Top Teacher User Spotlight — May 2020
“I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.”- John Wooden
At myBlueprint, we’re continually impressed with the innovative ways that teachers use our All About Me (K-6) and Education Planner (7–12) platforms.
Earlier this year, we reached out to some of our top users across the country and asked them to share the unique ways they use myBlueprint in their classes.
In this post, we highlight real stories of how these teachers make their lessons meaningful and enjoyable for their students in these three key areas:
- Career Exploration and Planning
- Student-Communicated Learning
- Goal Setting and Self-Reflection
Career Exploration and Planning
Once students begin to discover their personality, interests, and motivations with our Who Am I assessments, they seamlessly transition into goal setting and unlocking occupation matches from our career-specific compatibility surveys.
Teachers are able to harness these results and guide students in a well-balanced approach to planning their personal, professional and academic lives. The top users we reached out to also highlighted the platform’s ease of use, allowing students with varied learning styles and unique abilities to take ownership of their work, and independently build awareness of their personal strengths and interests.
Tammy Dorchak (Chinook High School, Lethbridge School District): “I love myBlueprint! At our school, we use myBlueprint regularly in our Career and Life Management (CALM) classes. Our CALM students create an online E-Portfolio where they put items that we create in class to highlight their skills, interests, and strengths.
We use many applications within myBlueprint for these assignments. Students will create resumes and cover letters, they complete the Who Am I surveys to see which occupations they are matched with and they will research three in more detail. They will also track current classes and credits and use myBlueprint as a research tool for future occupations and postsecondary options. myBlueprint has been a very valuable tool that my students have enjoyed using!”
Sydney Milligan (Chinook High School, Lethbridge School District): “I really enjoy using myBlueprint in my Career and Life Management class! It is a fundamental platform for learning about careers and gives my students many opportunities to find out what they are really interested in. Every day in my classroom, my students seem more interested in their life after High School as they explore their strengths as teens moving into adulthood. I feel very proud to be a part of this community and LOVE teaching about careers and future goals!”
Kate Nitsis (East York Collegiate, Toronto District School Board): “I started using myBlueprint in November 2019 when my French Immersion class made the switch from Gr. 10 Civics and Citizenship to Career Studies. I noticed immediately how user-friendly it is, especially the teacher interface. One of my favourite parts was switching from teacher to student interface so I could follow along with activities or preview an activity before assigning it in class. My students completed many activities leading up to the final career portfolio, which I accompanied with a mock interview in French and English. Overall, I believe myBlueprint gave them many opportunities to learn about themselves and pathways that are meaningful to them.”
Arthur Bruet (École secondaire catholique Saint-Frère-André, Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir): “myBlueprint is a resource that our students use a lot during our Grade 10 career course. The “Who am I” surveys allow them to know more about themselves and consider their career path. Then, they gather information about occupations and learn how to build a resume and cover letter. It is a user-friendly and informative program that provides an essential tool in which students can reflect on their future.” (Translated from French)
Vanessa Joanette (De La Salle, Conseil des écoles publiques de l’Est de l’Ontario /CÉPEO): “What I find very useful with the myBlueprint platform are the numerous activities in connection with the career exploration curriculum. Furthermore, I find it great that students can now have access to American postsecondary programs and institutions, which was not available on the platform we used before.
Here is what Kenza (a student) shared with me. She said creating her own portfolio is inspiring. Moreover, she particularly likes the quick and simple access to her personal information. She is also very happy to have made progress into her career orientation, thanks to the numerous career options and occupations, as well as post-secondary institutions that she was able to explore in myBlueprint. She plans to use it regularly, even after completing the course, given that she will be able to continue her career exploration and build her own portfolio until the end of high school.” (Translated from French)
Stacey Bain (Yarmouth Consolidated Memorial H.S., Tri-County Regional Centre for Education): “Using myBlueprint is incredibly easy and is a valuable resource for students and teachers alike. myBlueprint is very customizable and I can set up many of my learning experiences and lessons to incorporate a myBlueprint component. Primarily in our classroom, we use myBlueprint as a way to track our learning and our comprehension of skills that we know are important in the workforce.
Our students use myBlueprint to showcase not only to themselves and caregivers what skills they’ve learned, but also to potential employers. So much of our class is set up with career exploration at the core so having a way to gather our thoughts, showcase our skillset and present them to prospective employers is vital. I feel that using myBlueprint in this way definitely gives our students a head start in developing portfolios that we hope will set them apart.”
Mark Rae Peet (St. Joseph Catholic Secondary, Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario): “Equipped with equal parts skepticism and optimism, I dove into the program head-first to find that it was fairly intuitive to get a class set-up and running. The majority of the time, students completed the assignments on their mobile devices, (mainly phones), with minimal issues. I would say the platform met the needs of the class of twenty nine students, of which there was a wide range of abilities and career aspirations.”
Student-Communicated Learning
e-Portfolios are one of the most powerful features of myBlueprint. They allow students to communicate their learning over time in a variety of media — videos, audio, photos, journals, and more. These e-Portfolios remain ‘live’ and accessible for reflection and dialogue between students, teachers, and families throughout their K-12 education and beyond.
Our top users implement e-Portfolios in dynamic ways to encourage self-expression, develop students’ reflective skills and pride in their work, and capture each student’s developing identity. These inspiring teachers also use e-Portfolios with their students to deliver Internet safety education, and to cultivate digital literacy skills in their students at an early age.
Sean Martin (Sir Alexander Mackenzie Elementary, SD39 Vancouver School Board): “The VSB is highly recommending the program, so my school asked me to start using it to help inform my school colleagues about its potential benefits. I am self-taught with the program, so I began mostly using it as a digital portfolio space and branched out as I found more time to explore. I mostly enjoy using it as a form of meaningful ongoing assessment. I like that myBlueprint allows me to comment quickly and directly back to my students about their learning and allows for a dialogue where I can encourage them to explain more and extend their thinking further.”
Ann Chow (Langdale Elementary School, SD46 Sunshine Coast): “I have been using myBlueprint for writing, reflections, goal setting and for follow-up to activities or events happening at school. myBlueprint plays a part in my “Student-Led Conferences”, which I set up as a station for kids to share their entries. I find that myBlueprint plays an important part in my Careers, Social Studies and Core Competencies reporting.”
Nicole King (South Perth Centennial School, Avon Maitland District School Board): “All About Me is a platform that my Grade 1/2 students are using as a digital portfolio to collect their work and display to their families. It creates meaningful learning conversations to solidify concepts and establish feedback. Students are proud to show off their work and have become very independent at such a young age on how to navigate through this platform while gaining digital literacy skills and internet safety.
Throughout the second term of the school year, we will be more flexible in our portfolio creations as a means to demonstrate our learning, allowing more modification and redefinition of tasks through the SAMR model which is our goal with technology use in our classroom.
Students become very proud of their work, their contributions and put their best effort forward knowing that others are going to be having conversations about their learning. This establishes some essential learning skills at a very young age that continues on throughout their education.”
Sachi Banerjee (Allenby Public School, TDSB): “Our kindergarten class loves using the myBlueprint app to record our learning journey. The documentation tools allow us to create meaningful portfolios that will stay with them for their school career.”
Goal Setting and Self-Reflection
The range of media available for students to document their learning in myBlueprint helps support differentiated instruction, allowing teachers to harness the unique learning styles and creative strengths of their students.
Summative and Formative Assessment are essential tools used by teachers to evaluate students’ learning. These assessments coupled with students’ reflections form the basis of an ongoing holistic measurement of students’ learning. Teachers (and parents) are able to give clear feedback to students. Likewise, students are actively engaged in revising their work and reflecting on their development over time.
Tina Bergman (Trent River Public School, Hastings & Prince Edward District School Board): “I am an educator fortunate enough to work for Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board, since 2005.
I’ve taught every grade between Kindergarten to Grade 8 and one of the foremost assessment tools that I utilize is at myBlueprint. I’ve found it is instrumental for children to demonstrate their success at achieving instructional goals, and they are able to reflect upon their own personal learning.
Also, parents are able to see their own child’s success, students are able to identify the next step in their learning, and then reflect upon where they’d like to strive for their next goal. It’s exciting when students collaborate, become global digital citizens, achieve academic excellence, and strive towards academic leadership. The use of myBlueprint provides transparency for parents and improves public confidence in what we achieve together for the well-being of all our students at HPEDSB.”
Sheila Robinson (Rainbow Creek, Rocky View Schools)- “I use myBlueprint with my Kindergarten students to share what they are doing while at school and to have them reflect on their work. Their personal goals are added as a reminder to both them and their parents. They are independently able to access their accounts and enjoy teaching their parents how to get onto myBlueprint. They are so proud to share their growth and accomplishments with their families!”
Rosanna Barbieri (Allenby Junior Public School, Toronto District School Board): “All About Me allows students to express who they are. It helps build students’ self-esteem and promotes collaboration and a sense of community.
All About Me can also be used as an assessment tool to track and monitor student learning. I am able to add comments to students’ work, providing descriptive feedback. Parents can also be invited to actively participate by adding comments to their child’s work.
I use All About Me to help students express who they are and reflect. Reflecting on learning enhances and solidifies the classroom experience. For example, my students can post a journal entry on their current interests. In the future, they can look back and re-evaluate their interests and see how they’ve changed or grown.
Students can also express their ideas to showcase what they’ve learned in a particular lesson: My Grade 2s did air/water experiments and their task was to select a favourite experiment, create a diagram using the Draw feature on Class Pass App and write a reflection on what they learned.”
Some of the teacher comments above have been edited for length.
myBlueprint salutes all the amazing teachers using our platform. Thank you for making us love what we do here even more!
What awesome ways are you using myBlueprint with your students? We’d love to hear your story. Leave a comment below, or join our myBlueprint Community to share with other like-minded educators!
