edTPA & E-folio's

Without the experience of practicing for edTPA and creating an electronic portfolio of the work I completed for my Science Methods course, I would not be where I am today in the education program. Having this practice really makes me a stronger educator and allows me to be much more organized. When an education major hears the term "edTPA," they typically get extremely stressed out and worrisome. I now feel incredibly prepared to complete and submit the real edTPA for Student Teaching, once the time comes. Obviously it is still difficult and I'm going to need a lot more practice and guidance, but becoming familiar with it now has really made me become much more confident in myself. In Science and Social Studies Methods, we are introduced to the three tasks of edTPA based off of our unit plan. The tasks we have to complete are based off of the classroom environment, context for student learning, assessment commentary, video commentary, and much more. The documents do look very intimidating but once you get the hang of it, completing it is a breeze. Providing intense amount of detail in the tasks only makes you that much better of a writer and educator! Also, working alongside my fieldwork group members during this entire process makes it all that much easier. We are able to get together, discuss the different tasks and look back upon our unit plan. I know a few education majors who don't even know what edTPA is and that they've never heard of it or seen it before. I think being introduced to it so early on has been a life changing experience for me as an education major. If I have never seen it before or know how to complete it, during student teaching I'd be incredibly confused. I now feel confident that I am capable of completing it, but may need a little guidance along the way when it comes to submitting and passing it to become a teacher!

Another great tool I used in the education program was creating an electronic portfolio of the work I completed for my Social Studies & Science Methods course. During SS Methods, I have never even heard of an e-folio before and at the time, it was very stressful because it was thrown upon us towards finals week. I am one to stay organized and neat so being introduced to this was great for me because I easily caught on to the entire concept. I loved adding pictures, text, links, and quotes to my e-folio in order to personalize it to what I enjoy. Creating an e-folio is a great way to stay organized! I was able to link all of my assignments, lesson plans, activities, attachments, edTPA documents and much more all on one e-folio! Creating it is a little time consuming, but definitely worth it. Now that I am in Science Methods, I know exactly how to utilize my e-folio. I completed it way earlier than I did last semester and now have one less assignment to worry about! Making the e-folio, to me, is incredibly fun because of how personal I can make it!