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nice post on ePortfolio standards

From the Learning Futures Eiffel team blog here's a nice introduction on standards to consider for ePortfolios. It gives a nice summary of the major ePortfolio specific standards to consider and importantly, mentions related specifications such as OpenSocial which I believe those interested in ePortfolios should start to at a minimum, become familiar with. From the article:

Today, even if few ePortfolio suppliers are engaged in the implementation of existing specifications, those doing it generally do so within the context of a specific community, using what is called application profiles, i.e. an adaptation of a base specification to the particular requirements of this community. This adaptation adds a level of complexity to the issue of interoperability, as different application profiles of the same base specification do not necessarily interoperate...
Our own experience in this area certainly backs this up. Some time ago, we developed an Employability Skills ePortfolio and used the IMS ePortfolio specification to build it. The IMS specification itself is (well) quite comprehensive to say the least which added some complexity to our work but in developing a profile specifically for employability skills, we in effect lost interoperability with other IMS ePortfolio conformant applications unless they used the same profile as us (highly unlikely). In the past I have discussed the need for simple to implement standards and concentrated on specifications such as RSS, Atom and microformats. The Learning Futures article references hResume, an interesting format used by LinkedIn. Compare the definition for that with a heavy duty specification and see which one you would rather implement.

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