Electronic Portfolio Manual Kyle Richardson Thomas Rielly Rashid Salameh Adrian Schul 1
Contents Introduction...4 Parts list 5 Instructions... 6 Saving a template.6 Open a new page..7 Creating links...7 Adding Images.8 Saving Files...9 Uploading to the Web..9 Photoshop (cropping instructions)......11 Illustrations...12 Specifications.14 Function.14 Operating Principle...15 Glossary.16 2
Table of Figures Figure 1 (opening a new web page)... 7 Figure 2 (hyperlink)... 8 Figure 3 (uploading your page to the web)... 10 Figure 4 (photoshop crop example)... 11 Figure 5 (website example)... 12 Figure 6 (website example 2)... 13 Table of Appendix Table A... 18 3
Introduction An electronic portfolio consists of collected works put together on the internet and/on digital media. These electronic portfolios are also called e-portfolios, web folios, or digital portfolios. Moreover, electronic portfolios are designed to display a person s accomplishments, qualifications, experience, and abilities. However, they re also can be used to exhibit a persons particular skill. Electronic portfolios are a great tool used to promote ones self to businesses and organizations. In contrast to a paper portfolio, an electronic portfolio can be continually updated or changed to reflect the users learning and development over time. Electronic portfolios can be categorized into three different types; learning, assessment, and showcase portfolios. The learning portfolio is typically used to show what a student has learned and how he/she has progressed. The assessment portfolio is usually created for evaluation purposes. Furthermore the showcase portfolio is mainly used for people applying for employment positions. Electronic portfolios, when used to their full potential, can assist anyone who creates it. They can help focus thinking by providing a medium to turn theory into practice. Moreover, through the construction process, students and prospective employees can get a sense of what they are learning from time to time. 4
Parts List Professional style home page I. A summary stating the importance of the site and what someone can expect to find in the Electronic Portfolio II. A link to a resume III. 6 Links to each of the skill bases used in different projects and classes IV. A professional and appropriate picture The 6 Skills or Proficiencies a Student must have used (Each item is its own Link): I. Writing and Research projects and activities in the student s selected concentration area of study. II. Examples of Professional service activities completed or involved in that are associated with members of that profession. III. Leadership, group projects, presentations, and interactive participation that has been done in school. IV. Activities or Projects involving Consulting, Technology Transfer, and Management skill development. V. Examples of activities and projects related to career search and life planning development. VI. The communication skills, verbal and nonverbal, used in projects while at school. See appendix A for more information on requirements for an electronic portfolio. 5
Instructions (FrontPage) How to save an Electronic Portfolio template using Front Page? I. Create a new folder and name it after your name, electronic portfolio or something similar. This is where you will store all your electronic portfolio files. 1) Click the directory folder once to select it. This is the folder at the very top of the list. Right click on the directory folder and click New Folder from the drop down menu. 2) Then proceed to type the name of the new folder and press enter. II. III. IV. Open a Browser and paste the address of the webpage on which you got the template. 1) Many websites offer free templates to help design and create your own personalized website. Also, the Microsoft Office Website offers many free and compatible templates. Choose Save As from the File pull down menu. When the Save As window opens, name your file to save it. 1) In the File Name box, type index.html 2) Change the Save as type drop down menu to Plain Text 3) Save the file to a folder on your hard drive or on a portable flash drive. This is where you will put all your web files and images for your portfolio while uploading them to Front Page. 4) Click Save. 5) Find the file you just created index.html on either your hard drive or flash drive and right click on that file. Click on Copy from the drop down menu. 6) Select the new folder you made for your Electronic Portfolio files that is named portfolio, your name, or something similar. Right click on that folder and click Paste from the drop down menu. Now you have created an index page within your Electronic Portfolio folder. 6
How to Open a New Page? I. After you have found and saved a template, the next step is to create the pages you want to have on your electronic portfolio web site. II. To open a new page, click New Page from the File drop menu. Figure 1 III. Be sure to save your page when you have finished typing the desired information and inserting images and pictures on the page. How to Create Links to other Pages? I. Highlight the text or image you want to turn into a link. 1) To highlight text, simply click and hold the mouse and drag the cursor over the desired text you want to link. 7
2) To highlight a picture, click on the picture once. II. Click the Hyperlink button at the top of the screen on the menu bar. The button looks like a chain on the globe. Figure 2 III. IV. Linking to a Saved File you have Created 1) Click the Make a hyperlink button in the URL dialog window. The button looks like a folder with a magnifying glass. 2) Find your file on the hard drive or portable flash drive that you saved. 3) Click on the file and then click OK to approve the saved file you want to link to. Linking to an existing Web Site 1) Type the URL address of the page you wish to link to in the blank space next to the URL. 2) Make sure you type the full URL and don t just start with www. 3) Click OK to approve the page you want to link to. How to Add Images onto your Electronic Portfolio Web Page? I. Choosing and Saving an Image 8
1) Find the image you wish to put on your page. The image can be one you found online or your own personal image. 2) When you have found the image you want, right click on that image. 3) Select Save Image As or Save Picture As from the drop down menu that appears over the picture. 4) Select the folder on your hard drive you are using to store the files and images for your portfolio and click Save. II. Adding your Image to your Page 1) Find and Open the folder where you saved the image or picture either on the hard drive or the portable flash drive and right click on it. 2) Click Copy on the drop down menu. 3) On the desired page you want the image or picture, place the cursor on the spot where you want the image or picture to be. 4) Right click and then click Paste of the drop down menu that appears. How to save your files? I. Choose Save As... from the File button on the top menu bar. 1) Make sure you have the correct folder selected in the Save In dialog box at the top. II. III. Type in what you would like the file to be named followed by.html (like coverpage.html) Give your page a title 1) The title is what is displayed at the top of the browser window and also the name of your page when it is book marked. 2) In the Page Title line, click the Change button and type the title as you want it to appear. IV. Clicked OK when you are finished. 9
How to Access your Myweb.wit.edu Web Space using FrontPage? (Uploading to the internet) I. Open FrontPage. II. From the File dropdown menu select Open Site. III. In the window that opens, under Web name, type in http://myweb.wit.edu/[your user name] 1) Use the username you would use to log into Leopard Connection. IV. When prompted for username put in wit\[your user name]. V. Your password is the same as the active directory password you use to log onto your local computer. VI. Your web will open in FrontPage: 1) From here you can drag and drop files into your web space and image directory and publish them. Figure 3 10
Instructions to Crop Using Photoshop The crop tool in Photoshop allows you to select a portion of a photo you want to cut away from the rest of the photo, keeping only that portion and discarding the rest. This powerful tool can be used to enhance your photos and create other projects using pieces of your photos. I. To begin, you will need to search for and open the document that you would like to crop. The image can be anything or of anything. II. Now that the document is open, you can simply crop any part of the image you want to. To crop an image, you need to use the "crop tool" in Photoshop. The hot key is "C". This will automatically select the crop tool by clicking "c" on the keyboard. III. To use the tool you will now left-click and hold. While you are doing this, drag the mouse to another part of the image. Do not select the entire image. After all, there would be no point in cropping then. After, unclick the mouse. IV. Now you will have two colors on your image. One will be dark/gray. This represents the part of the image you are getting rid or cropping. The other will be the same color of the image. This represents the part of the image you are keeping or not cropping. V. The idea is to select the part of the image you want to keep with the crop tool. Now after you have un-clicked the mouse, you will right click the image, despite whether the area you wanted is selected. When you right click, a small drop down menu will give you two options: "cancel" and "crop". Cancel will end the crop and allow you to do the process again if you didn t select the right area. Figure 4 11
Illustrations Following is an example of the main menu to an electronic portfolio: Figure 5 An electronic portfolio is simply an organized collection of completed and in-progress work. Electronic portfolios have changed the very foundation of how people display their accomplishments. Students can easily benefit from electronic portfolios, since anyone can view students resumes, both before and after graduation. If internship interviewers or potential employers can see an online resumes that include views of a student's actual work, that student may be more likely to obtain the position. Electronic portfolios show all shorts of information 12
that can be helpful for employers to make their decision about hiring you. These portfolios enable employers to see person s resume, accomplishments, and their work ethics. An example of how someone might display their courses within their electronic portfolio: Figure 6 Electronic portfolios show what the employee has been studying and the accomplishments that they have made in college. It gives an employer a quick sense of what the person might be like. It s like an interview before the interview even happens. 13
Specifications Electronic Portfolios have to follow certain specifications: The portfolio should have a JPEG format picture. If it were to be any other format, it would consume too much space and pixels. Usually you would want to have a professional picture of yourself because that s the first thing that a prospective employer who is visiting your site is going to see. You would want to make your electronic portfolio as simple as possible so that the person viewing it won t be confused or lost. All the links and tabs on the page should be functional. The font should be in a reasonable size and in a reasonable color format so that it won t conflict with the background scheme. Function An electronic portfolio has a few main purposes for the student who created it, but the main function is to help promote the student to potential employers. The portfolio is a place 14
where a student can talk about their background and demonstrate their skills and experience in different projects and situations while attending school. This information is all on the World Wide Web for an endless amount of companies to learn more about that student. A secondary function of the electronic portfolio is for networking with friends or peers. Students can talk about their opinions of projects on their portfolio and peers can read about what projects worked well and how to get in contact with that student to discuss projects ideas and thoughts. Operating Principle The electronic portfolio works in two ways that will help the student promote themselves through their page to employers. The first and most effective way the electronic portfolio works is when the student includes the web address on their resume. The potential employer will be able to research the student through the page and be able to get an understanding of where the student is coming from and what kind of learning experiences the student has gone through in school projects. The second way is to attach the website to a career search engine on the internet. This way when a company looking for employees conducts a search online, the student s electronic portfolio may pop up if the skills the company is looking for match up with some of the skills the student used to complete the school projects. 15
Glossary Directory folder - is an entity in a file system, which contains a group of files and/or other directories. Files are kept organized by storing related files in the same directory. A directory contained inside another directory is called a subdirectory of that directory. Drop down menu the menu that is displayed when the cursor is placed over a menu button on the menu bar. Usually the menu button must be clicked in order for the drop down menu to show. Hyperlink - navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on or part of a (different) domain. Jpeg - is a commonly used method of compression for photographic images. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. URL - compact string of characters used to identify or name a resource on the Internet. The main purpose of this identification is to enable interaction with representations of the resource over a network, typically the World Wide Web, using specific protocols. Web Template - is a tool used to separate content from presentation in web design. Web templates can be used to set up any type of website. In its simplest sense, a web template operates similarly to a form letter for use in setting up a website. 16
Index Cropping 11 Electronic portfolio Definition.4 Functionality..14 Homepage...5 Images..8 Links 7 Opening 7 Saving..9 Skills needed 5 Uploading... 10 17
Appendix Table A Personal Information Educational Credentials Career Achievements Comm. Competencies Professional Activities Recognition personal interests, mentors, role models, personality inventory, assessments education history, thesis or other major papers or research, examples of coursework products work history, career plan, references, inventory of career accomplishments communication skills, technical skills, certifications, speaking, diversity skills, teamwork publication, presentations academic honors, workplace achievement or recognition, promotions 18