Practical Portfolios

Obviously, from everything that we've learned in class and through our research, we all know that ePortfolios can be used in life. Personally, I think the way that they work best is in terms of self-evaluation, and also evaluation by a teacher in a classroom setting. For many ePortfolios, the purpose is to show a collection of work which highlights how a person has grown and changed over time through this very work. Often, interesting aspects such as video or audio sound bits, or links to an interesting website, or even just pictures, can be added to an ePortfolio to add a little bit of color, and also to animate the person's life and individuality more successfully. Then, as the ePortfolio continues to change with new additions, you can always look back on it to see how you yourself has changed, and to evaluate your own body of work. This is the part of making an ePortfolio that I personally am most interested in; I would like to have something interesting to look back on in the future which shows some of the work I have done in college. In terms of evaluation by a teacher, I think that this could be a very useful tool for grading and learning in a safe environment. The teacher can get an idea of what the students have been doing with their time and their ideas, and grade accordingly, keeping in mind levels of improvement and overall creativity.

In terms of using an ePortfolio for employment, I think that it really depends on your career. For certain people it might be extremely useful, such as teachers or artists, but for others, such as those working in the practical business world, I think that the helpfulness of an ePortfolio is probably limited. Theoretically, I think that it could be a very useful tool to show your work and your ideas, but in reality, I just don't think that many businesses would accept it as a reliable testament to what you have done, and I think getting it to them in the first place would be extremely difficult. For the time being at least, paper resumes most certainly rule over ePortfolios in the business world.