which include a wide range of resources, information on classes in the program, and even a survey.

Jill's just out of the gate eP has some materials related to her role as a librarian.

As an instructional technologist at one of our college, Jennifer's eP is meant to show the various features available in the system.

Another Art teacher, Gail, has a beautiful showcase of samples from her glass fusion class, and her slide show demonstrates nicely the steps in a workshop.

And a guest, the "grandmother" of eportfolios, has graced us with a most excellent example. Thanks Helen!

This is just taking off- the college in our system that created this tool reports more than 1000 ePs running on their site.

Some messages of inquiry about the legendary beast in question bounced around the AAHE Electronic Portfolio Action Committee. As much as I believe in the concept of Blackboard's content management system, and see how it provides a platform for potential eportfolios, I am left Google-less in actually trying to find one I can see. Is the only one out there the one Bb snapped for Lisa Smith?

Maybe I am looking in the wrong places. Maybe they cannot be seen outside the Blackboard fence. Maybe they are all un-published. Maybe Bigfoot and Nessie have munched them all. I just do not know.

I am not slamming Blackboard's technology or content system, but more that there has been talk of this for at least a year, and I cannot even find one blurry photograph to believe in. If I was running a corporate site, I would stock it with a pile of real concrete examples.

Now about those alien landing sites....

The University of Denver Portfolio Community is a comprehensive electronic portfolio system that supports individual, course, and community portfolios and curriculum assessment. This session will discuss the DUPC's development and lessons learned during its implementation and compare it to other electronic portfolio systems..

Began work in mid 1990s in school of communication. No commercial products then, so they did a home grown system.

Note to presenters- Nearly all presentations wade through word slides of background info, etc before getting to a rushed and hurried demo. Always start with the demo, give us a visual. grab our attention.... then wade through the bullet points.

It has been sitting there, ready to serve since last Spring. Few takers.

But now things are picking up. Some Computer Graphic Art Students at Phoenix College are just getting started setting up a first batch of student ePs. Another one of our colleges is holding a faculty demo alter this month. And our Ocotillo ePortfolios Action Group will be sharing this widely in their upcoming activities.

And Helen Barrett, the "grandmother" of electronic portfolios (her words) has been one of our most active guest users in creating a comprehensive eP in a short period of time-- this is great as Helen will be visiting Maricopa in February 2005 for an ePortfolio Dialogue Day.

And I decided to get off my lazy behind and put some new content in my own eP, building a new collection in about 25 minutes with articles I have written the last few years for our internal publication. Someone e-mail Biff Cantrell, as his eP is pretty dusty.

Good action is brewing.

This year, we ripped the page right out of the Small Pieces Loosely Joined concept and built a system to support our four action groups that will lead activities and projects on:

• Learning Objects
• ePortfolios
• Hybrid Course Structures
• Emerging Learning Technologies

Each group publishes their activities, findings, ideas on a weblog. Each group also has a wiki of its own to build collaborative resources, and a discussion board to have "conversations" (previously alluded to in July 2004).

The map sort of looks like:

larger image

So four groups times a blog,, wiki, and board = 12 information sources.. plus a blog for the General faculty Ocotillo chair and we have it all tied together with RSS or RSS-like feeds to present a dashboard view of all the activity... we call Ocotillo Central:

http://graphite.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ocotillo/

This week we've announced to our system the new setups via an online kickoff event. We have short video welcomes from the 8 faculty co-chairs, plus our Chancellor, 2 Vice Chancellors, a Dean, and the faculty general chair. These have been set up to be available in QuickTime, Real, or Windows Media streaming formats. The ideas is to give our people an idea who is leading this initiatives, and why they are important, and then ask them to join in on some discussions via our web boards.

Well, the action has been okay, but slow. People are reading the boards, and we can see a number of account created there, but there is not a whole lot of discussion... so to set some things into frothy motion, I am inviting any CogDogBlog readers to join in-- as our intent all along was to have this system by open to people inside and outside of Maricopa.

So here it is. Visit the Virtual Kickoff at:
http://graphite.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ocotillo/kickoff.php

where there are instructions for how to use the discussion boards. The boards are open to the world to read, but to participate, you must register to create an account (and confirm via an auto generated email).

So come on in and stir things up. Who knows what will happen.

We have been working on getting people who have experience or expertise in these areas to join us as "guests" for topical discussions in the web boards. Contact me if you want to be a virtual guest.

I showed them a mocked up fake ePort, and then we just created new content on the fly.

They were ecstatic at how easy the system was to use, yet flexible to be a container for a wide variety of content types. Every time they asked, "How would you do ______?", there was a feature to answer them. Yup, it can be archived to a ZIP and put on CD. Yup, you can restrict portfolio pages by password. Yup, you can change the page colors at any time.

And they really liked not needing to know any HTML to create this content. Sweet.

As an experiment, I had asked my colleague, Eric, not a technologist, to add to the "fake" eport-- the only instructions I gave was to log in, yet he was very comfortable in creating new content, editing what I had written, adding new linked documents...

This group was excited, so I am hoping to see some nice portfolios fill out over they year-long internship.

Audree Thurman, the clever programmer of this nifty system, had developed a nifty approach for RSS feeds. There is a web page version (human readable) for changes among all the portfolios, there is the geeky, orange icon labeled RSS version, and you can also sign up to get notifications by email when a specific eportfolio has changed (e.g. so a teacher can monitor a number of student eports). See the details under her posted "enhancements" summary.

Anyhow, I had plotted to put the RSS feed on the front page, and forgot about actually doing it. So I was able to rather quickly use the Feed2JS version that generates the content via a PHP include. I will likely end up making this a cron (timed) job that runs it every 15 minnutes, so the include is just a static file.

But I was also interested in creating part that would pick a published eportfolio and random and insert a link on any page I needed. I wrote Audree this morning and asked if she could write a script that would update a text file with a tab delimited format for each eportfolio's Owner name, their college, and its URL. With this, I can easily have a PHP include that sucks the data into an array, counts' em, and picks one at random. She wrote back in about 15 minutes and said it was done.

So now, the new and improved Maricopa eP site has both of these dynamic features:
    http://eport.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/

We are expecting this site to bust out of the seams as our Ocotillo ePortfolio Action Group ramps up this year. There ought to be much better ePortfolios than that one by Biff Cantrell.

So not only can you create a survey to exisit inside an eP, you can publish the results-- I just whipped them up from the tool, and cleaned it up as HTML, and loaded it as a Templated document type- here are the Big ePort Survey Results certainly nothing to hang a PhD on.

But think again what we have here- this ePort is a container for all kinds of items.

Over the last few weeks, she has added new tools and features, based on faculty and student input, especially since at her college, the use of it has grown wider into a personal publishing system as well.

The first new thing is the ability to create an item type that is a survey or quiz. At first I scratched my head trying to figure out why such a thing would be embedded into an eP, but one could use it as a way of collecting feedback from peers or teachers, or it could be used as a course tool by faculty, or ....

So I quickly added a 3 item survey on "What is an ePortfolio?" to my eP play pen- if some of you readers out there would be so kind to respond to its deep probing questions, I can later share you what you can do with the results.

The other enhancement is a method to build a hierarchy of portfolio pages, again at the request of a faculty member at another one of our colleges. This makes sense as the tool more or less lodges all portfolio items into one drop down menu, and that could become unwieldy over time. So the new feature is an ability to have one item in that menu actually link to a whole collection of other portfolio pages.

A neat new example from our South Mountain Community College is an eP that describes their Storytelling Institute. The menu link for Storytelling Faculty brings up one of the "Collection" pages, but this time rather than a collection of files or documents, each item there is a link to another ePortfolio item (that then does not have to hang in the main menu).

It is not easy to describe, but Audree has listed some examples in her ePortfolio Enhancements collection whihc includes other minor new features- an ability to automatically have all changes published (previously, one made changes or added content, and then had to manually clicka button to make the changes visible), and to assign a password to individual pages... again at the request of faculty

Have you tracked a theme yet? The features in this tool are not dreamt up by programmers or academic theorists, but in the trenches teaching faculty, and they are being nicely integrated into the system as needed.

Does your expensive enterprise CMS do that for you?