1. Google Sites – an excellent tool for student portfolios. (Also have students create their own Google profile.)

2. Portfolio houses artifacts and also includes links to YouTube channel, uStream channel, other PLN tools, e.g. wikis, blogs, Diigo, Twitter, FB, etc.

Overtime
The portfolio will grow (and be pruned) overtime.

Future
1. Wondering how the portfolio can be updated with QR codes, GPS, and apps reflecting a person’s experience/mobile learning.

2. A timeline generated of digital/online interactions/behaviors, which shows how a person has changed (or not) over time.

-Nichole

1. Knowing how to use social media – not just for oneself, but for a client (big distinction). LinkedIn and Twitter are at the top of the heap, but it doesn’t hurt to have a Facebook or Foursquare presence either.

2. A “professional” blog or website – which is regularly updated and shows an understanding of the medium; again: on behalf of oneself and a client.

3. An online AND old-school portfolio of design, media production, and writing work – it doesn’t matter where it’s posted, but they want a link that takes them right there with a minimum of “looking around.” The old-school “work in a leather-bound case” still has cache, as a chance for a student to show a potential employer what he or she can do, face to face.

4. Demonstrated use of mobile technology – mostly iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad and Apple-related stuff; students don’t need to show “programming” ability, but an understanding of app culture and its ever-expanding role in the world.

Lastly, ever potential employer in these industries wants young people – grads or not – to know how this stuff works, so they can educate everyone else, who may have lots more experience in traditional areas, but not online.

Remember that there are a variety of forces at work on shaping such a portfolio (parents, teachers, peers) and that the work should not be a goal in and of itself because then it will be one more thing to do (and therefore one more thing not to do). Some of the shaping of the portfolio by others will be overt and some covert and it is the self-awareness of this influence which will dictate how much or how little the portfolio will be a “true” representation of the student.

I just listened to a Leo Laporte podcast (can’t remember which one) and the panel was discussing how they thought social vetting of information will grow to be more important than a Google search. If this is true, it may change how our online presence is evaluated. What if our online conversations or our social circles are how we are evaluated in the future?

Embedded, student-created content

* What role will this play in “reputation management” or the personal brand of the student?

I think it should be the “go-to” when networking. Replace Facebook.

* What are the challenges and complexities of the process?

Students are not engaged with identity building in the same way educators are. Their identities arise naturally through social media and networked gaming. So, how do we inspire self-branding and self-promotion–what motivates?

* To what extent should educators have their own “g-portfolios”?

Well, I have one to document who I am, what I do–it’s my “go-to” site if you were to Google me. It usually comes up after my personal blog (which is pretty friendly, I always bear in mind I am a teacher) and Flickr.

* What are the best tools, sites, etc. to create and organize these portfolios?

I use Wikispaces but am experimenting with Google sites for next year.

Personally, I would love to teach my students how to be critical consumers of technology by detecting fake websites, responsible users of technology by setting up a gfolio and allow them to connect and share their resources with one another. Yet for my district I would have to pigeon hole this assignment into either expository or persuasive writing. I would love to change this and add a media literacy unit and teach students to write for a global audience. I also find Leslie Raffelson’s idea intriguing and would like to come up with a project where students develop their own brand and combine that with the gfolio.

I would love to hear what you come up with,
Christina

Branding is a new term.
I wonder what a lesson on building your own brand would be like. Study what a brand is and the reasons/history behind it, then develop what their own brand is(maybe a logo as well (art!)) and go on to establish what that brand means. Example: my brand is my copyright logo that I use with specific fonts and colors. More important is that it represents my work. I only use it on my photos, but I should be tagging ALL my online work with that brand and making it familiar and making things mine. Should students use this ‘brand’ to tag their work? I use a particular picture of me in all my social networking sites (twitter, nings, etc) and I keep them all the same. It is a choice to brand me with this picture so that people will become familiar with my face through a variety of media. Do we ask students to do that? Should we? How can we help students develop their own BRAND.

Or maybe, come to think of it, it’s a delicious tag. Or…

Fun to try to think of how it might work. But the underpinning to all of it is the conscious effort to transparently share your best work.

Thanks for the thoughts.

The “huge business” of social media monitoring is the business that schools should be in, no? We should be trying to put those guys out of business, in fact, right?