I have to give credit where it is due ! I found this resource on Tik Tok today. It is pretty cool. I think that it will come in really handy if I am trying to brainstorm what to do with a student or working on an IEP.
ePortfolios in Practice
When I was hired as a non-certified TTOC a few years ago, I was overwhelmed with the vast amount of information that I was gathering. In my first couple of days, someone told me that some teachers use websites to store all their information and then they can easily access it no matter what classroom they were assigned. It sounded like a great plan, so I started building one, and yup, it still exists – I just checked… http://mrssaramcmanus.weebly.com/  (I should probably figure out how to delete that!)  I wonder now if those teachers were using ePortfolios in their everyday teaching?
I love the concept of creating a platform throughout my teacher education program where I can showcase my growth and collect resources for my future. I also love that once I am certified and begin to spread my wings as a practitioner, I will continue to have somewhere to reflect and digitally accumulate the artifacts of my career.
I was disappointed in the Edutopia Blog Do I Need a Digital Teaching Portfolio? where Edwige Simon wrote, “leave out any irrelevant or personal information pertaining to your hobbies or family,” as it is in direct contrast with a modern teaching philosophy like Parker Palmer’s “we teach who we are.” If my ePortfolio is not about me, if it does not showcase who I am and the things nearest and dearest to my heart, then my ePortfolio will not be an accurate reflection of the teacher I am.Â
I loved the connection between the University of Waterloo article and our EDUC 421 class regarding “making learning visible.” ePortfolios really do have a unique way of taking a student’s way of learning and placing it onto a platform to be presented in a format that can be uniform yet unique to each learner. Although all portfolios aim to showcase a collection or body of work, ePortfolio can add depth and personal reflection similar to a journal; they can allow for two-way communication by commenting on posts/blogs; and they can always be edited as the perspective of the student changes.
Understandably, teachers who were not trained with ePortfolios may not jump right onto the bandwagon, but now that I am beginning to have a depth of understanding of how helpful the process of reflection is in my practice and how I could adapt it to be a useful tool, I am confident that my ePortfolio will stick with me long into the future.
EDUC 421 – Weekly Journal #4
Week #4Â – January 27, 2022
Briefly summarize your PD activity and key take-aways. What connections, if any, to assessment and/or motivation can you draw from your professional development activity?
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I attended the Kevin Lamoureux Keynote Presentation for School District #28 and the workshop on Finding Balance with Katie White. There is no way that I can limit myself to one page with two incredible Professional Development seminars in one day.
I was especially pleased that the Keynote was introduced by the School District’s new Indigenous Education Principal, Joanne Moise. It was my first time seeing the new Principal and my first impression of her is that she will bring a fresh and much-needed positive energy to the AB ED department. While working at McNaughton, our interim Principal was inspired by Kevin and had the staff meet to watch some of his pre-recorded presentations. I had not made that connection until the Pro-D presentation began. Our EDUC 346 class is reading the book he contributed to, authored by Jennifer Katz, “Ensouling Our Schools” (2018). I love that now that I recognize him as the author, I will see his passion behind the words and be able to hear his voice in his chapters.
Some of my favourite things Kevin did during his presentation that stood out to me were how he: challenged his audience and put them to task (add to my to-do list: Read the TRC 94 Calls to Action); acknowledged negative aspects while promptly moving forward with positive intentions for the future; and took complicated subject matters and broke them down into logical chunks ensuring he reached as many people as he could (UDL???). In hindsight, you can tell that he has likely given that keynote presentation many times with only slight regional adjustments, but the impact at the moment was still powerful, and I’m sure to leave a lasting impression on all those who attended.
My two biggest takeaways from his presentation were the concept of reconciliation as a gift to heal and that I can still love Canada. Last term, I struggled to come to terms with all the actual historical facts I was learning about our country that I love so dearly. Kevin’s presentation today has allowed me to see that Canada was founded with good intentions, led astray for a while, and now it is time to get back on track. I know that I will be able to teach Canada’s history in a much more positive frame of mind now that it has been restructured through his lens.
Katie White’s Finding Balance in a Shifting Assessment Landscape was an interesting afternoon, especially because I only saw the “Finding Balance” title and thought it would be about work-personal life balance (hahaha). I don’t know if I learned more or left the workshop with more questions. Most of the big takeaways for me came around the topic of Proficiency Scales. I connected with her definition of a proficiency scale being “a tool to describe degrees of quality and/or consistency to a learning goal.” It was a lightbulb moment for me to see that the Emerging-Developing-Proficient-Extending scale was relational to the consistency scale of Rarely-Sometimes-Often-Always. Separating a Proficiency Scale from a quantitative 1-4 scale into that of only qualitative also impacted my understanding of non-letter grade reporting.
I hope that one of the tidbits that I don’t lose is Katie’s idea of how to remember what competency is. I plan to practice asking myself, “what makes a driver competent?” the next time I have to look at the Curricular Competencies for a lesson plan activity. Unfortunately, that is also where one of my questions and frustrations comes from. I’ll try my best to explain… I think she hinted at it slightly but then got back on track. So we, as teachers, take the time to break all of the curricular competencies down, as she did in her presentation example of an Art Unit. Then we are to thoughtfully tie them into the very vague Content points/tasks that we are given in the curriculum, which are generally not much more than subject headings. Next, we create proficiency scales for each of these and then track those across multiple opportunities to create an amazing base of evidence over time. Then… we just smush it together for reporting??? Like a simple: Science 5 Meeting Expectations with a comment. I don’t get it.
Or… Do all these competencies break down on the new report cards for each subject area? Maybe, I just haven’t seen an elementary school report card in a few years. It seems like a tonne of work for one out of four possible outcomes. This makes sense why portfolios go hand in hand with a Proficiency Scale model report card. If I can just have my elementary students work with me through formative assessments building their skills, and placing all their work into a portfolio, then when it comes time for reporting, I can either choose to do a summative assessment, or I could use the collection as evidence of growth over time. I could even have the student go back through their work and have them pick their best work to showcase as evidence of their learning. There must be more for me to learn on this subject, so I will remain open and hopin’ for good things to come!