an institutional rather than a user focus
This is key: Desires to use portfolios in institutional/program assessment practices are part of what has made them cumbersome. Portfolio use in programs that emphasized their value for students and learning have always been the best examples in my opinion (eg, Portland State, LaGuardia CC, Clemson), even if they also use them in institutional/program assessment too.
e-portfolios did not become the standard form of assessment as proposed
Agreed, and yet I still believe that portfolios are a powerful part of what some call "authentic" assessment practices.
for many students owning their own domain and blog remains a better route to establishing a lifelong digital identity
DoOO is definitely a great goal, especially if it is viewed in part as a portfolio activity, so people use their domains to build up a lifelong portfolio. What seems key is having the right supports in place to help people and institutions reach such goals not only technically, but most importantly, as a set of practices integrated into their personal and institutional workflows.
e-portfolios
FWIW, I think the eportfolio community coalesced around not using a hyphen or capital P in the term. Some prefer to just talk about "portfolios", reasoning that the "electronic" part was not a necessary ingredient and probably should be updated to "digital" regardless.
What has changed, what remains the same, and what general patterns can be discerned from the past twenty years in the fast-changing field of edtech?
Join me in annotating @mweller's thoughtful exercise at thinking through the last 20 years of edtech. Given Martin's acknowledgements of the caveats of such an exercise, how can we augment this list to tell an even richer story?
2008: E-Portfolios
My first entry into edtech was in eportfolios, back in 2004 when I was at Portland State University. PSU was probably an early adopter of eportfolios, so 2008 may be the right year to put them in as a wider focus.