Google Drive Blog: Electronic Portfolios with Google Apps

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Electronic Portfolios with Google Apps

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Guest post: Dr. Helen Barrett is a retired teacher educator, an independent researcher, and international trainer/consultant on electronic portfolios and digital storytelling in education. This year, she is writing a book about using Web 2.0 tools to create Interactive Portfolios.this website

"E-Portfolios for Learning" provide an environment to reflect about your learning, telling your own story of growth over time. These working portfolios are often structured as journals or blogs where you can include samples of your work along with personal reflections. (This is my Blogger blog, where I document my activities, achievements, and reflections... my personal learning environment.)

"E-Portfolios for Personal Branding and Self-Marketing" let you develop a "resume on steroids" for showcasing skills and samples of your best work to potential employers, customers, or graduate schools. (This is my Google Site, set up with my own domain name in Google Apps, highlighting my professional achievements.)

"E-Portfolios for Assessment/Accountability" are used by educational institutions to document achievement, sometimes replacing or supplementing standardized tests, or more traditional forms of evaluation. (I don't have an example, because many of these highly structured portfolios are behind passwords and most universities use customized systems for this purpose.)

Begin with a working portfolio, that could be as simple as a reflective journal or blog in Blogger, the Announcements page type in Google Sites, or even a Google Docs document set up as a diary.

Using several Google tools, collect digital documents that represent your best or typical work:

Google Docs provides a great environment for developing and storing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations as well as PDFs. Google Docs also lets you share your work with others for commenting and feedback.
Share videos and images using YouTube and Picasa.
Upload other file types as attachments in Google Sites.

To create a more structured presentation of your work for a particular audience, select certain pieces to go into a more tailored portfolio/website. Google Sites can help you organize your work with a reflective narrative, telling your story while linking to supporting evidence (selected entries from your journal/blog and links to files in your digital archive) to meet your intended purpose. Here is a high school portfolio where a student documents his senior project.