Resources for Online Portfolios

This week, I am re-posting my 2010 Drive-thru favorites. I selected this one from June, because it shows the power of networking.  The experience led to the first college recommendation  I have ever written for a student that did not focus on academic work done in my class.

 I was approached for help recently by an art student who wished to publish an online gallery of her senior portfolio. She wondered what sites might best display her work. I really enjoy researching little projects like this and decided to post my recommendations to her and her fine art teacher, @idrawandpaint

One of my top recommendations, wix.com, came by way of my one of my AP American Government students. Her cbl project group produced an online voting demo called Operation iVote which had a stunning look. When I asked the web designer of iVote, about her experience, she said that wix.com is "the easiest thing ever to use and would be perfect for something artsy like a portfolio." wix.com is a flash based web design creation site. I inspected some of the free templates and samples at the site and they were very impressive. (I did not explore the pay options or features).

I also asked for input from ADE listserv and received a number of suggestions. Matt Cauthron of the Digital Arts Academy invited me to visit a treasure trove of galleries. His students use http://flavors.me/. Take a look at his students' portfolios in progress! An online stroll through these galleries and a peek at the flavors.me directory assured me at once that flavors.me offers the tools for creating an avant-garde portfolio.

Incidentally, the young art student who intends to build this online site also wishes to include electronica music. She is hoping to secure permissions for this and wondered if I had any suggestions. My attempt to help her led to a solution that has since become available to our entire student body.

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Screenshot of Michael V. Manalo's curriculum vitae created with wix.com

21st Century Letter of Recommendation

I had a new experience last week which points to the changing nature of my courses and my role in them.  I wrote a college letter of recommendation for a student who would be the first to admit that she did not stand out on conventional testing of the course "material."  Nevertheless, she stood out, as I explained in my letter

We formed a unique sort of collaboration following our time together in the American
Government course. Jill sought me out for a suggestion regarding a web site for hosting
her work and portfolio. I recommended a site another student had used for a CBL. We also
consulted a graphic design teacher in California and were joined in our project by a Mercy art
teacher.  Besides yielding Jill's domain www.-----.com, our
exploration also yielded a special licensing agreement for Creative Commons music between
our high school and Magnatune.

I referenced the student's experience in my course as well-- but almost exclusively in terms of collaborations and projects.

A milestone, I think.
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"Untitled Collograph" Frickr Creative Commons photo by Vaultboy

Team Work

Our third professional cluster group focused on the theme of "Team Work".  After I put in a plug for Downplayer, we discussed the Creative Commons.  I pointed to two rich sources of media that are licensed to the Commons:

1) Magnatune - we are not evil, a generous source of CC music if it is used for educational purposes.  Our school now has a subscription and I am urging all teachers plumb its 10,000 songs.

2) Flickr CC photo searches.  The Yahoo Advanced Image search in order to find cool images for use with attribution.  It is my go-to source of content for images in s;ide presentations, photo/movies and blog art (like the photo featured on this post).

The "team work" portion of the PCG involved a discussion of classroom group activities.  My memories of "group work" as a student were pretty negative, so I prefer to have my students work in "teams." 

The discussions were interesting, because the five cluster groups took their conversations in very different directions.  Teachers were generally eager to share positive group experiences.  Also common concerns were raised about free-loaders, group chemistry, and fair assessment.  I tried to be a good listener , so that I could address some of the concerns, later.  After all, since we share the challenge of "design[ing] a challenge based learning project which develops [Tony Wagner's Seven] "Survival Skills" for at least 15% of [our] students we need to arrive at a sound comfort level with team work.

Coincidentally, for the "CBL Group Think" at Apple tomorrow, I've been asked to give a ten minute presentation on The importance of reflections and why we need to measure more than just the solution and implementation (learning is bigger than a grade).  I think that this is one area where both the Apple and Mercy High School educators share considerable common ground.

Here are the slides from PCG #3 (licensed to Creative Commons of course).

Team Work Slides

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Flickr Creative Commons photo by Paul Williams

Music that's Licensed for Student Projects

In my last post I described research I did for an art student who was looking for a web site to host her online portfolio. (She has since chosen wix.com).

The student was also concerned about finding the right electronica music for her edgy site. Therefore, I enjoyed putting 33 tracks of Creative Commons music on a flash drive, knowing that I could offer them to her without copyright infringement.

Each of my tracks came from my own go-to source, Magnatune. By subscribing to their "Free Song of the day" email list I had gradually acquired the electronica music. All of these songs are licensed as free-use with attribution for non-commercial video blogs, podcasts, and anything a student makes for academic purposes while attending school. For the past several months I have used their music for instructional slide presentations, videos, and podcasts. (You many be listening to it on this site right now as you read). Magnatune selects its artists with care, and the quality of the recordings and doonloads is excellent.

I hadn't visited the Magnatue site for a while. But my research spurred me to revisit. I discovered that Magnatune has adopted a subscription service. After an exchange of emails, I learned to my delight, that with one $15/month subscription, the students at our school may access the site for student classroom projects. Their are only obligated by the CC license to include attribution.

As you must know or suspect, many students (and sometimes their teachers!) are inclined to use music without permissions. It's much easier to discourage this illegal practice when one can offer a quality, legal substitute. My art teacher friend snapped one up a subscription at once and our associate principal was glad to pay for it.

I recommend that you check them Magnatune. They have a very fair business model for their artists, not to mention interesting listening options. Given their generous disposition toward our students, I hope they thrive.

P.S. Starting next week, the Drive-thru will publish on Mondays and Thursdays until September.
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Screen shot of Magnatune home page.