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Twelve ePortfolio examples for Teacher Education  

Category: Customers
Wednesday 9th October 2024
CarolePebblePad
by: Carole Hunter

Research shows that ePortfolios are increasingly being used in teacher education to support teaching, learning, assessment and professional development. In this blog, we introduce you to our new Teacher Education resource. It includes 12 fantastic examples of how PebblePad’s ePortfolio, workbook and assessment tools are being used in Teacher Education programs in Australia.

These examples demonstrate how PebblePad, as a Learning Journey Platform, can be used right across this spectrum to meet various learning needs, including;

  • Pedagogical documentation
  • Process documentation
  • Scaffolding literacy skills
  • Multimodal reports
  • Peer review
  • Reflective practice
  • Planning learning and assessment
  • Developing class resources
  • Teaching placements
  • Teaching Practice Assessments
  • Evidencing teaching standards
  • Professional identity

One of the things we love most is highlighting the great ways PebblePad is being used by educators and students alike. When it comes to Teacher Education programs, many people immediately associate the use of portfolios with a means for students to record their progress and evidence against a set of professional standards, or to create a personal showcase to differentiate themselves in the job application process – and we see some terrific examples of those uses! But we’re also seeing PebblePad being used to support pre-service teachers in myriad ways beyond this.

Across a course, there will be a need for both carefully structured approaches that scaffold the learning process, as well as freeform approaches that allow students complete creative control. PebblePad’s template, workbook and portfolio builder tools have every scenario covered.

Our new resource, Using PebblePad in Teacher Education, has wonderful examples of different approaches drawn from the inspiring educators and students at some of our Australian partner universities: Charles Sturt University, The University of Melbourne, The University of Tasmania, Murdoch University, The University of Sydney and Avondale University.

 

Using PebblePad within subjects

The Using PebblePad in Teacher Education resource begins with a set of real use cases that demonstrate how PebblePad is being used within subjects. This includes:

  • Pedagogical documentation that builds both skills and confidence in teaching creating arts to young children;
  • Process documentation of the student teacher’s own discipline-based skills, as a way of sharing with others;
  • Supporting sequences of learning activities and iterative assessments (including peer review) in curriculum areas
  • Creating multimedia reports, scaffolding academic literacy skills, and supporting reflective practice.

In each case, you’ll find links to either the full resources being used with students or examples of student work, to give you an idea of what this looks like in practice.

PebblePad for professional practice in placements

When it comes to professional practice, even before placements begin, students are using creative portfolios or scaffolded workbooks to plan and develop units of work which they will use in the classroom. They can even use PebblePad’s pages and portfolios for creating class resources that they’ll use with students on placement.

Of course, each teaching placement will have a complex set of student requirements. This can include both providing evidence of (and reflection on) experiences by students, as well as feedback and assessment by supervisors, academic mentors and the academic coordinator.

Ensuring the process and outcomes are clear and transparent to all, and that at-risk students are quickly identified is imperative. Students themselves are also finding great benefit in using the PebblePocket app to reflect on experiences offline, either immediately after teaching or when they are out and about.

Using PebblePad across the course

To attain professional accreditation students need to provide evidence against a set of teaching standards, and again educators can choose to support students through a highly scaffolded approach or a highly creative approach. The development of a narrative that expresses their emerging professional identity is critical to this process.

Take a look at some of the great resources developed by teacher educators across Australia to achieve ALL of these components in this page of resources: Using PebblePad in Teacher Education

The PebblePad community is a generous one, and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the incredible universities, educators and students who have contributed to this page. It’s this kind of sharing that helps those new to PebblePad to visualise what course-wide use might look like in their own context.

 

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Carole Hunter

Carole has a background in teaching, educational publishing and learning design in Australia and the Pacific. She has been passionate about portfolios for as long as she can remember, and started her journey with PebblePad in 2008 leading a university-wide implementation of the platform. She has since taken on leading roles in multiple large scale initiatives, supporting educators in their transition to effective online teaching underpinned
by strong pedagogical principles.

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