I have completed the portfolio presentation this past week, and have been collecting my thoughts about the experiences and the process.

It was an interesting discussion, and I enjoyed talking with the reviewers, who were really supportive and patient. Both Susan Moisey and Mohamed Ally helped me feel comfortable (though I was quite nervous) and provided timely feedback to keep me on track.

Once I have a link to the recording of the second part of the presentation done using Elluminate, I will embed it in this post.

I sent out a competencies matrix table by email to the reviewers in advance (the morning of the presentation) that gave an overview of how the selected artefacts met the MDDE program competencies. About 15-20 minutes before the presentation, I began pre-loading the web sites into tabs. Once I shared the browser application, however, the tabs disappeared; I found it confusing to try and find them again - I had seven browser windows open, but I could not view tabs at all (maybe in my haste I overlooked them; however the point is that perhaps to simplify things, don't bother to pre-load the web sites. Load them in real time instead. This could be a problem, too, though, as I noticed the connection to the Elluminate application was unsteady and slowed at times.

I decided against using slides and doing the presentation in that manner. Instead, I shared the browser application with my reviewers.

That way I was able to quickly go to the various websites. Yet when I tried showing downloaded files in Word, the reviewers could not see the documents. After a moment of confusion, Mohamed suggested I share the desktop instead. Thus, I needed to open up the access to share my desktop. This way, everything I did on my PC was open for viewing to them.

For future reference, I would have prepared a brief powerpoint presentation of between 6 -8 minutes with the following points:

introduction of myself

why I chose the MDDE program

why I selected the portfolio option

brief summary of process of creating portfolio

Another reason I was releuctant to use powerpoint and load all the slides to Elluminate was that it would take too many slides. For example, in MDDE Portfolio: Presenting Competencies for Artefact One I needed to use five slides - overall, it would end up being dozens of slides. Perhaps a way of overcoming this obstacle would be to upload the presentation in Slideshare, and link to it during the Elluminate presentation.

So, using the desktop sharing option, I opened up the documents I needed, and although it sometimes took a few extra seconds to scan the document myself for the section/paragraph, I was able to discuss the manner in which the artefacts met specific competencies, directly referring to the sections relevant to the discussion. I highlighted the texts and phrases as I emphasized certain ideas from the texts or tables. In hindsight, by using the shared desktop, I would not have needed to download any files from the AU Landing site; instead, I would have open them more quickly from my own desktop.

During the live presentation, I found myself shuffling through the hard copy version of the 3 page description of the MDDE competencies, and the two pages of the competencies matrix.

Not sure how I could have improvide on organizing that, as they need to be readily at hand. I would probably have resorted to posting the pages on the wall in front of me during the live presentation.

Something that worked seamlessly and smoothly was the use of posterous. For some examples, I went to Posterous to use the rich pictures I created - it was an effective tool to use. I was able to to go to the posterous web site, select the specific post, and then scroll through the artefacts that were connected together as a personal digital footprint - rich pictures, photos, tables, even documents.

I used AU Landing to demonstrate the portfolio, and posted a number of blog posts about the process. This showcase is essential for sharing with others in future. My recommendation is that for the actual presentation itself, use Posterous (send an email with all the attached files) to compile all the relevant sections of the artefacts together (tables, images, graphs, sections of text, etc.) into a series of posts that you can quickly refer to, so you don't have to jump between several different sites.