From Evolve

Contents 1 Name your e-Portfolio 2 Populate your profile 3 Introductory blog post 4 Community Forum 5 Creating ‘Special Content’ 6 Using access controls 7 Managing your content 8 Changing how your e-Portfolio looks 9 More advanced options for your blog posts 10 Creating a CV

[edit] Name your e-Portfolio

• Select the Menu option ‘Go to your Workspace’ (right-hand side). This takes you to your own workspace. We will be doing most of our work in this area. However, for now we just want to give your e-Portfolio a name.

• Click on options on the right of the light green toolbar

• Give your web log a title and a tagline. There are other controls here but you can investigate these later. Note you can always come back here and change the title and tagline if you wish

• Now click ‘View site’ on the very top to view your e-Portfolio space.

[edit] Populate your profile

• Select the Menu option ‘Go to your Workspace’ (right-hand side).

• Click on ;Manage’ on the light green menu bar

• Now click on ‘FreeFolio profile’ on the dark green menu bar.

• There are two sections to your profile. The first provides brief details about you. Think about what to add under the section we have called blurb! This provides a short strap line which goes under your photo. Personal interests allows others to see what you are interested in and make connections.

• The personal development plan allows you to add your learning objectives. This can be updated at any time. We will be changing this section in the near future to allow you to add multiple learning objectives

• Scroll to the bottom and click ‘Save information’

What now? Click ‘View Site’ on the very top menu bar and then About Me on the red menu bar. You should now have some content in your profile and a nice picture of yourself!

[edit] Introductory blog post

• Go back to ‘Your Workspace’ again (right-hand side).

• This time select ‘Write’ from the light green menu bar

• Select ‘Your Blog’ – then ‘Post a new entry’

• The ‘Write Post’ page from will open. The blog interface is fairly standard. Give the post a title, add some content in the post section, add a category (right) that describes what the post is about

• Scroll down through the ‘Upload’ section (we will look at this later) and add a short introduction in the ‘Optional excerpt’ box. This appears as a short introduction to you entry and in the ‘Community Central, area.

• Go to status on the right and click published. This allows others to see you entry. There are more fine grained access controls but for now we just want to put up a quick post introducing each other

• Click on publish and then ‘view site at the top.

• There are other functions like embedding files and controlling who can see the blog post and strange sounding things like ‘post slug’ but we will deal with these later!

Now that we have filled in our profiles and put up an introductory blog post in our personal e-Portfolio it is time to look at the Community Forum.

[edit] Community Forum

• Click on the green ‘Forum’ Button (top right)

• Click on the topic ‘Careers’

• Scroll through the entries and add a ‘Reply’

• Click ‘Send post’

You can start a new discussion topic any time you wish by clicking on ‘Add New’ - under ‘Latest Discussions’. You can also see a quick summary of the latest discussion items in Community Central.

[edit] Creating ‘Special Content’

We have created a number of ‘Special Content’ forms based on the work you undertake in BSS.

• Go to ‘Your Workspace’ again and the click on ‘Write’

• One the Dark Green Menu bar, click on ‘Case Study’

• You do not have to fill this in now. But think about how you might use this form in your work.

[edit] Using access controls

The system allows you to keep posts private to yourself, to share with everyone on your system or to share with selected users.

• Go to ‘Your Workspace’ again and the click on ‘Users’ on the light green toolbar.

• Scroll down to ‘Add user from Community’. In the user E-Mail box add the email address of someone you would like to have privileged access to your posts (without other people being able to see them. You can add as many people as you wish (NB In the future we will try to change this box so you can just add a persons name).

• Now click on ‘Write’ on the light green menu bar.

• Write another short entry

• Now, if you select save and continue editing the post will be private and you will stay in the editing area.

• If you click on Save the post will be published but only visible to you.

• If you click on publish everyone in your network will be able to see the post

• However, you may just want to share the post with one or two selected colleagues. You can do this by scrolling down to the Access by User box. Here you can see the name sof the people whose email addresses you added. If you click on one or more of these and then click publish only those users who you have chosen will be able to see your post. Note that anyone with a exclamation mark next to their name will be able to see all posts - even those that are private. These are because they have administration rights to the system.

[edit] Managing your content

Often we are afraid to post things on a computer where others might see them for fear of making a mistake or of making a fool of ourselves. But do not worry - you can manage all your entries very easily - including deleting posts.

• Go to ‘Your Workspace’. This time click on Manage.

• Now you can see your latest posts to your e-Portfolio

• One the right hand menu side you can edit, view or delete any item,

[edit] Changing how your e-Portfolio looks

You can easily change what information appears in the side boxes in your e-Portfolio.

• Go to ‘Your Workspace’. This time click on ‘Presentation’.

• Now click on ‘Widgets’ on the dark green menu bar

• Now you can see the boxes that appear on your side bar on your main e-Portfolio area and those that appear on your profile.

• At the bottom you see other available boxes. You can just drag items out of your main sidebar or Profile sidebar to remove them, or drag new items in to add them. You can also change the order in which they display by dragging them up and down. When you are happy with your arrangement, clcik ‘Save Changes’. Feel free to play with this to see what different options there are. You can always change it back later!

[edit] More advanced options for your blog posts

Earlier we created a simple blog post in your e-Portfolio. Now we want to look at more advanced options.

Linking to external web pages

• Go back to to ‘Your Workspace’(right-hand side) and select ‘Write’ from the light green menu bar

• Move your cursor over the different icons on the editing toolbar above your post. These allow you to format the content (you can also switch to code if you know how to write html).

• Highlight a word or phrase in your post. Click on the ‘Insert / edit link’ icon (it looks like a chain-link). Ab new box will appear allowing you to add a link to an external web page or file.

More advanced controls for your posts

• Go to ‘Your Workspace’ and select ‘Write’ from the light green menu bar

• Click on the small downward arrow on the Discussion box on the right.

• If you do not want to allow discussion on an open post you can untick the ‘allow comments box (the Allow pings does not apply to your e-Portfolio because this is a closed system).

• For extra security you can add a password to any item. This is done by clicking on the downward arrow in the ‘Post a password’ box.

• The post slug is a strange sounding control. But it is very useful. By default systems like FreeFolio automatically add a unique url or web address for each post. But these are machine generated and are often do not read very easily. You can choose yourself the last part of the web address for your post in the post slug box.

Add a web page

Most of the time, you will probably be happy to use the blog posts to add new items to your e-Portfolio and the discussions and comments for talking with your colleagues. But, you may have written something longer (a discussion paper for instance) and want to add it to your e-Portfolio.

• Go to ‘Your Workspace’ again (right-hand side) and select ‘Write’ from the light green menu bar

• Now select ‘Write Page from the dark green menu bar.

• This looks just like a blog post. But it is designed for longer items and instead of showing in your e-Portfolio blog, is linked to from the ‘Pages’ box on your blog side bar.

Tip: Pasting from Word can produce messy content in any web programme. If you press the hide / show advanced toolbar - the very right hand icon on the post toolbar, you will get another toolbar row. The icon with the small word logo on it cleans up word content.

[edit] Creating a CV

FreeFolio allows you to create and update your CV. Of course we use different CVs for different purposes. But, the European Commission and the UK government have agreed a common standard for CVs. This is called the Europass. Because it is an agreed standard, different computer systems are able to read the CV.

• Go to ‘Your Workspace’ and click on ‘Manage’ on the light green toolbar.

• Click on CV on the dark green toolbar

• You can create and update your CV here.

• You can customise your basic CV for different purposes and uses. You can also export the CV as a web page.

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