Digital Portfolio.
“I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. How you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art.”
― Helena Bonham Carter
In the spirit of ‘Life is art’, I’ve done my digital portfolio as a series of blog posts on a website I am still in the process of completing. If nothing else, I’ve learnt that a digital skill is never really ‘done’.
“It is about cultivating confidence, tools, interests and community to acquire digital skills and understanding”
In this blog post I will reflect on my overall learnings and what progress I have made in terms of achieving each of my five chosen digital skills. While I still feel very much like a beginner, I am more confident and able to seek out new solutions to my needs and problems, and less overwhelmed with what Christie Kliewer called ‘Information Anxiety’ (Kliewer, Medium 2017).
“Information Anxiety is produced by the ever-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand. ”
The fact of the matter is “knowing how to read, write, and participate in the digital world has become the 4th basic foundational skill next to the three Rs—reading, writing, and arithmetic—in a rapidly evolving, networked world.” (Web Literacy 2.0)
Please then take a closer look at the blog posts on each key target skill for further information on the process followed, resources used and outcomes achieved. A brief description of what I’ve been able to achieve with each follows to get you started.
My paper girls
I have used these images and artworks to test and acquire some new Photoshop editing skill sets. The paper girls are also what I am building my website around. Ever since I was little, I would draw paper girls like the ones in my mum’s sewing pattern books. It’s evolved from there.
This art is old school like me. It’s made by hand. It exists in the physical form. It has texture and depth. It is layered and can take weeks to complete one paper girl design. But now, when they are finished, I can give these artworks a whole new digital life.
“Walk the talk” ~ The Paper Poets
For my first digital skills goal I decided to learn how to “edit, organise and format images for use on my website” primarily using Adobe Photoshop. At the outset, I also thought I would be able to learn about Adobe In Design to convert my artworks into digitally printed cards to be featured on my website for eventual sale.
This has not happened. While I have refreshed my understanding of and skills in using Photoshop to the extent that I have been able to translate a number of my paper based artwork into a digital format and complete this blog, I have not yet mastered the In Design skills. I also have more to learn about Photoshop, especially in terms of quality control and best practice formatting for different mediums.
The blog post on my paper girls explains this further and shows my process of learning in formatting images for the web, working with layers, resizing and cropping, and using the different editing tools.
Building a website
For digital skill number two I said I would “build a website to showcase my artworks and collections under ‘The Paper Poets’ brand.”
I have not finished the website but have built a foundation and gained skills, knowledge and understanding to do more when time permits. Now, more than ever, do I fully appreciate the sentiment behind Russell & Vinsel’s ‘Hail the Maintainers’ who said it is “the building of infrastructures, the mundane labour that goes into sustaining functioning and efficient infrastructures” that has the most impact on “people’s daily lives” (Russell & Vinsel, 2016).
The effort, time and strategy needed to generate, sort and organise content for a website is immense. Something I’m still working on.
Twitter life
There’s no beginning or end when it comes to twitter. For digital skill number three I said I’d go where everyone else has already gone, and join Twitter. It took me weeks of observing to get the courage up to deliver my first post. It wasn’t ground breaking, but I have done what I set out to do. I’ve got a profile and I’m following along some interesting channels and improving my understanding of the GLAM sector. I’m more aware of news and events to hand as they happen.
One Note here, One Note there…
Digitizing my note-taking has been a game changer. More ground breaking than Twitter is for sure. I’m pleased to report I have graduated from being a ‘pen based’ reader and note-taker, to doing it all my desktop. Once I even managed to sync my devices and take it ‘on the road’. I love how it keeps source web referencing, and the multi-layered notebook - I find this particularly useful for deep research and organising across different topics. See blog post for more.
and to end… to google search or not
My last digital skills goal was to improve my information retrieval skills using more advanced search functions such as truncated and boolean. Combined with my new One Note skills, I am finding (and keeping track of) more targeted and useful research. Just as time consuming as everything else though.
Learning new skills on your own is difficult. I didn’t really get into contacting anyone directly for more help. Mostly trial and error, blogs, online tutorials and you tube clips. While I still have a way to go I’m proud of what I’ve been able to learn and create. Ultimately I think I’ve benefited most from having a university deadline to motivate me.