I hadn’t planned on getting my writing life in order today, but then I somehow happened on this post by Michele Martin on using Delicious to create an online portfolio. Since I have a couple of articles due out this fall (and a couple of new books in the works), I decided a good place to start getting my brain around the idea was with all of the off-blog writing I’ve done the past few years, and so, there went a couple of hours. After wading through it all, it turns out I was able to locate online 35 of the 40 or so pieces of published writing I’ve done (at least the ones I can remember.) Anyway, I gave them all a tag, and now when you pull up the associated page in Delicious, you can see them all in one quick swoop.
A couple of observations here: First, while I know there are parents who are choosing their kids names based on whether or not the domains are available, (which is ridiculuous, btw) I’m thinking it may be good to choose a tag early on. I’ve started using tessorichardson and tuckerarichardson for the stuff I post about my own kids, and I’m thinking they might continue to use that tag as they begin creating and posting their own stuff as well. Second, what I like about this is that because of the RSS feed, people who might be interested can track my work and I can repurpose it elsewhere, say on a Pageflakes page (which could also serve as a portfolio, btw.) Third, as Michele says, the easy to update part of this is really intruiging. For instance, I might want to do this whenever I read generous reviews of my book, (forget the bad ones…(0:) or when excerpts of my presentations end up online. Just create a bit of a different tag, like “willrichardsonbookreviews” or “willrichardsonpresentationclips” etc. And then, I could use the bundles function to bring them all together (or, of course, I could just add a catchall tag like “willrichardsonportfolio”.)
Dunno if this has any earth shattering significance, and I’m sure many folks are already playing with variations on this theme, but I think the ease of doing this once you have it set up makes it worth a second or third thought.
(Photo “Footprints” by andy 5322.)
Speaking of footprints…
Did you catch the non-digital pyrotechnic footprints at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics? It was a powerful reminder that we’re all on journeys of some sort, coming from some place and going to another.
The power to search the body of one’s work is compelling… I suspect that the future generation will be better informed (if not overwhelmed!) by their collective and individually archived digital footprints. Using foresight to tag them for retrieval is definitely an idea worth sharing!
Thanks for the post. I have been doing the same thing since I read Michele’s post. What I love about it is that it is quick and easy. I now feed that delicious tag into my eportfolio. I put a comment with the reference to explain anything of relevance to support the citation. It is so much quicker that writing/typing everything out long hand.
Will, I really like the idea of repurposing the feed into a Pageflakes or Netvibes tab. That could be a great way to aggregate eportfolios for a class. I also like your use of more detailed tags, differentiating between different kinds of work. Thanks for taking this idea and running with it!
Hi Will, I’m exploring using my b2evolution install (which powers my blog) as a means of creating my portfolio. It’s going to be used to support my CMALT application (http://www.alt.ac.uk/cmalt.html).
b2evolution lets you create as many blogs as you wish, and control who can see what to a very fine level.
I did think about hosting the portfolio on a free tool, but I wanted to keep control, and also wanted it in the same place as all my other writing.
Will,
I’m very interested in knowing what books or articles you may be working on. I have been using Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms as the basic text for a course I teach online through the State U. of NY at Buffalo. The information in your book is excellent but some of the step-by-step instructions are already outdated since Blogger, delicious, etc sites keep improving their application. Any chance of an updated edition or a new book?
Maryanne