P6: Annotations

Some digital portfolios are annotated; some are not. An annotated portfolio is excellent for someone entering a new field, whether you are a student or a seasoned worker changing areas. Annotations show a potential employer your thought and work processes. Annotating a project can let them know what problems you overcame to produce the final product. Also, when it comes to team projects, you can explain the part you played and how your team worked together.

Content

Some digital portfolios are annotated; some are not. An annotated portfolio is excellent for someone entering a new field, whether you are a student or a seasoned worker changing areas. Annotations show a potential employer your thought and work processes. Annotating a project can let them know what problems you overcame to produce the final product. Also, when it comes to team projects, you can explain the part you played and how your team worked together.

Your annotations should reveal what you were trying to do with the project and what really happened. Your project should cover the following information:

• The audience, purpose, subject, and context of the project
  • Who was it created for? Note both your project audience and the company or class. Do note the name of the class, not the number, so your potential employer has an idea of the context.
  • What was it supposed to do? What is the purpose of this project?
  • What did it cover or include?
  • How would it be disseminated and/or used?
• The process for creating the project, especially if it happened in stages
• Any problems you overcame
• For team projects, your part and how the team worked together
• The technology-rich part: include information on the program or technical process for creating your project as well as any technical challenges you encountered

Now, the challenge is to reduce all that information into a paragraph of fewer than 150 words.

Presenting Annotations

Your annotations should be clearly associated with the project link or file. You can do this in something as simple as a table or as complex as a graphic or roll-over text. Just make sure it is clear which annotation goes with which project.

Redacted, Trade Secret, or Top Secret Projects

If you have documents or projects that you cannot share in full because of trade secrets, non-disclosure agreements, or government secret status, check with the company if you can share a portion of it. You may be able to share a bit of it without sharing government or intellectual secrets. The important thing is to ask permission. If you can share a portion, you can explain about the project in your annotations – again, keeping to what the company will allow you to share.

Annotations can make a portfolio more enticing to a potential employer. Taking the time to create annotations will pay off in the end.

Exercise: Annotations

Gather the projects for your portfolio, then annotate each project. Ideally, create this within your portfolio draft. However, you can just put them in a text file or Word document instead.