Privacy, eportfolios and social networks

While I was at Ausakai I went to a presentation about PebblePad. Pebblepad is sof course not part of Sakai and the presentation was basically about why an external application had been chosen in preference to using Sakai's own eportfolio application.

One of the more interesting findings was that students liked having a separate application - the learning management system was, well the learning management system, and felt to be owned by the institution, while the eportfolio application was felt to be private and sort of like an academic facebook or myspace page in which the student could generate personas and reveal what they wished to whom, something that accords with the Helsinki university finding that people tend to manage their privacy on social networking sites naturally.

This suggests that there may be a requirement for a service that allows people to make a personal statement or more accurately personal statements about themselves. After all to some people I'm a man who likes cats, to others I'm a roman and early medieval history geek, and yet others a respected IT professional, and to be able to separate their lists of friends/contacts accordingly ...