Using e-portfolios to collaborate

In Kimi Ora School we work in a trans-disciplinary manner. That means that teachers and therapists have full involvement in all aspects of the students programme. e-Portfolios have enabled all staff to contribute and collaborate in a positive manner that builds the trans-disciplinary team.

And, this year I began using e-portfolios as a way to communicate between ourselves as a team and within our team of course is the parents and the students and their extended family and friends who have come on board. Yeah, I think its really good just for helping us to communicate as well because it’s that thing where you can see something and communicate to it rather than like whether it’s by hearsay or whether you miss out one person when you’re talking to them, if everyone’s checking the e-portfolio you are more aware of what’s going on so, and you communicate with each other really succinctly and really accurately so at Kimi we encourage the trans-disciplinary team practice. So with that I can be doing a session as an OT (occupational therapist) but also incorporating parts of and SLT’s (speech language therapist) role or a physio’s role but then they can see my session and then comment on it as those professions and then help me to shape how my practice should be within those sessions and I think the benefits of it are that you can see what’s happening and you can see the progress and its really motivating and with parents getting back to you really, really quick it makes you keen to keep going ‘cos you, you know you feel like you’re making a difference to the child’s life at home.

It gives a real insight into Joshua, his behaviour and I say that in a good sense. What he does at school [is it], that my wife and I never knew. The behaviours that he does at school that he doesn’t actually bring it home.

Having the e-portfolios has meant we can get a lot of advice and ideas from our families, which is, you know, they’re the ones that have had our students their whole lives so they know the best.

Early on with one of our students we had done a session with him reaching out to grab some objects in a water tray so it was a bit of a sensory experience as well as a sorting one and we put the video up and the parents got straight back to us with a comment saying that they thought he had been foxing a little bit and was probably able to do more that what he was doing so that meant that we were then able to say ok next time we’ll be onto it and then the next time we did the session we were much more aware of the fact that the student could do more than what he was doing when he started.

So we’re able to kind of immediately change our practice to benefit our students as much as possible.

I’ve found e-portfolios really useful in my practice because it makes me think a lot more about what I’m doing with students and what I’m capturing and how I’m sharing that knowledge ‘cos before I guess that I felt I’d been practicing a little bit in isolation at times because families though they have involvement in the school, its not that you have instantaneous contact with them. I also like the way that it makes me more accurate in what I’m doing. It’s not like notes but it’s a really good running record of the progress you’ve made.