Before you start creating your e-portfolio, it is critical to consider the privacy and safety issues related to sharing your e-portfolio on the World Wide Web. The challenge is to create an e-portfolio that is useful and accessible to employers but that does not put you at any risk from dangerous predators / fraudsters on the Internet. In this tutorial, you will password-protect your e-portfolio so only those that you invite will be allowed to view your e-portfolio.
Professionalism
Your e-portfolio should display professionalism... it will backfire if an employee types your name into Google, finds your e-portfolio (or is invited to your e-portfolio by yourself) and then sees postings about your wild partying, bad-mouthing former employers, swearing, typos / spelling mistakes, etc.
Some students when they first get started with their blog may start fooling around with inappropriate remarks, swearing, etc... Don't do this! Although you can delete postings, once they have been published some search engines will archive your original postings and you may find that you can't erase your unprofessional postings!
I once created a blog to complain about a company I felt didn't honour their refund policy. Within days, I received a knock on the door and a cease-and-desist letter from their lawyers. Not wanting trouble, I decided I would delete the blog only to find out that it was too late... it had already been archived by another site and it was no longer in my control. I tried to explain to the upset company's lawyers that I had done what I could take down the site but it took a lot of effort to sort out.
Of course, you must also make sure you follow any acceptable usage rules at your local college or university if you are a student. All other federal and provincial / state laws apply in the online world, just as they do in the off-line work so make sure your content is appropriate.
Safety considerations
The e-portfolio that you set up for this assignment is set up with the full privacy and security functionality available with Google Blogger so that only the people that you invite will be able to view your e-portfolio. Despite this, you should still be careful to only post information that you feel comfortable with -- information that you feel okay viewed by the public (even if you give permission to an employer to view your e-portfolio, you may not want to disclose anything too personal that may put your potential employment at risk).
Privacy
You also want to make sure you aren't giving away any information that you wouldn't normally provide... e.g. IDs, passwords, banking info, too much details about your contact information, etc... you don't want people signing up for credit cards or applying for student loans in your name!
Some of the above items may be common sense but they can not be stressed enough and should not be taken lightly. Investigators of a murder suicide in a school in Colorado are looking at the possibility that the killer researched MySpace to learn about the kids attending the school (Sheriff: School shooter sent letter to say sorry).
This may be the extreme case and involve younger, more vulnerable kids... it is equally important for college students to safeguard their privacy, safety and online professional reputation.
Here are some articles on the blog privacy, safety, and professionalism theme:
Blog it now, regret it later
MySpace makes new online safety push
MySpace Invader
The World Wide Web and e-portfolios are here to stay... the above considerations aren't intended to scare you from developing an e-portfolio... You just have to be smart about how you do it so that you can leverage the power of the Internet to help you secure employment and manage your career and be safe and secure while doing it.
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