The Curricular Technology Team has drafted a list of the functional requirements for any platform or collection of platforms that would replace Segue, see:
Segue from Segue » Functional Requirements for Segue Replacements
If there are features or functionality in Segue that we have left out in this list, please let us know.
I’m not sure I see retrievable storage capacity on this list. Our program, Education Studies, has a need (state mandated) to at least save a site for at least five-seven years so that when we are audited we can show what was developed at a given point in time. I guess saving to disk might be an option if disks are indeed still in use in the future. Ideally, also, students often add to their sites after graduating and thus “accessing after graduating” is also an issue. Suggesting a way to crawl a site to a platform that charges a fee might a way to do this but we’d still need to have that original work archived.
Thanks for reminding us of the needs of the Education Studies program. We were aware that Education Studies e-portfolios need to be available for at least 5 years and remain committed to ensuring this availability for all existing e-portfolios.
To ensure new platforms can also guarantee this availability, I’ve added a section to the functional requirements page about content migration. One option is to export e-portfolios to “static” HTML, a simple format that can be easily maintained without requiring databases or web applications. Another option is to be able to export e-portfolios to a widely supported “open standard” XML format that can then be imported into freely available hosted web applications. Both options would allow us to maintain archival copies and allow students to take their e-portfolios with them and set them up with a service provider of their choosing so they can continue to develop them.
Hope this makes sense and seems reasonable. Let me know if you have more questions/concerns.
One thing you might consider is using Acrobat to generate PDF archival copies of web pages. You can point Acrobat at a URL and it will archive the page and any subpages in PDF form, with searchable text, graphics and embedded links.
Thanks, Alex
So storage if archived the way you suggest would then be somewhere on our servers as opposed to a CD. Is that right?
Whatever format we choose for archiving should be as simple as possible so that it can be stored on a server or on CD.
This is a great tip, thanks.