Last week I was speaking to an FE colleague about the different ways that TEL can be used to embed employability skills into textile courses. As part of the discussion we were talking about blogs which got me thinking about the about.me widget in WordPress and the way that it can be used to display links to your on-line accounts without the need for any coding. As I use the widget on this blog I demonstrated my account which contains a graphic portrait of myself, a short biography about my professional interests and links to my Twitter, LinkedIn and technology blog. Although I hadn’t thought about using about.me to embed employability in the curriculum my colleague was really inspired and could see huge potential in using the tool with her students especially as she is going to use WordPress as part of her classes so that students are able to build up an on-line portfolio. Could you use about.me with your own students? Now that I’ve been inspired by my colleague I can see the tool fitting in perfectly with media and art and design classes. As well as using the links to sign post employers to their work students can upload their own background image to their page which could be a photograph they have taken, a graphic picture or an illustration.
