Professional Learning Goals

• Teachers developed experience working with student-selected portfolio artifacts
• Teachers developed facility in helping students choose artifacts for their portfolio and in helping students improve the quality of their reflection on learning and subsequent actions
• Teachers noted increased engagement with parents of their learners as can be facilitated by digital portfolios and student-led conferences
• Teachers developed facility sharing student learning and day-to-day school-home communication (upcoming events, classroom activities and experiences) using the class home page features of the VLE

Activities and Resources

• Our teams (teachers and DECEs) worked together with district System Education Technology Support (SETS) staff to set up their classes in the VLE and prepare the QR code cards for their students
• Our teams worked together to develop comfort with the Brightspace app and the complementary VLE interface
• Our teams initially shared the functions and purpose of the VLE class home page with parents and began using it as a primary school-home communication path
• Our teams collaborated to reflect on the choices of artifacts their students included in their digital portfolios and quality of their reflections
• Our teams developed a table of indicators based on the student samples and reflections

Unexpected Challenges

• Banking Arrangements: In our case, our banking took place through our district’s accounting system and, as a result, ongoing accounting was a challenge, and final exact release figures will not be available until July.
• Time Delay in Acquiring Project Hardware: Delivery issues in ordering and receiving our iPads resulted in a delay in our official startup; cases for the iPads were lost and needed to be re-ordered
• Limited Availability of Occasional Teachers: Opportunities to schedule team project time were negatively influenced by difficulties in acquiring release time as initially planned
• Parent Access: Not all parents have Internet access to engage with the VLE/home page/student work

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

• Over the course of one year in any given class, students will demonstrate increased awareness of the qualities exhibited in their reflections on their work
• Over the course of a number of years, students will demonstrate increasing quality of reflection on their learning, resulting in improved results across a variety of subject areas
• Over time, students will demonstrate increased engagement with their learning as a result of increased parent awareness and engagement in their child’s learning

Sharing

• Blog post on school website
• Sharing through math-specific workshops with other system teachers, K-12
• Sharing results of parent-survey with school and system leaders
• Presentation to school trustees (pending)
• Potential to share outside of system at conferences

Project Evaluation

• Our team became more efficient at teaching students how to use, access and add to their portfolio. We know that we were successful because it is taking us less class time and students are becoming much more independent and comfortable with the process of adding artifacts to their portfolios.
• Our teams are continuing to develop facility in helping students choose artifacts for their portfolio and in helping students improve the quality of their reflection on learning and subsequent actions on an ongoing goal. We have seen some improvement in the quality of student reflections, but we are hoping to see even more improvement next year when we can start the process in September. As well, many students will be participating in this for their second year next year and we know that they will bring their enthusiasm and proficiency to motivate those students who may be new to the process.  
• Kindergarten teams who have extended their implementation to include sharing with parents have noticed increased engagement with the parents of their learners. Parents are enthused at seeing classroom activities, work samples, presentations, videos and activities that can support learning at home. They have enjoyed hearing their child’s reflections on their chosen pieces of work. It has been exciting for us to see the learning that happens at school being extended at home and that learning is getting posted from home and can be shared back at school.  Students that go on family trips are now using the VLE/Portfolio to capture their experience and share with the class.
• Our teams continue to learn, develop and explore ways of sharing student learning and day-to-day school-home communication (upcoming events, classroom activities and experiences) using the class home page features of the VLE
• Some parents have indicated that VLE posts and Portfolio additions have provided conversation starters about what’s happening at school and leads to extended learning at home. For families that live in two different homes with some far away and don’t get to visit school very often, this helps them feel connected and a part of their child’s education.
• Kindergarten teams are enthused at the option to support their ongoing documentation efforts through student-selected work stored in the VLE. We are also reflecting on the role of the educator in assisting early learners with this process and the nature of “shared artifacts” generated in time by the interactions of a number of students.