An overview of some terminology from the world of web publishing.

This micro-course is a primer in web publishing for educators, so the language I use will be specific to the culture and practice of the web. Coming from a background in art and design, I find terms like ‘portfolio’ and ‘gallery’ are very specific and can be interpreted online in various ways. The field of education (in which I am also a practitioner) has its own understanding of these words, particularly with our use of the ‘e-portfolio’. So I thought it would be helpful to outline a few definitions up front.

I find it interesting to consider the “affordances” of a thing. The quality or the property of an object that defines its possible uses or makes clear how it can or should be used. While a portfolio and gallery are similar in that they both contain and present media to an audience, they have different structures and purposes. For instance, a portfolio's contents can be shown sequentially, flipped through like a book, while in a gallery, you can observe much of the collection simultaneously.

I asked ChatGPT to explain the difference between a web portfolio and a web gallery and here is the output.

Web Portfolio:
Web Gallery:

For me, this resonates and is why I chose to share it here. In summary;

Does this help us create a learning activity using one of these web publishing approaches? In the next discussion activity, we will explore our educational use cases.