I keep my portfolio in digital form, using Circus Ponies Notebook on my laptop. This works very well for me, as I can type prose considerably quicker than I can write with pen and paper, so I’m able to keep up with my thoughts better. It also means that I can include movies and audio clips: for example, I have done a couple of supervision sessions with other people on the course and recorded the debrief session rather than taking notes. There are still a few physical bits of paper that I have too, primarily handouts from course workshops, but almost all of it is digital.

"Files" by S. C. Asher, Flickr

Now, I fully understand the reasoning behind having everyone submit their portfolio on the same day, even if only 3 or 4 will actually be checked by the examiner. If only those requested by the examiner were submitted, how could the examiner know that the rest had even produced a portfolio?

What I struggle to understand is this: why do I have to print off 100+ pages of A4 that may never leave the folder I submit them in? I’m going to have to put the multimedia bits on a CD anyway, so why can’t I submit the whole thing on CD. I could export it both as HTML for screen reading and as a PDF for the examiner to print and read offline if she prefers. All the links between sections would be preserved for easy browsing. I could even submit it by email (albeit quite a large one) and do away with having to submit a physical artifact at all. With a digital copy of the digital original, there’s nothing to stop the examiner from perusing it in whatever way she sees fit.

I’m not sure why it is that it’s done in this way: most likely it made sense when the course was first set up. I am sure, though, that it’s time to update this policy. In my ideal world, there would probably be a central e-portfolio system for us to use, but given the very personal nature of the PCHE portfolio this would probably need to be optional, since for some people the advantages of a physical portfolio outweight the disadvantages. However, even being allowed to submit the portfolio on CD would be a start.

Do you assess your learners using a portfolio? Is it a physical or digital artifact, or somewhere in between? Leave your comments below.

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1. Ask the readers: do you keep a portfolio?
2. Ask the readers: Why use technology in teaching?
3. Storytelling

The whole experience really brought home the importance of the art of storytelling in teaching. When I think back to my school days one of the things that I really enjoyed in English lessons was writing stories. The key thing that my teachers always used to try to get across is that a good story should have a beginning, a middle and an end.

The beginning sets the scene, fills the audience in on any background they might need and generally gets the ball rolling. The middle is the meat of the story and should be where everything really happens. The end wraps up, ties up the loose ends and is the point of the rest of the story happening at all.

Now I come to look at it in this way, everything I write and every presentation I make tells a story. On the micro scale, each paragraph and slide tells it’s own little story. On a big scale, a lecture course or a research project is also a story.

I’ve particularly noticed the story structure of the PCHE course. In the beginning, we learned about reflective practice and supervision: the tools we needed to make sense of the rest. The middle consisted of a wide range of workshops related to teaching practice and theory. Now, at the end, we’ve moved on to subjects like curriculum design and course evaluation, which round everything off quite elegantly by placing it in back in the wider context which we considered earlier on.

Seeing teaching done in this way, with both explicit and implicit reference to stories has caused two changes in me. First, I want to start going to storytelling workshops at the folk festivals I sometimes visit. Second, I’m going to pay more attention to storytelling in my own teaching, speaking and presenting.

How do stories fit into what you do? Are you aware of the stories you tell every day? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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3. Equity in education: giving everyone a fair chance

I used to think that to treat people fairly meant to disregard their race, class, gender, sexuality, age, disability and all those other things which make them unique. After all, equality is touted as being a central value of modern society, and my copy of Chambers Dictionary gives the following definition:

equality n the condition of being equal; sameness; evenness.

Looking back, though, that interpretation seems a trifle naive. No two people are identical, so treating them in the same way is always going to be a compromise; doing so blindly seems particularly insensitive.

For example, under that original assumption, the ideal way to interact with a person who is disabled is to treat them as though they were completely able-bodied. But think about that a bit more. I’m fortunate enough never to have been considered disabled, but I have sprained my ankle in the past, and even being so minimally-hobbled it would have seemed wrong for someone to be expecting me to carry heavy boxes up and down stairs. Treating someone in a wheelchair like that just seems downright offensive, if not just plain dim.

And yet neither can we jump to conclusions. Staying with the disability theme, take Evelyn Glennie, who has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12. It would be easy to assume that music wouldn’t be an ideal career for her. Amazingly, she is a world-class percussionist and composer. If you’d like to see her in action, take a look at this talk in which she teaches her audience how to listen. It’s about half an hour long, so make yourself a nice cup of tea and I’ll wait for you to come back.

So fairness means more than just equality: we have to take people’s differences into account. However, we can’t jump to conclusions either. Not only do people differ in their natural capabilities, they also differ in how they relate to them. When you get right down to it, the only person who can tell you how I want to be treated is me.

But that still isn’t an end to it. If I lose my sight in an accident, I’m guessing that you probably won’t want me flying passenger aeroplanes (although check out this story about a pilot who was guided to safety after being blinded by a stroke in mid-air). Even making all reasonable effort to give everyone the same opportunities, there are still cases where we just can’t.

When it comes down to it, we have to be sensitive to the capabilities of everyone around us. If you had a team-member who was amazing at customer service but lacked a little in the time-management department, you’d make allowances. Dealing with disability, cultural differences or whatever is no difference.

One person who’s really helped me learn this is a colleague of mine. Her English is good; so good that it’s easy to forget that it’s not her native language. But every now and then I’ll use a word or idiomatic phrase that I take for granted and she’ll stop me and ask what on earth I’m talking about it. Thanks to her patience, I now try to be aware of those I’m talking to, whether I’m teaching or not, and whether they’ve understood me. If not, I try to rephrase what I’ve just said or explain myself without being patronising. I’m still learning, but I’m getting there.

Have you ever run into difficulty dealing with someone who’s different to you? How do you cope with the natural diversity of the people you meet every day? Leave a comment below to share your experience.

Related links:

• Evelyn Glennie’s page on Wikipedia
• TED talks: Evelyn Glennie shows how to listen
• Pilot struck blind in flight shepherded to safe landing by RAF

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3. Storytelling