Though I have had some reservations about ePortfolios, I am more turned off by the ways ePorts get used rather than with the actual ePortfolio technologies available. These platforms are already pre-packaged and pre-formatted so I am deeply disturbed when faculty create a master template where students (or staff) just input data. It amazes me that ePortfolios can become just another 5-paragraph formula so quickly. Here is what I mean by a template:
The box wrapped in a gray line is called the top navigation bar of an ePortfolio. You click on a word/item and then you get a series of corresponding ePages that have another series of left navigation options. What happens in many of the classrooms that I see is that teachers set the topics of the navigation bar to match the requirements of the department, state standards, etc. Students just load in their work, almost like sifting recyclables into the correct bin. While that kind of automated sifting is an important task for one’s daily household chores, it most certainly does not qualify as digital literacy or even LITERACY. For me, it is simply tragic that this sifting passes mustard for writing classrooms.
This sifting into digital templates is yet another kind of standardization and corporate cloning. That kind of ePortfolio robs students of even minimal levels of digital design in already pre-formatted platforms. The technology actually allows you to remove the line around the box, thicken it, shadow-box it, color it, round its ages, make buttons, add a background color, etc. You can do the same with the left navigation (click here for my own ePort as a sample). You can have multiple backgrounds in all of these spaces. The examples are so countless that you need an actual design plan. In fact, most websites start with a sketch, a practice that stirs significant conflict since far too many teachers do not see sketching as composing and writing. I am always so wonderfully surprised when I hear web designers talk about their design choices in the same way that an interior designer does. It makes sense since we are, in essence, designing a space. So if students are not allowed to think about any of these design elements for themselves, then can we really call their work an ePortfolio? I remain stunned that writing teachers do not think design has any part of literacy in the 21st century. While that fact alone is not shocking, such teaching practices are especially violent for students of color.
The images of smiling, happy students of color are masterfully manipulated in college marketing for every brochure, poster, and college webpage— images that, once again, are not controlled by people of color. The overall saturation of images in a multimedia era has not meant anything positive for people of color. When you do not control the resources, you certainly do not control how your image is portrayed. I am talking about decolonization here: what might it mean for people of color to (re)imagine their image inside of the violence of a visual/media culture that denies them this kind of self-determination? Self-determined visual cultures will be vital for digital literacies in the 21st century, all the more so given the stunning number of college teachers who use educational technologies to strip students of their own cultural-visual rhetorics.
Giving students control of their own visual image has meant that I have had to introduce a little CSS in my class. It’s not that difficult. While many of my rather crotchety colleagues might seem to think that the sole focus of college writing in the 21st century is grammar in print texts, I know better than to trust such systems and teachers. I am disappointed by how many remain intent on denying my students the REALEST and most basic of human rights/literacy in the 21st century… self-determination.
There’s just something about the language. My colleague, Victoria Bond, and her co-author, T.R. Simon, is a case example. I don’t want to spoil their wonderful book, 
That language is also the reason why I have cherished The Watsons Go To Birmingham-1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis since it came out in 1995. He shows you the love, dignity, and warmth of a black family while also showing how a young boy deals with and understands the bombing of the 16th Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama. There is no happy ending to the book, just an ending that lets you know that black love will sustain this family and community. When you value the language and experience of these kinds of tellings, then you just can’t help but feel real slighted when you see a Hollywood adaptation. I finally watched the movie version of The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 on the Hallmark channel this weekend. Mostly, I was just curious to see if the film achieves the brilliance that I think Curtis’s book achieves. I suspected it wouldn’t and I was right.
I knew I was traveling down a slippery slope when I first turned on the movie because Hallmark didn’t air the movie on the actual anniversary. Maybe it’s because I don’t watch too much television but I also found it quite difficult to view this movie when every single commercial was white. I have never seen so many middle class white women shopping at Walmart as I did in the commercial breaks. No single commercial with a black family? A black mother? A black woman? They did, however, play 
Despite the facts of the eleven issues listed above, we have never acknowledged the terrorism that was the norm in places like Birmingham, Alabama. Racist violence has been part and parcel of our local and national governments. Davis reminds us that the murder of these 4 Little Girls is a complex history, one that is rarely acknowledged in our commemoration ceremonies, but one that is intimately connected to ongoing violence under our ongoing racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia: from Trayvon Martin… to Oscar Grant… to the numerous stories of racist violence that I have told here about the universities where I have taught.
Maybe this is an academic/professor thing but I am often perplexed by self-aggrandizing and conceited college faculty. I remember when I first started on the tenure track and was surrounded by folk who thought their scholarship was the most impressive and deepest thing ever. It was perplexing because these folk weren’t the least bit interesting to me, much less offering some kind of new Kuhnian shift to the world. It was like these folk had no sense of themselves, what they did well and what they didn’t do well. It became very dangerous because you could end up working on a project/committee with someone who claimed an expertise on the subject at hand, only to find out they didn’t know/do jack! The folk who I actually thought were brilliant scholars and teachers NEVER spoke of themselves, name-dropped their famous advisors, patted themselves on the back for the comp exams they took 10+ years ago, quoted from their unpublished/old dissertations, or sent emails/tweets announcing the brilliance of their newest publications/talks! They were somewhere writing, organizing, working with students, and actually BEING brilliant, not talkin about themselves. The lack of self-awareness could even extend beyond scholarship. I remember once talking with a colleague who had spent hours shopping, picking an outfit, doing her hair and make-up, and getting ready for a campus event because she needed/wanted to aesthetically compete with one of the women in the program. Here’s the thing: the woman who was the mark is a former model with a wardrobe/collection of labels rivaling Michelle Obama’s… and also one of the nicest people around (I knew her outside of the campus from common friends). She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen and yet she doesn’t think of herself this way nor is she the type to compete with women for men’s attention. Now here’s the real twisted part. The woman who saw HERSELF in competition is a dead-ringer for an Italian Greyhound dog. Yes, I know I am being triflin’ and mean, but I just gotta call it like I see it. DEAAAAAD-RINGER! 
I realize that people love greyhound dogs and I mean them no offense; greyhounds do seem quite unique but you gotta admit they are some scraggly, weird-looking things. The point remains: if you look like a greyhound dog on your best day, what makes you think you are a shining star next to one of the most beautiful women in the world? Really, how does someone anoint themselves as Miss Universe when in actuality they could be racing around a dog-track chasing a fake rabbit? Maybe these folk just need some black friends because ain’t no way I could even walk out the door so falsely convinced of my superflyness without my peoples setting me straight real fast (my family talks about you BAD to your face for much LESS than the examples I have offered). Just this summer, I tried to purchase some $8.99 finger nail polish and the 19-year-old black male sales clerk assured me that it made no sense to spend THAT much money for a color that had NO chance of looking good on my toes. I put it back and saved myself that 10 dollars. When black folk offer constructive feedback, they really CONSTRUCT! My toes can’t even make it out the stores in my neighborhood without some real honesty. Academics don’t choose their profession because of their good looks so this kind of vanity is a REAL strange and misplaced thing anyway. If you think this greyhound-dog-woman had an inaccurate sense of something as irrelevant and materialistic as physical beauty, well, honeychile, you need only imagine how delusional and impressed she was with something serious like her scholarship. If women get away with these levels of fantasy, conceit, and delusion, imagine what men in such patriarchal structures do. In fact, at every “third-tier” university where I worked/interviewed, male administrators stayed proclaiming the university’s similarity to the University of Illinois. I have been to UI campuses: there are NO similarities. The last time I saw such grand delusions of grandeur was when I lived in Hollywood, Los Angeles for a summer in my 20s. This is why self-reflection is important: if you are convinced you are the BOMB, then you don’t ever look deeply at yourself, at what you are doing, at who you are, and why you are making the decisions you are making. You just walk around proclaiming to be one thing when you are another altogether and stay STUCK on stupid forever.