Tag: evidence

  • Edu-research: A new approach to evidence-based practice

    Edu-research: A new approach to evidence-based practice

    This may be an unpopular opinion. Brace yourself.

    There is so much research into education that it has become, at minimum, problematic; at most, toxic. There are five C’s to explore why educational research is writing itself into irrelevance. Call it the “C’s of Evidence” if you’d like.

    Clocking-In

    Teachers are already time poor. I can’t remember the last time I got the chance to sit down and read anything work-related, more than scanning through to read the lesson outline or writing resource to implement in my class that week. Much less any educational white-paper that someone came up with with new evidence that I should now be implementing in my classroom.

    And yet that is what teacher’s are expected to do.
    Evidence-based Practice became the catchphrase of the 2020’s in education circles as teachers sought to justify themselves and their classroom decisions.
    But how many actually look at the actual evidence?
    And how much of the evidence is actually classroom tested?

    Time to read white-papers is one thing. But it’s a whole other thing to implement the findings into your own practice, and apply it across multiple curriculum areas, whilst remaining within school policy and expectation. The time that takes is greater than you might initially think, especially when considering overviews, planning, guides and resource creation. Doing this while continuing to teach a class on a daily basis can often be measured in years rather than months.

    This can be sped up of course if the research has already been synthesized for the classroom, a resource developed, and the overview written in a way that classroom teachers can pick it up and run with it. However, in many cases, what this leads to are teachers following the research second hand – trusting the resource in their implementation of the research, rather than ever reading the research and what it is based off themselves.

    Conditions

    Research is like a Science experiment. You have a series of variables that you are observing and trying to test, with constants to be able to judge the variables against, and some control conditions that allow for baseline results to be compared against. Research in education is conducted with a series of conditions, with the likes of control groups, limited sample sizes, and narrow focuses. There are many, many issues with the way in which education research is conducted. It’s not so much an issue just with education research, but any research in which humans are the test subject.

    Multi-factor Generalisations

    There are simply so many factors that can contribute to the make up of a person, what they do, why they do it, and what we can learn from that. A child who scores 12 out of 100 in Maths can have a long list of reasons that can contribute to such a score. Did they wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Are they hungry? How long is their attention span? How much learning support at home have they had in the past two years? Are they struggling with a learning disability? Have they experienced significant trauma in their lives. Is this their first, second, third, or fourth school? Does their family hold a positive view of education? Has there been health issues that impact on their attendance at school? These are all variables, for which there are zero controls. None of these remain constant, and each impacts on a person to differing degrees.

    Of course, all of these factors are impossible to take into account for the research to be conducted. You can’t possibly control all of these, and so they are largely ignored.

    Don’t work with animals or children

    Children are notoriously inconsistent. They are still learning the world around them. Whilst this makes for some naivety and therefore a degree of honesty that adults tend to be able to mask or fake, children also are much more in-tune with the imaginary and make-believe that there are serious questions over the validity of any results involving them.

    Small Samples

    Along with the myriad of variables that are trying to be accounted for, these then get multiplied by the number of students in a class that a teacher has to work with. Research is inherently dealing with smaller sizes. Rather than try and conduct in-depth research using every student in the class, they might take a sample of 5 students at random. Rather than interview every class, they might select one or two at the school. Rather than go to every school in the area, they might select one or two. The list of ways that the research is limited in order to make it manageable.

    But when was the last time a teacher had five students where factors could just be ignored? Never. Each day, there are 20-30 students to account for in the class, any number of factors impacting on them.
    So how applicable is any research conducted in the name of education?

    Contradictions

    Recently the education community has jumped on the Science of Learning bandwagon (one in which I believe the wheels are falling off quicker than they said ‘click click’ to the horse). This brought with it the Science of Reading, which looked at ways in which we actually learn to read and therefore to direct effective ways in which to teach Reading.

    Marie Clay, one of New Zealand’s most honoured education researchers, was a world power in educational research. She single-handedly lead the drive for programmes like Reading Recovery in every school to support struggling readers in the 1980’s, and was a proponent of ‘whole-language’ literacy.

    However, with the influx of the Science of Reading, as well as, researchers from various universities (particularly in the United States), her methods are now criticised as being ineffective, showing no improvement and even purported to have negative effects later on.

    Yet, while looking through a pile of seriously old education books, I stumbled upon her book in which she introduces Reading Recovery. In it, she outlines her research and what she did in order to reach her conclusions (which was that early, specific and individualised intervention supported struggling readers to get back up to speed with their peers). The depth and detail in which she goes into, the considerations made and the testing of her intervention was evident in the brief skim through I had of her initial chapters.

    What it showed me was real proof that educational research is somewhat insignificant. Because here was someone who has been lambasted and rubbished in recent years for implementing a programme in many countries all in effort to support and raise literacy levels of students who find reading difficult. She conducted her own research in order to find out what it was that made the most difference. She was meticulous and her findings were evidence-based practice.

    Now I’m not saying research can’t be disproved, and I’m not saying that additional research can’t find shortcomings, or even find better, more effective strategies. Of course they can. But at the same time, who is to say that if the likes of Marie Clay, whose research is just as legitimate, can be tossed out and the proponents vilified, then in my mind; so can absolutely any other piece of research.

    The vile statements of utter contempt recent converts of the Science of Reading have for the very mention of Clay’s name is something to behold. ‘She’s a disgrace. Caused terrible disservice to an entire generation of children.’ and other similar comments.

    So we have one piece of research saying one thing. Another piece of research saying the opposite. Undoubtedly both with a different range of variables and an indeterminably amount of factors, and neither of which had the combination of students, needs, families, experiences as those in the classroom in front of you as the teacher today.

    Shortly after, this came across my social media feed, and I simply had to screenshot it.

    This statement was made, quoting the following aritlce about research carried out by Becky Taylor in the United Kingdom.
    https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/jun/comment-should-we-stream-school-students-based-ability

    It found streaming Year 7–8 students was beneficial for higher-ability students. These students made three months’ more progress in schools that streamed students for maths that those that did not. Streaming also did not damage the results or self-belief of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

    In fact, this study found students who were not streamed made only one month less progress overall than students who were, after two years. Students with disadvantage and students with low prior achievement made similar amounts of progress regardless of how they were grouped.

    These findings were surprising because they seem to contradict previous claims streaming can harm some students without benefiting others. This new study can and has been interpreted as showing streaming benefits some students while creating no harm to others.

    However, the findings do reinforce previous research suggesting streaming is inequitable and widens achievement gaps. The new study found high-achieving students made much more progress than low-achieving students when streaming was used.

    When presented with contradicting research, how are teachers meant to know which piece of research is correct? Which one do they listen to? The only way to really know would be for them to read both and take into consideration the sample sizes, the measures used and the methods applied for data retrieval and how the data was analysed and the evidence collated.

    And we’ve already found out that no teacher has the time to do that. By the time any teacher has been able to do that, new research would have been found and contradicted everything you’ve just read.

    When presented with contradicting research, how are teachers meant to know which piece of research is correct? Which one do they listen to?

    Count them All

    With the coining of the phrase ‘Evidence-based practice’, or ‘Evidence-based approach’, education now relies on there needing to be research in order to do anything in classrooms. It would appear to me that this is clearly a supply-and-demand issue. Teachers are wanting research conducted so that they can say they are following the evidence, and so research is conducted en mass.

    There has been a noticeable increase in educational research in the past decade.
    Is this true? Or does it just seem that way because everyone is talking about it?

    Well, I did a quick Google Search (with AI search disabled for the record!), and was thrown to this paper where researchers are now researching whether there has been an increase in research. Go figure!
    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41979-026-00184-5
    I, of course, do not have time to read it in any depth.
    Instead, I simply jumped to the results tab which shows exactly what I suspected;
    The sheer number of research papers being published has exploded since 2020.

    Graph of increase in published research

    Not only do we not have time to read all the research, there is now so much of it to read through, that it has become an impossible task for any classroom teacher to keep up with the sheer amount of it.
    To be clear, what these numbers above show;

    • In 2009 (when I began teaching) there were about 150 journals of education research being published. That’s on average one journal published every two days throughout the year. I read a grand total of 0 of these at the time.
    • A decade later, in 2019, the total number of journals published had pretty much doubled, to over one for every weekday of the year. The number of these I had read to date had also doubled. Double nothing is still nothing.
    • Come 2020, and suddenly we have 750 journals published. That’s 750 journals in a year. That’s 3 journals for every workday that year.
    • It remains around 750 published journals for the next 5 years. That’s a mere 3,750 journals published. To be clear, that’s the same number of journals that were published in the 20 years from 1997 to 2016. I did the maths.

    Put simply, researchers have written themselves into oblivion. What I mean by that is that there is simply so much research that we simply cannot keep up with it and we are simply numb to all of it now. The sheer magnitude in the number of research papers in education is creating a saturation of the market, sending them into obsolescence and irrelevance.

    Teachers are routinely told ‘The Research says this…’, ‘The Research says that…’, and the vast majority blindly follow along, accepting of whatever approach we’re being told about. This is mostly because we don’t have the time, and simply because we can’t be bothered looking up the research, analysing the methods, and processing their conclusions. Let alone searching through the 750 journals published this year, which could be disproved within the next year at the rate that we’re going. It’s easier to nod our heads and just believe what is being told to us. We rely on our own experience of our classrooms, of teaching, our own understanding of how student’s learn, and the plausibility of what is being said as being true. If it sounds reasonable, there are many who will just give it a go until we’re told otherwise.

    All this research, where findings can vary, and just about any hypothesis can be backed, is essentially rendering research as completely unimportant. Evidence-based practice isn’t a status to be touting if research can back and support anything and everything. With so much research out there, not only is it obsolete because very few have the time to read it, but with so many articles out there, evidence can probably be found for anything and everything. The saturation of the education research market is like an empty glass that is being filled, yet once the cup is full, the tap was left on and the water is now overflowing. The value of the water is depleted and we are no longer thirsty.

    “The sheer magnitude in the number of research papers in education is creating a saturation of the market, sending them into obsolescence and irrelevance.”

    Cash is King

    Why do we need all this research? One reason is the ‘evidence-based practice’ rhetoric. And because of that, in order to push through any new resource, or any new approach to teaching, providers need to have evidence for which to claim their product as being ‘evidence-based’. What this leads to of course, is every large educational conglomerate as well as governments providing funds for research to be carried out.

    Education is big money. In 2025, the total income from education was a staggering $1,106,000,000.00. Yes. You read that right. $1.1 trillion. Of course, there is expenditure to take into account, but it leaves the country with $95 billion dollars in profit.

    And that’s just New Zealand.

    – Figure.nz: https://figure.nz/chart/kIpNw1H5r3cVIesv-O0u2toDAfNpAyifH

    This then brings in a whole other reason to be skeptical of research that is conducted. Which master is the research serving? The wider educational community, or the company that is funding them to find what needs to be found in order to push their products through?

    Concluding Evidence

    One of the key statements I will hold onto was from one such researcher; Steve Graham. I was lucky enough to hear a lecture about Writing Instruction in which he outlined some of his findings from his unironically named ‘Evidence-based recommendations for teaching writing‘ paper.

    You can view it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004279.2024.2357893

    Photo of Steve Graham
    Steve Graham

    Graham essentially said that upon reflection, any evidence, including his own, needed to be seen for what it is; evidence from a research environment.

    He said (in not so many words) that just because it happened in a research environment, regardless of sample size, “…does not mean it is going to replicate in every situation and circumstance.”
    In this one statement Graham made it clear that just because they found this in their research conditions, it does not mean it will translate into every classroom all of the time. Some classrooms may find benefit. Others may not. Some students will benefit. Some won’t.

    It is probably the single most self-reflective statement I have heard from any education researcher – a real, truthful, and down-to-earth statement about the reality every piece of research, including his own. It provided an unusual confidence in which one can stand on to challenge any research. It provided confidence to take on board research, but not make it the be-all and end-all that some try to make it.

    Moreover, I am of the opinion that each and every day, teachers around the world are conducting their own educational research. Observing, questioning, recording, planning, implementing strategies and lots of trial and error. It may not be published anywhere, and it may not carry with it the backing of a distinguished university, but that does not mean it is not important, nor less valuable. The evidence for my evidence-based practice? The 15 years I’ve spent in the classroom.

    That’s now my evidence based approach.

  • Teaching Portfolios: Example of My Portfolio

    Sometimes the best way to work out what you need in a portfolio is just to see what someone else has done.

    So I’ve taken a series of whole screen screenshots to show off what I’ve done. It’s not necessarily the best portfolio in the world, or at all what you do. But, it is what I have done, and have been adjusting and trying different things with time.

    Introduction
    Title Page

    I’m not sure why, but I made a title page for my portfolio. It just seemed like something that I could do to include some of my graphics design skills.

    Table of Contents
    A Table of Contents with all the pages for my portoflio listed

    I used a downloaded macro that creates a list of the pages in an indented list.

    In 2018 I focused my registration efforts into Inquiry, and through that Inquiry made links to the standards / criteria. I then collected additional evidence that I wanted to keep a record of.

    Evidence example 1

    This is an outline of the week plan for the student teacher in my class.

    Evidence example 2

    The Inquiry cycle we used as a school staff complete with some of the questions we would be asking ourselves.

    Evidence example 3

    A mid year review using ‘SWOT’ as a focus. I won’t go into details with these as they are merely serving as examples of the kind of evidence I collected for my Inquiry and portfolio. The key here is doing ONE thing but getting two uses out of it – as well as not doubling up on any work!

    Evidence example 4

    The record keeping of the interventions I carried out for one of my priority learners in my Inquiry.

    2019 contents page

    In 2019, I began keeping my portfolio in a slightly different method, with more focus on evidence than on Inquiry. Essentially, the Inquiry became just another piece of evidence, rather than using the Inquiry to show the standards being met.

    You can see on the right hand side that all the evidence has just been added into one big folder, and then in the Contents page it has a list of the tags being used using the standards as each tag.

    Evidence Example 5

    Another piece of evidence from a PLD session. Check the list on the right side; everything is in one big folder. I’ve attempted to keep it in chronological order.

    Evidence Example 6

    An example of anecdotal notes taken on one of my priority learners.

    Evidence Example 7

    In this piece of evidence, you can see three benefits of using OneNote for collecting evidence. Firstly, the ability to add in screenshots easily means that you can use other documents and then import them straight in. Secondly, I am able to add my own explanation and description of the evidence in the text above. Thirdly, you can see the three coloured box icons at the top of the page – these are the tags of the standards that this piece of evidence meets – meaning that one piece of evidence can fit into multiple standard categories without having to copy and paste or duplicate evidence.

    Evidence Example 8

    More evidence I’d taken from notes at a PLD workshop. Note the tags used at the top of this evidence.

    Evidence Example 9

    Finally, as mentioned, I had kept my Inquiry as a separate piece of evidence from my portfolio. Here I’ve made a link to the document (so that I could access it from OneNote and my portfolio) and included a quick screenshot as well as other notes and links that are relevant to the inquiry as the year went on.

    So hopefully that has been a help to those out there that are looking for ideas, or just want to see what others are doing with their portfolios. Remember to check out my other posts about teacher portfolios and ways that you can maintain and keep a portfolio of this kind.

  • Teaching Portfolios: Standards Based Portfolio

    One way in which you can build your teaching portfolio is to use each of the six standards as a different ‘category’ for which to organise your evidence into. This can be done easily in both hard copy portfolios as well as online or computer based portfolios.

    Whichever way you decide to go in setting up your portfolio, you should consider each of the steps in this guide.

    Hard Copy Portfolio

    For hard copy portfolios, use a set of file dividers to break your folder into sections.

    You could also use an expanding folder and set aside six pockets to put the evidence into.

    Keep the front divider page and use this as either a title for each section, or as a contents / index page for what you put into each section.

    Computer Portfolio

    If you plan on using Google Drive / OneDrive / Dropbox or even just Windows Explorer / My Documents, simply create a folder for your portfolio, then inside it, create six folders – one for each of the six standards.

    You could also use OneNote and create six sections along the top for each of the standards. Then each new piece of evidence just becomes a page within that section.

    See our article on OneNote portfolios for more info.

    Evidence

    As you collect evidence of your teaching practise, simply take a copy (photocopy or Ctrl+C) and put it into the relevant section. If it fits under more than one of the standards, then put additional copies into those sections. In Computer based portfolios this is very easy, as you just continue to paste each file into each relevant folder as many times as you like. For hard copy portfolios you’ll need to make additional photocopies.

    Don’t forget to date each piece of evidence as it comes in. Computer based portfolios will do this automatically for when the file was created.

    Keep Track

    It is a good idea to keep a contents page of what has been placed in your portfolio. There are several ways you could do this, but the simplest way would be to draw up six columns and each time a piece of evidence is added into the section, you add it to the column / columns that pertain to each standard. You could also use the index card of the dividers set that you purchased for your folder and add each piece of evidence as you go.

    It is also interesting to keep track of how many pieces of evidence you have in each of the standards. A simple file count in each folder will tell you in a computer based portfolio. A tracking sheet could be used for both systems as well so you can see what areas you might want to work on or focus on for the next term or two.

    This is a tracker from a bullet-journal, but one could easily adapt something like this for keeping track of the number of artefacts you have in each of the six teaching standards.

    This is just the beginning steps of setting up your Standards based Portfolio.

    Another way would be to set up your portfolio using dates as your organiser. You can see how this is done in the next article.

  • Teaching Porfolios: Date Based Portfolio

    One way in which you can build your teaching portfolio is to use each of the years for your registration as a structure for folders and dividers for your portfolio. This can be done easily in both hard copy portfolios as well as online or computer based portfolios.

    Whichever way you decide to go in setting up your portfolio, you should consider each of the steps in this guide.

    Hard Copy Portfolio

    Essentially you just need a divider, or section, or entire folder for each year. You could choose to group your years together for the three years of your registration, though this is not necessary.

    Then its just a matter of putting each piece of evidence into the relevant year as you teach. I would keep each one dated and keep them in the order they happened in. Then at the end of the year, close it off, and open up the next section ready for the new year.

    Computer Portfolio

    In Google Drive / Drop Box / Windows Explorer / Finder create three folders inside your portfolio. Label these as the years of your registration. Obviously, you could just continue, or keep your registrations together in a folder themselves.


    One big melting pot

    Obviously if you just add each piece of evidence into a folder for each year it will begin to resemble a dumping ground of teaching stuff or one big melting pot of evidence rather than a well organised portfolio.

    One could merge the standards based approach outlined here into each of the year folders in order to add another layer of structure to your portfolio in an effort to keep it more organised. But this would require six folders, all named the same, created three times for each of the years. It would work, but it wouldn’t be very elegant. But, if this is how your brain works, then its a viable option. However, a better way would be by using tags.

    Tags for each teaching standard

    You can create a set of six tags, each one relating to a standard.

    Tags can be used throughout most file systems, but in particular if you use OneNote I would highly recommend this. If you set up a blog for your portfolio, categories or tags can be used for this purpose. I believe both Windows and MacOS have the ability to tag files. I’m not sure this is possible in Google Drive or Drop Box, but I could be wrong.

    If you’re building a hard copy portfolio, then stickers are your friends! Choose six coloured stickers to use, make a key of which standard each colour relates to, and then in the corner of the piece of evidence, place a sticker for the standard or standards that it relates to.

    Multiple Standards

    The biggest benefit to using tags is that it becomes very easy to attribute multiple standards to one piece of evidence. This is something that happens more often than not. Using tags saves on the doubling up of evidence as you copy a piece into multiple standards folders of other systems. Instead, you merely add as many tags as is suitable for the evidence, and it is “added” to those standards straight away.

    OneNote is free to use. Whilst the online and app version is very good, I find the OneNote 2016 software to be the best.

    For syncing, you will need an Office365 account, which costs. However, it is free for all schools thanks to the Government schools agreement with Microsoft.

    The Best Method

    The best software I’ve found for building a portfolio is Microsoft OneNote. In particular is the ability to use tags. These can then be searched for, and using different macros it can also build a contents / index page for each of these tags.

    I used to use a blog type approach, with each post being a different piece of evidence, but with some privacy issues being that it was online, as well as the fact I was having to create posts as a piece of evidence, rather than just using the file, it became cumbersome and extra work with the doubling up. I did however appreciate the use of tags and categories to be able to organise the evidence while still maintaining a date based approach.

    I will write an in-depth article about setting up your teacher portfolio in OneNote soon.

  • Teaching Portfolios: Making them Work

    Even though they are not required by the Teaching Council, many schools use Teaching portfolios to show evidence that a teacher is meeting the criteria and standards for registration, and therefore can be signed off when their registration comes up for renewal.

    The format of appraisal and the keeping of portfolios has been a bug-bear of teachers for a while now, with the increase of workload in collecting evidence and putting it in a portfolio for something that is not actually required.

    However, I argue that portfolios are a good way of keeping records of your teaching career and can help make you a more reflective teacher in the process. I think that they would be worth maintaining even if they are not required.  While I acknowledge there is a bit of work required to keep it, there are several ways in which you can streamline the process so that keeping a portfolio is no longer a burden or a time-sapping exercise.

    The following are several keys to success that I’ve found along the way so that keeping and maintaining your teacher portfolio.

    Rule 1: Make it work for you; instead of you working for it…

    The number one thing you need to do when making your portfolio is to make it work for you.

    What does this mean?

    Put simply, choose a system, a method of keeping evidence, resources, materials, artefacts that is natural to you. If you’re a hands on person who prefers hard copies of things, then use a clearfile or lever-arch folder, or even a cascading folder.
    If you keep a lot of your teaching work in Google Docs, or use Google Drive a lot, then create a folder for evidence and put all the files in there.
    If you put a lot of your teaching work online, then you could set up a blog or website.

    Choose a system that works for you

    • Clearfile
    • Lever-arch File
    • Cascading Folder
    • Cardboard Box
    • Google Drive Folder
    • One Note Notebook
    • Google Site
    • Website
    • Blog

    You can find out more about each of the main ways to organise your portfolio at the following articles:

    Date Based Portfolio

    Standard Based Portfolio

    Organise it how your brain works

    Following on from the previous point on making it work for you: Setting up your portfolio in the way that your brain operates means that organising and maintaining your portfolio will be second nature to you rather than battling with yourself internally each time you come to update it.

    There are two main ways in which you can organise your teaching standards portfolio:

    • Date Based
      This consists of folders or sections labeled by date (ie. 2018, 2019, 2020). In each folder you put evidence of your teaching practise as it happens.
    • By Standard
      This consists of creating a set of six folders or sections, one for each of the six teaching standards. As you create each piece of evidence, simply put it in the folder that it best suits.

    Obviously there are other ways as well. I’ve found the best to be a combination of these two ways. It doesn’t matter really how you choose to organise it, as long as whichever way you choose is how your brain best processes a portfolio of this kind.

    Robust yet Flexible

    It wouldn’t be a blog about teaching without a bit of an oxymoron in it. When you set up your portfolio, make sure whatever system you choose to organise it in is robust. Stick to it, and keep it consistent. At the same time however, be flexible enough to adapt it to fit your needs as you go. Don’t be afraid to try new things, reorganise it or adjust it as you need to. Remember, the first rule is key: this HAS to work for you. As soon as it doesn’t, you’re working for it and it become cumbersome.

    Tags Are Your Friend

    One thing I have found the more and more portfolios I have made over my years as a teacher is that you need a way to tag or categorise each piece of evidence. Regardless of whether you go with a date based or standards based approach, having a system of tags will save you a lot of time. Using tags avoids the problem mentioned next.

    Avoid doubling up

    There is nothing more demoralising to a teacher (or anyone for that fact) than having to do something twice.

    Therefore, ensure that you only have to enter evidence into your portfolio once. The use of computer based portfolios certainly helps with this, especially with evidence that fits under multiple standards.

    Avoid doubling up

    There is nothing more demoralising to a teacher (or anyone for that fact) than having to do something twice.

    A very good portfolio will find a way in which you can keep your work organised when you create it AND enter it into your portfolio at the same time. This is somewhat of a pipedream, though definitely possible. Essentially this is where flexibility of your system is key, as this wouldn’t be possible for every piece of evidence, but definitely a possibility for some.

    Keep an eye out for more…

    We will be adding more Teacher Portfolio ideas, tips, tricks, and how-to guides in the near future. Check back here for more!

  • Moving Google Sites to a different Google Account

    ePortfolio on Google Site

    When I first thought of a way to gather all my evidence as online documents, rather than print outs and photocopies that gradually fill up a clearfile every year, I knew that Google Sites was going to be the way. It’s seemless link into Google Drive allows for me to create an “Evidence” folder, and then link to any document inside those folders. Using the Practising Teacher Criteria as a guide and a structure, I created folders inside the ‘Evidence’ folder, and began collating and sorting the evidence appropriately.

    However, at a NZEI cluster meeting where I shared this with other teachers in the area, many were concerned that hosting this on the school’s accounts would be problematic should one leave that school and move onto another. They mentioned that being able to somehow host this themselves on a personal site would be better.

    Luckily, this isn’t too hard to do, even if you’ve already set up your site on your school account like I had!

    Gmail or Google Account

    If you have your own personal Gmail account, you essentially already have Google Sites. Next to your account name, there is the Google Apps ‘9-square’ button. Clicking on this will open up the available apps, including Google Sites (hopefully!) If you haven’t already created your site, you can create a new one by clicking on the red ‘Create’ button.

    However, if you need to move your existing Google Site to your own domain, or your personal account, then you’ll need to complete the following steps. These can be found at E-Portfolio Apps. I have added to these to match the current Google Apps UI.

     

    Moving a Google Site out of an Educational Domain

    Steps to take place under the Educational Domain:
    1. To begin, open the site from within the educational domain.
    2. Go to More Actions () -> Manage Site.
    3. Select the “Sharing & Permissions” (or select this from the More Actions button in step 2).
    4. In the section titled “Invite people:” type in the email address of the personal account.
    5. Select “Is owner” from the drop down box. 
    6. Click Invite these people. This will send an email to the account listed above which will include a link to the sites current location under the ed domain.
    Steps to take place in the personal Google account:
    1. Open Google account and Gmail to view the link to the account we just shared.
    2. This will take you to the Ed Domain log in page. At the bottom of the sign in section there is an option to “Sign in with a different account”. Enter the personal account log in and password here.
      Note: To avoid all this, try opening the link in a different browser.
    3. Once you are logged in, open the site and click the More Actions –> Manage Site options.
    4. Select the General option.
    5. In the middle of this page, there is an option to Copy this Site. Select this. 
    6. Type in the site name and take note of the new URL which should read:
      http://sites.google.com/site/(new site name here)

    7. Click the button to Copy Site.

    To remove the school account as an owner of the site:

    Go to More Actions –> Sharing & Permissions and remove the school account as an owner of the site.
    Note: I didn’t do this as I still wanted to have access to this from my school account at this stage.
    At any point the school site can now be deleted.

    Instructions written by Heather Stafford, Technical Communications Instructor at E-Portfolio Apps. These have been edited by Al Ingham to match the current Google Apps layout in August 2015.

    Conclusion

    And that’s all there is to it. Easy ay!

    I even went a step further, using my alingham.com domain to create a sub-domain for my eportfolio to sit in. Editing this is relatively straight forward by following this article.

    It is also important to remember that, unless you want to go through all your evidence and black out student names, you should keep your eportfolio as ‘private’, and never publish the site as ‘public’. This means that any sub-domain you’ve created will simply point to the sites.google.com url, but the information will remain private to you and anyone that the site has been shared with.