[00:01] SPEAKER_00:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.
[00:06] Announcer:
Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.
[00:15] SPEAKER_01:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by my colleague, Matt Renwick. Matt is head principal at Howe Elementary School in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, and the author of Digital Student Portfolios, a whole school approach to connected learning and continuous assessment from PLP Press.
[00:35] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:37] SPEAKER_01:
Matt, welcome to Principal Center Radio.
[00:39] SPEAKER_02:
Thanks, Justin. Thanks for having me.
[00:41] SPEAKER_01:
So, Matt, this book grew directly out of your experience in your school of developing a process for creating digital student portfolios. Is that right? And could you tell us about how that went?
[00:50] SPEAKER_02:
Sure. That's correct.
[00:51] SPEAKER_01:
Yep.
[00:51] SPEAKER_02:
We started with – we knew technology was coming. And I saw it, and I saw schools going one-to-one. I saw all this stuff, and I knew money was coming. And I just thought, how are we going to invest in this? Is this going to be something that's just an add-on? Or is there an avenue in which we can take to make it a part of our instructional day that will actually enhance our learning?
[01:17]
So I wrote a very small grant. It was $1,000. In fact, we got declined for it. And I went back to the organization that's local. And I just said, we really would like to try these. And so they were able to cobble together different funding sources.
[01:30]
And we got two iPads. And I just asked my fifth grade teachers, I said, just give me two-year kids who are maybe not your most motivated learners, but I just want to see what happens when I give them iPads. And so we had them come down. They started to use them. And I just observed. I just saw what they were doing.
[01:47]
And it was pretty much kind of how I used it before then was just playing games, checking email, watching funny videos, things like that. They weren't really changing the learning environment at all. So that's kind of how we started was, in a sense, action research. So every time we would add a new twist to it, and what if we published their writing online? How would that change things? What if we had them collaborate on writing?
[02:14]
And we continued that process. So now we're in year three. We have around five iPads per classroom. We're not one to one. And I don't know if we'll ever be one to one, at least at the elementary level. But we're starting to really use them for authentic learning.
[02:31]
Just the other day, I made an e-book with my son. He was sick, home with asthma, and we made an audio e-book with Book Creator on iPad, and I plan to share it with staff, and now with Book Creator, you can post those books online on YouTube, and I just think it's just an awesome way to showcase student learning, and parents love it, and it's been a neat process. It's not been easy, but I feel like We're not just adding on technology. We're actually using it for purposeful reasons.
[02:57] SPEAKER_01:
And let's talk about what you mean by authentic learning. I think in the traditional model of doing work in school, the work goes from the teacher to the student as an assignment, and then from the student back to the teacher as a completed assignment, and then from the teacher back to the student as a graded assignment, and then from the student directly into the trash can. you're giving us kind of a different model where the work goes elsewhere and is also developed in a different way. Can you tell us a little bit about your school's vision for authentic learning?
[03:25] SPEAKER_02:
I think technology or no technology, I think that we are trying to strive to a more of a partnership type of learning, a partnership, so that there's some negotiation happening between the teacher and student. Instead of saying, you do this, the teacher might say, hey, here are a few options on how you could convey what you understand and know and are able to do. What works best for you? What works best for the skills and the content? And really talk to kids about what they want to do within constraints. I mean, we can't do everything, but just continue to do those types of things where it's like I said, more of a partnership.
[04:00]
Approach rather than top down.
[04:02] SPEAKER_01:
And you also made the decision to not just say, OK, well, you have some choice and here's a rubric and we'll convert that into a score that we'll put into a traditional grade book. You also made the choice to go with electronic portfolios. Can you talk about why you made that choice and what those portfolios look like?
[04:19] SPEAKER_02:
Well, I used to teach fifth and sixth grade for seven years. And I remember my portfolio process. It was a week before portfolio night. We would take these files that we've been stuffing papers into all year. together into a binder, put reflection notes on him and then sharing with parents. They look great.
[04:36]
Parents like them. The only problem was is that we never use them for really powerful types of learning like assess self assessment. And so. With digital portfolios that it's continuous throughout the year, it's expected of staff to share them out at least quarterly with families and the parents don't have to wait till April to to see how their child is doing. they can see it quarterly and every time something is shared online. And then going back to your question about why we chose digital portfolios, then the other big reason is that, like you said, rubrics, Justin, rubrics are great, and I think they're a powerful assessment tool.
[05:14]
But what if you can just look at a piece of writing or look at a math project or listen to a child read? You can tell a lot from that, and that is also considered data. And why are we always trying to filter all this authentic learning pieces into a number into a quantitative score. Why not just look at it and say this is what that child knows and is able to do. And I'm not saying get rid of quantitative scores, but what I am saying is we need a better balance and I think digital portfolios can serve that purpose as well.
[05:44] SPEAKER_01:
Now, a digital portfolio is different from just kind of a dump or an archive of all of the work that students have been doing, right? Like there's a curation process and a reflection process that students go through. Is that right?
[05:57] SPEAKER_02:
That's correct. And we're still working out that systemness, I think, that you're referring to. Yes. And what we're trying to do, we have four nights a year. Teachers just often don't have time to take a picture of an artifact, put it in Evernote, and then analyze. There's no way they're going to be able to do that.
[06:13]
So what I've encouraged staff to do is just capture it. Capture first, ask questions later. And so then they'll bring those capture pieces of artifacts and then with their team, either during PLCs or at an after school training session, they'll sit down with their staff and talk with each other. What is this that you see? What's good about it? Where could this kid improve?
[06:35]
And then do some more sorting, organizing, analyzing. So there's really it's kind of a two step process. The classroom capturing and then the later collaboration advancing and making instructional decisions.
[06:46] SPEAKER_01:
I think that's so powerful to have student work informing instruction while that instruction is still taking place. I think all too often, if we look at student work collaboratively at all, we do it after the fact when we've moved on. And one thing I hear you saying is that the process of collaboratively looking at that work and making instructional decisions on it is very powerful.
[07:06] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, definitely. It's, yeah, I mean, when they have to pause and take, maybe take a snapshot of their learning, they're not just pausing their instruction, but taking a moment to reflect. Why am I taking a picture of this? What you know that's huge, especially with how kinetic the classroom is and taking those moments to reflect and for the students to reflect too. I walked in last year on it was so cool. It's a picture of my book, but it's a teacher sitting with a child whenever students and she's got her writing in one spot and then her goals which were put into her portfolio on the other.
[07:41]
And it was a conversation and it was. just having that kid think about their writing and that's, it seems like not a lot's going on because they're not doing anything. But it really is, it's all upstairs and that's where we want it to be.
[07:58] SPEAKER_01:
So I'm sure this was not an instantaneous and simple process to go through as a school to figure out how to make electronic portfolios work. In the book, you share a number of lessons for other schools to adopt to kind of make that process easier. What are some of your top recommendations for schools that are thinking about starting digital portfolios?
[08:18] SPEAKER_02:
I think first, kind of like I spoke about in the beginning here, is that start really small. microscopic. Right now, this past half a year, for example, we've been using idea paint, that dry erase paint that you can put on tables, walls, whatever. But we put it in one room on one table and I had that teacher just kind of analyze, you know, take artifacts from it and make a decision on whether they think that's good. Not a lot of people knew about it and now we're going to expand it a little bit more. But that's my first recommendation is really just start small.
[08:50]
There's no rush. to it. If you look at some of the initiatives where they really rushed it, for example, Los Angeles, you know they really rushed it in and now they're back stepping quite a bit. So that would be my first recommendation. And then I think celebrating often is really critical. I don't think we take enough time as a staff as schools to celebrate all the good things we're doing and that celebration is going to look different for every teacher.
[09:14]
So as a leader, I might look into one classroom who the teachers uploading videos with their kids doing work and they're writing assessments. feedback and I'm going to point that out and provide feedback. Then you might have another teacher who's just learning how to take pictures and maybe edit the photo within their digital portfolio. I'm going to praise that for what it is too. And I think trying to move everyone in the same direction instead of trying to make everyone an expert, I think is really smart too. So starting small, celebrating the little things.
[09:46]
I don't think there's any little thing that's too small to and just continue to move forward towards some type of a goal. This past year we started really small. We just had writing portfolios, and it was informational writing, and you keep one note, never note, of that kid's writing over the course of the year. And I also encourage staff to record audio either of that child reading their own writing or reflecting on their writing, you know, what they liked, what they didn't like, what they want to improve upon. Those are just a couple that come to the top of my mind, I guess.
[10:18] SPEAKER_01:
So, Matt, you decided to use Evernote for school-wide writing portfolios. Can you talk about that decision and what you had people do to capture student writing?
[10:28] SPEAKER_02:
Sure. Well, I had lots of conversations with my leadership team. I didn't just say, hey, this is what we're doing. I just said, check this tool out. And we'd email each other over the summer. And I just said, check it out and just see what you think and tell me.
[10:38]
And I think just getting that staff input is key, as I think a lot of leaders know. And then once we got going on it, I did a lot of modeling as a leader to teach them how to do it. We started really small. This is how you just capture an image of student work. And then we did that and practiced it. So using that gradual release of responsibility, it works with kids, but it also works with staff.
[11:01]
And that's how we got the thing running. And once we got rolling, then some teachers really took off and started using it in ways I hadn't even thought of. And so then I started having them lead some of the PD and The buy-in is so much greater when we have staff teaching staff. It's not a mandate anymore. It's collaboration, and that's where we want to be.
[11:22] SPEAKER_01:
So Matt, what's one thing that you would like everyone who's listening to this today to do?
[11:28] SPEAKER_02:
As a principal, I would encourage every other principal out there, every other school leader, to get in the classroom daily. And when you're in there, I think it's great to just sit and listen and interact with kids. I do that regularly. It helps me keep myself connected with what we're all about, but also make it intentional and purposeful. And just as my teachers are using it to capture student learning, I'm using it. I have a digital portfolio for all of my teachers.
[11:55]
I am capturing learning that they are eliciting in the classroom, and then I'm sharing it with them. I might take a picture of something they did cool and annotate it and share it with them and just say, hey, that was a great question and answer discussion that you just had. And they can use those pieces for their evaluations. And again, going back to that partnership, that they have a shared notebook that they can dump stuff into and look back later. I have it. And we're creating it together.
[12:26]
We're kind of co-creators in our learning.
[12:28] SPEAKER_01:
So once again, the book is Digital Student Portfolios, A Whole School Approach to Connected Learning and Continuous Assessment by Matt Renwick. Matt, thank you so much for joining us for Principal Center Radio. Thanks, Justin. Good to be here.
[12:42] SPEAKER_00:
And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.
[12:46] SPEAKER_01:
So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my interview with Matt Renwick? One thing that stands out to me is the value of small experiments. And as you heard, this journey... toward digital student portfolios in Matt's school was not a one-step process.
[13:02]
It began with a number of small experiments, it took time, and it took a lot of cycles of learning to figure out what was going to really make a difference in the culture of the school. And I want to commend Matt for doing something very smart, which was to not let the technology be the driver of the entire process. I think too often we let technology set the pace and everything else that needs to happen instructionally and culturally and with professional development within the school can't keep pace. So as you heard, Matt wrote a small grant. He started with just a couple of iPads and did some experimentation and let students kind of play around, see what they did, see what they needed, and went from there and over time built that up into a system of school-wide electronic portfolios that he writes about in his book. So if you have an inkling that something needs to change in your school, it doesn't necessarily need to begin with a bang.
[13:55]
It can begin with a number of small experiments. And the key with those experiments is to keep the cycle short, to reflect on your learning and to build momentum. And one thing you can do to build momentum is to find interested teachers to take what's working and do more of it. If you have something that's working in one classroom, find the next interested person, get them involved, and then you have it working in two classrooms. And pretty soon, you'll be ready to go school-wide.
[14:23] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
