I've been reading Chris Tovani's book, So What Do They Really Know?, and I've been gathering some great ideas that I want to try.
A few thoughts to remember:
"my goal is to let students work on their own or in groups for two-thirds of the period, leaving one third of the time for whole-class instruction" (35).
"When students have the majority of class time to read, write, and discuss, I have the opportunity to gather data that tells me what they need" (35-36).
See notes on how she organizes her classes into workshops on p. 39-41.
Learning target charts p.48.
Inner voice sheets p. 50.
"Allowing students to be metacognitive at the end of the period and share new learning makes others in the class smarter, and it gives the teacher insights into students' patterns of understanding and confusion" (57).
"Students didn't understand how important it is to have a question in mind when it comes to research and building background knowledge.  It's no wonder they aren't digging into the reading.  Many don't have a clear question, which means they don't have a way to sift and sort information" (62).
"whoever is doing the reading, writing, and talking is doing the learning" (69).
Tovani recommends this website.  Be sure to come back to this and spend more time with it:
http://guides.library.harvard.edu/friendly.php?s=sixreadinghabits&gid=4877   (76).
"The inability to annotate something related to the reading alerts learners that their minds have wandered, which gives them an opportunity to go back and reread before their thoughts stray too far from the text" (77)
Tovani has students write annotations on sticky notes since they cannot write in their texts.  Then she has students select the sticky notes that they want her to assess (82).
"When I ask students to choose their annotations, it forces them to determine what is important.  It gives them ownership of their thinking and allows them to decide what they want me to assess" (84).
"When students understand that I don't have to give as many quizzes or assign sets of comprehension questions when they annotate, they are much more likely to engage.  I also find that when struggling readers learn that I'm not looking for one way to think about the reading, they are more likely to share their thinking in annotations" (87).

Tovani, Chris. So What Do They Really Know? Portland: Stenhouse, 2011. Print.

Low on new ideas today, but I wanted to be sure to make note of this link for "This I Believe."  I think a project of this type would be a great addition to an e-portfolio.  http://thisibelieve.org/search/

Brainstorming for Digital Portfolio/ Multi-genre project:
Talk with students individually at the beginning of the semester to determine what their driving interests are.  This needs to be done early and before they know that I am looking to establish a topic so that their choices are not affected by outside forces.
Have students begin a KWL chart, writing about what they know about their topic, what they want to know, and at the conclusion of the project, what they have learned.
Have students develop a relationship with a mentor who knows something about their topic.  This mentor will have access to the student's writing
Make up guidelines for what the mentor will be expected to do so that participants will know what they are getting in to.  In some cases, I think that this might be a great inter-disciplinary assignment.  Perhaps if students do not have any definite ideas about what their topic may be, ask them what their favorite course is.  Go from there.  I really think that ideally mentors will be chosen from outside the school setting, but in some cases, I think that in school mentors may work (Gary Carroll, Dr. Goodrum, teachers who are truly experts in their fields).

Here are some links I need to keep up with:
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/creating-online-community-through-30671.html   This is a lesson plan.  It provides excellent instructions for setting up a blog and a great rubric for online portfolios.

http://www.users.muohio.edu/romanots/Tom_Romano.html  Here is the guru.  Check here for multi-genre project examples and rubrics.

http://www.mshogue.com/ce9/multi_genre/multigenre.htm  Lots of information from a school that performs multi-genre projects.