Portfolio Lab

CPSC 110-08: Computing with Mobile Phones

Portfolio Lab: Creating a Google Sites Portfolio
In-class Exercise

What's a Portfolio

A portfolio is a collection of all the work you do in this course -- reading assignment, homeworks, writings on issues, in-class exercises, and major creative projects. In this course you will document everything you do on your portfolios -- from small lab assignments, to your written reactions to readings about mobile computing, to your large creative projects.

There are lots of good reasons to maintain a portfolio:

Sharing is good. It is an important part of the culture of the free software and open source software movement.
Writing up your work will help you remember how to do things and you'll have a ready-at-hand repository to refer back to in case you forget how to do something.
You can continue to work on your projects after the course ends.
You can share work from your portfolio with your friends and family.

Examples

Here is a particularly nice example of a student portfolio from the Spring 2011 edition of this course. Here's another nice example.
Here's a link to student portfolio pages from last semester's course.

Google Sites

We will be using Google Sites as the repository for our portfolios. This is an example of cloud computing. Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby computing resources, such as hardware, software, and information, are provided to users as a utility that is delivered over a computer network, such as the Internet. In this model, computing is like a utility service, such as the electricity or water or gas utilities that we rely on in our homes.

In this case we are using storage and web services: we are creating a web site and storing material on it but we don't need to know any of the details about how and where our data are stored. About all we know is that our portfolios are stored on a computer disk at one of Google's data centers.

This is one of several examples of cloud computing that we will encounter in this course. Another is the App Inventor development enviroment. The apps we create will be stored on a server somewhere on the cloud and the computational work of translating our programs will be done by the cloud computers, not by our laptops or lab machines.

How Portfolios Will Be Evaluated

Portfolios will be evaluated at three checkpoints during the semester. We'll be looking at the following:

Completeness -- does your portfolio contain the required materials (as assigned).
Organization -- is your portfolio well organized and well designed? Is it easy to navigate?
Clarity -- are you answers to questions or written opinion pieces clearly written?
Comprehensiveness -- how thorough are you answers to reading questions? How well do your written opinion pieces address the issue at hand? How well documented are you coding solutions?
Correctness -- are your answers to questions correct?

Each assignment in the course will specify what you should post on your portfolio.

NOTE: The work presented on your portfolio should be your work. It should not be copied from someone else in class. That would constitute an infringement of Trinity's integrity contract and will be dealt with according to the guidelines in the student handbook.

In-class Exercise: Setting Up a Portfolio on Google Sites

We will be using Google Sites for our Portfolios. Go to: http://sites.google.com. You will need to have your Google account, so please register if you don't already have a Google account. If you already have a Google account, just log in.

Creating a Portfolio Site. Once you have registered with Google sites, click on the Create New Site button and set up your portfolio. Among other things, you will have to

Choose a name for your site -- e.g., Ralph Morelli's Portfolio
Choose a theme -- lots of choices to pick from.
Under more options, provide a 1-line description of your site -- e.g., My portfolio for CPSC 110-08.
Under more options, select everyone in the world can view this site to share to sharing your portfolio with other class members.
Type in the code and click the Create Site button.

Setting up Your Home Page. For today's lab let's all compose a brief bio and a insert a photo on our home pages. This can be updated throughout the semester.

Click "Edit Page" (top right corner)
Type in a bio. Use the editing bar on the page to format your text. Include at least one link to some other page.
Use the insert tab in the upper left corner to insert an image onto your home page.
Here's what my page looks like.

Creating a Page for Labs. Create a page titled "Labs". Put the page at the "Top Level". The Create Page button is on the top right. This will automatically make it appear in the Sidebar.

Creating a Page for Today's Lab. Create a page titled "Creating my Portfolio" and use it to describe what you did in today's lab. The Create Page button is on the top right. This page should be "Put under Labs".