Notes from the Field

School Library Monthly/Volume XXVII, Number 7/April 2011

Grassroots Google Tools: ePortfolio in Assessment and Curriculum Integration

by Sara Duvall, Kristal Jaaskelainen, and Peter Pasque

The What

Do you know that there is free methodology for creating and organizing online student portfolios and curriculum sharing sites throughout an entire school? There’s no need to spend any money because Google provides everything schools need to undertake such a project and move into a truly 21st-century teaching model. By using the resources in this article and on the accompanying Google site, it is possible to plant the idea in your school and watch it grow.

The Why

The initial introduction to Web 2.0 technologies has passed and these technologies have now become integral to educational culture. Up-to-date educators leverage these technologies and incorporate them into classrooms. Cutting edge teachers have an increasing number of students who are blogging, podcasting, tweeting, and utilizing these tools. No doubt, such teachers already exist at your school. The next challenge, therefore, is to expand this 21st-century teaching and learning beyond a single classroom and build a schoolwide culture that embraces and incorporates various technologies in a systemic and dynamic manner. The Ann Arbor Skyline High School model is a straightforward, accessible, and easy-to-replicate example of such widespread technology integration.

The new paradigm for technology is that technology is not relevant unless it seamlessly integrates with many other forms of technology. Calendars need to automatically sync with computers, phones, and Web sites; televisions need to work with the Internet, Blue Ray players, Netflix, iTunes, AppleTV, Roku, and computers; cameras need to automatically upload pictures to Flickr, Facebook, and Picassa. Hardware and/or software isn’t deemed useful anymore unless it can intertwine seamlessly with and complement technologies that are already in place. The days of technology as a stand-alone device are over.

Technology integration is an essential part of educational goals today. In schools that meet the 21st-century needs of students, curriculum needs to be shared with other teachers in the same discipline, to be integrated into other disciplines, to be relevant to students, and to not stop artificially at the end of a unit. The efficacy of teaching and learning in the classroom must be analyzed and continually refined to ensure all students are mastering the content, understanding the big ideas, and synthesizing the main components. Effective curriculum carries beyond the classroom door, and technology can help organize a potentially overwhelming undertaking.

The How

Schoolwide technology integration in the Ann Arbor Skyline High School has been accomplished by utilizing a variety of the Google Tool set to stimulate schoolwide integration and collaboration. Think in terms of planting seeds in a garden of limitless potential. Skyline’s process focuses on Google Docs and Sites as the seedlings. Every Skyline student (current enrollment 1,200+) has an online portfolio of work, and each core curricular area is building online, shared curricular Web sites. Each of these projects has grown into schoolwide standard practice. These Web sites are accessible to every teacher and student and have the potential to grow, expand, and improve teaching and learning. Numerous schoolwide practices have been influenced and improved by using these simple tools.

Get It Done

Step 1

Familiarize yourself with how to link Google Docs with Google Sites, as well as how to share the site and documents with others. Learn how to avoid overwhelming teacher’s Google Docs and how to easily manage numerous invitations to other sites. Refer to the "How-To" (Tutorials) section of Skyline’s Google site or use the Google tutorials directly.

Step 2

This is a two-part step. Implementing both steps is recommended, but part A or part B works just fine as a stand-alone project.

Part A: Students. Convince one core-curriculum Department Head to integrate online portfolios into every course in the department. English/Language Arts teachers were the choice at Skyline, but any required core subject will serve. To reduce stress, roll this out beginning with a required ninth grade course and expand year by year. In this way, every student in the school, over a four-year period, will have a Google portfolio and be able to demonstrate mastery in using online resources to share and collaborate on information creation and retrieval. Initially, every student signs up for a gmail account and then sets up a personal Google Site, which serves as their cumulative portfolio. All sites are shared with the teacher. "Turn in" an assignment now means posting it to one’s Google site. Over time, the student portfolio site is personalized and organized. The Skyline Google Site provides handouts, how-tos, and tutorials on this process (https://sites.google.com/site/skylinecpi/). The ePortfolio not only preserves all the coursework, but becomes the culminating assessment as students present their work to teachers, peers, and community members at the end of each term.

Part B: Staff. Convince one core-curriculum Department Head to make the transition to online shared curriculum sites with one course. The English/Language Arts curriculum and, specifically, teachers of English 9A at Skyline complied with this request. Five teachers get together and thematically design a Pacing Guide for the course. The Pacing Guide goes up as a shared Google doc. Then each of the five teachers designs two of the ten units and adds them, along with videos, handouts, tutorials, etc., to the Google Pacing Guide. Of course, teachers have to sign up for a gmail account and get started with Google sites the same way that students do. This model works especially well for developing new courses, but it is so useful that the value to curriculum transition from an existing course is quickly apparent. This system becomes exponentially more valuable if your school uses common curriculum and common assessments. Again, the Skyline Google Site has handouts, how-tos, and tutorials on this process (https://sites.google.com/site/skylinecpi/).

Step 3: Integrating the ePortfolio Sites and Curriculum Sites into Your School

Rolling these systems out to the staff and students is a self-seeding process. Once teachers see the exciting results in one content area, others get on board. Students understand this idea right away. Interestingly, research shows that new methods of technology integration work best when the staff members model, in their own professional lives, the same processes the students are asked to use (see resources on the Google site). This is one clear reason why integrating both the ePortfolio and Curriculum Site Integration at the same time is recommended. Start with the teachers. Get them up and running with sharing docs and building sites. Once teachers get the picture, the handouts and tutorials that they will use with their students make sense to them.

Sum It Up

Ann Arbor Skyline High School is a new, comprehensive high school dedicated to looking beyond the 19th-century educational model to embracing a model that meets the 21st-century needs of students in the wider world. Integration of instructional technologies is an essential component. It is no longer "what" is being taught, but how it is being taught. Students understand the difference and are more involved with their education because of it.

Yes, You Can Do It!

Utilizing Google Tools meets the next generation of challenge—to expand 21st-century teaching and learning beyond single classrooms. The Google Tool set is a free, user-friendly, grassroots way to embed technology use in your school as a natural part of the culture, thereby, creating a 21st-century model of education that you can build on and expand as your confidence grows.

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