anyone use an electronic portfolio?

[laehmichal]

one of my friends is a public school teacher, and she mentioned in the upper grades, they are starting to use electronic portfolios.  I looked into them, and they seem like a great idea  - I can upload schoolwork and projects, keep video of the kids reading aloud or doing science experiments, etc.  I was wondering if anyone uses one, and if so, what hosting site do you use?  Just looking for a reliable one, that is preferably free, or at least not too pricey.  Or, if anyone has made their own, how did you format it?  i am very limited in my computer literacy :), so simple is best here!

[moominmamma]

We've used Blogger for this purpose for the past year and will be using a WordPress installation on our umbrella school's server this coming year. We also used a Moodle software system for a while (it sucked! no embedded files, everything as attachments, no threaded sequential comments) and for a couple of years we also used a custom-built system for reporting that morphed into something very similar to WordPress (though glitchier from the parental perspective). 

Blogging software is perfect for portfolios, IMO. You set up post categories or tags that are subject-oriented. You set the blog to private, with you and your child as authors and your homeschooling supervisor as the only reader/commenter. You can easily upload videos to YouTube and set them to hidden, then embed them in the blog. My kids' learning blogs are full of photos, page-scans, mp3 recordings and videos. You can post weekly or monthly, or by the term, or do one post per term per subject, or just post whenever something noteworthy has occured. Whatever works well for you and your supervisor. 

Miranda