For many years, I have wanted to have a writing portfolio element to my English classes because of their value for students to take ownership over their own writing and watch their own growth. However, I do not have my own classroom space--I've been in as few as two rooms and as many as five--so I tend not to feel ownership or control over the physical space I'm in. As a result, I have never successfully found the space to dedicate to creating portfolios and consequently student work would get lost or discarded, and I didn't want to manage an extra element. However, my inability to manage a space for student portfolio work should not prevent them from having a space to keep their writing and monitor their growth as writers throughout the year. Since my students will be receiving laptops next year, ePortfolios can provide students with a sescure location with mobile access to store and build their writing portfolios. Portfolio writing emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as a method of assessment for student writing in response to the growing standardized testing movement. Taejoon Park of Columbia University describes the emergence of portfolio writing as follows:

In fields like composition, in particular, this view of testing was seen as counterproductive to the whole process of teaching and learning the complex, multifaceted skill of writing. As a result, many composition specialists began to search for ways of measuring student writing that would be more consistent with the emerging process approach to writing, allowing other views of student writing than the single, timed test, usually placed at the end of a writing course. In an attempt to find an attractive alternative approach to writing assessment, many composition researchers began to experiment with portfolio-based approaches, and, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, portfolio pedagogy began to emerge as a personal, multiple-use tool for both teachers and students. (Park 1)

It then stands to reason that portfolio writing is still a viable and valuable tool for students to monitor their own growth as writers over the course of a school term or year. With the advances in Google Apps for Education, students can now use Google Sites to create their own electronic Portfolio (or ePortfolio). Below is a chart that illustrates the purposes of utilizing student ePortfolios.

https://sites.google.com/site/eportfolioapps/overview

As a result, ePortfolios provide students with a space to collect artifacts that they've created over the course of the class and display their growth. This format allows students to create, collect, revise, reflect upon, and publish their work. Ultimately, students are able to think critically about their work and growth but also showcase their best work publically as well.

The ePortfolio works as a digital platform for portfolio writing. Portfolios are important for students because they ask students to articulate their learning and growth through reflection. John Dewey, a predominant educational philosopher, argues that reflective thinking is the key to long term learning. He states that reflection is, "…active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends" (1933, p. 9). Therefore, reflection requires thinking that is deep, active, and careful and does not allow students to passively submit work without ever reviewing it or looking back at their own growth over time. Furthermore, reflection on writing asks students to better understand what makes their writing good or how to improve it. Google Sites explains how ePortfolios can offer many levels of reflection for students:

Reflection takes place at several points in time: when the piece of work (an artifact) is saved in the digital archive (a contemporaneous reflection while the work is fresh on our minds... or reflection in the present tense)... thus the role of a blogging tool; and when (and if) this piece is included in the more formal presentation/showcase or summative assessment portfolio. The reflection written at this later point of time is more summative or cumulative, providing a much broader perspective on a body of work that represents the author's goals for the showcase portfolio... reflection in the past tense. Technologically, selection would involve creating a hyperlink to specific blog entries (reflection) which may have documents (artifacts) as attachments. Finally, once we have looked back over our body of work, then we have an opportunity to look forward, setting a direction for future learning through goals... reflection in the future tense. (https://sites.google.com/site/eportfolioapps/reflection/resources-on-reflection)

This tool is incredibly powerful for student learning because ePortfolios ask students to think about their work in the past, make current connections, and reflect on how their new understanding will shape their learning in the future. As a result, students can think quite deeply. Therefore, students can no longer provide a hastily written assignment and leave it without improving it or learning from it.

Additionally, ePortfolios are living documents that grow with students throughout the year. Google Apps for Education provide students with a forum to build ePortfolios and recieve recursive feedback from the teacher and peers via work in Google Docs using the "share" feature. With this, students are able to produce multimedia artifacts to display their learning, and students are able to build a community of feedback and learning or reflection during their learning processes.

Google Apps for Education ePortfolio Workflow

The workflow pictured showcases the strengths of the various apps that are provided in Google Apps for Education and how they might be utilized for an ePortfolio. Google Docs is listed twice for students to be producers of artifacts and papers. They can create their own writing and share it with their peers and teachers for recursive feedback as they navigate the writing process. Google Docs also saves the versions of student work automatically as they write, so those with access to the doc can also track the changes and progress made on a document. Hapara, Google Docs, RSS feeds, Gmail, and Google Groups give teachers a forum to communicate with students about their work during the process. Google Sites and Blogger gives students avenues for publishing their work; these spaces also offer a place for students to reflect on their work. Reflection can happen via a blog as they are going through the writing process or summatively with a site of their best work. Finally sites like Youtube and Picasa offer ways for students to upload and link multimedia forms of their learning process. Images and videos can be powerful learning tools that students can use to showcase their growth in addition to written work, especially if teachers are looking for mastery of a concept or idea. Collectively, Google Apps for Education can become a powerful tool for both teachers and students as they develop and reflect upon skills over a course of study.

The cloud based nature of Google Apps for Education allows the classroom to be extended beyond the walls of the school building. Students can both document their learning as they progress, but they also have a chance to showcase their best work and share their work with authentic audiences. Teachers are able to assess the summative product of a portfolio and provide students with formative assessment along the way as the portfolio is built throughout the course. Students also get recursive feedback as they write and reflect upon their own work upon completion and as a culmination of their learning.

Portfolio writing critically engages students in metacognition and recursive feedback; it is also ubiquitous because it can be maintained and developed beyond the confines of the physical classroom space since it is developed in the cloud.

• Metacognition
  

For me, the most significant learning experience that this platform provides students is metacognition and critical reflection of their own learning. Metacognition, or thinking about one's thinking, is incredibly important for students because it forces them to try to understand their learning process. According to Vanderbilt's CFT Assistant Director Nancy Chick, students are more adept at transferring knowledge as a result of metacognition. She says, "They do this by gaining a level of awareness above the subject matter: They also think about the tasks and contexts of different learning situations and themselves as learners in these different contexts." When students reflect on their learning and the writing process as a whole, they are more likely to transfer the skills to new assignments and hopefully across the curriculum. Thinking about their thinking also requires students to return to their work and internalize changes that need to be made and what they do successfully and why. By articulating these ideas in writing, they are deepening their thought process and more likely to remember it the next time.

• Recursive Feedback

Since portfolios are a work in progress to show growth over time, they are based on growth and feedback. "One and done" writing is not an option, and feedback becomes a critical part of the learning process. As noted earlier, Google Apps for Education has multiple avenues for feedback from "sharing" documents to commenting on blogs to RSS feeds to monitor updates. For me, the most important feedback comes along the way during the writing process. Students need to get feedback in a meaningful way while they are currently working on an assignment or drafting a piece of writing. By providing clear expectations and a clear rubric, teachers can structure an environment for students to receive peer to peer feedback. Students are able to make comments right in the document that is being drafted, and teachers can monitor the comments that are being made for accuracy and merit. Furthermore, students can get feedback in the form of comments on their blog posts or ePortfolios in Google Sites. Therefore, students can get feedback along the way while they are working and summatively after the work has been presented. The feedback also fuels metacognition because the students are able to think about their work and make changes based upon comments from their peers. 

• Ubiquitous Learning

Finally, ePortfolios are ubiquitous because all of this learning can happen any time and anywhere. Students can draft and revise and give feedback from anywhere they can access their Google Drive. This means that student feedback is not limited to a class period and students can continue to build their ePortfolios more effectively.

Google Sites allows students to build and personalize their own wiki ePortfolio. (Click here to browse examples.) Below is a screenshot of an ePortfolio created through Google. The basic structure is provided by the website and the teacher provides the guidelines and expectations for the assignments, but students build their own reflection and portfolio. They also have the opportunity to select which pieces of writing they include in their work. In addition to showcasing their work for the semester, students can also use their Google Site to start thinking beyond high school. They provided example has a place for students to post their resume, a post secondary plan, and awards. Because of this, students can build an ePortfolio that can be used beyond their showcasing assignments for a teacher, but they can showcase their work for potential schools or employers as well.

ePortfolio Example

This type of structure can be adapted for any course. For my freshman course, for example, I might have students write a letter of introduction about who they are as incoming freshman and goals for the year, and then have a section for each type of writing we will work on throughout the year (analytical, creative, expository, poetry, etc.) and students can choose their best work of each genre to include. The ePortfolio then becomes more of a showcase of student work, but they will be expected to include examples of their growth and the feedback they've recieved. Google Sites also allows users to comment on the pages, so students and teachers can use that feature to communicate. I would require students to produce a clean copy of the final revision and a hyperlink to the first draft with the feedback they recieved from peers. Since this application is meant to be metacognitive it is important that they have both copies available for the final portfolio in order to show growth and understanding. 

Overall, the possibilities that ePortfolios offer are more substantive than the drawbacks. It is up to the teacher to create an environment and structure in which students can be successful. In order to implement this project, I will scaffold the development of the site and model how to build the basic structure of the site. Once I've modeled the basics, more advanced students can explore and customize the site as they see fit while those who choose to leave it in its basic form may do so. In my eyes, the benefits of the higher order thinking that will be required of students to compile a portfolio of their work outweigh the minor struggles of holding students accountable and helping learners who might be overwhelmed by navigating the apps. In a classroom with 30 students, there are always going to be students that need to be held accountable and students who struggle with the forum that they are working in, so I might as well provide them with strong curriculum to work with that is cognitively valuable. Another benefit of working electronically is that it will help keep parents informed. Documents and student work can be shared and communicated with home as easily as with teachers, so all parties can be informed of progress if necessary. 

Google is constantly changing to keep up with the 21st century classroom, and they are adapting what the classroom looks like. Over the past several years, they have changed and updated their applications for teachers to make them them more userfriendly, useful, and ubiquitous. Now, teachers and students can track and watch their growth throughout the learning process with Google Apps for Education. I am very excited for the possibilities and I think that teachers of all levels, ages, and disciplines can utilize Google Docs and Google Sites to generate ePortfolios to document learning. As we get more standards driven with education reform, it's important to balance the standards with assessments that cannot be measured by a scantron machine. Writing is a skill that is constantly being honed and refined. Students must understand that "one and done" is not an option and that it takes work and thinking to write well and learn from it. For this reason, I recommend ePortfolios to have students showcase their learning process and articulate their growth.