Free edTPA Tools Support Teacher Candidates and Programs

Completing edTPA^Ⓡ is a critical step for many teacher candidates on the path to becoming a fully-certified teacher. But assembling the different artifacts, commentaries, and video clips in an organized way – and then transferring it to the edTPA platform – can be a challenging part of the journey for a candidate.

Our daily focus at Edthena is building tools to make using and analyzing video easy, so we wanted to apply that expertise to ensuring that managing video as part of the edTPA process wasn’t a technical challenge for candidates.

We believe we have designed a better way to assemble and transfer the required edTPA artifacts for submission for official scoring, and we now offer the Edthena edTPA tools to all programs and candidates at no additional cost.

We came to this work via our existing partners who were already using edTPA, and they asked us to build a solution that went well beyond offering a way to download the edTPA handbooks.

The short explanation is that we built a way to take advantage of the Edthena timestamped commenting tools as part of assembling artifacts for edTPA. We combined this with new dashboards to track process and automatic error checking in order to make completing edTPA a smooth step on the road to becoming a teacher.

The detailed explanation is what follows.

Upload and trim video easily

[Editor’s update: We now offer once-click, in-browser record and upload! Read more.]

We know that one of the biggest hurdles for candidates is getting their videos online and within the size limits.

As an edTPA user of Edthena, teachers can use our Video Tool to trim and upload their videos with drag-and-drop simplicity.

The process of compressing and uploading the videos is fully automated.

And our track record on this is about as good as it gets… 99% success rate to upload the videos across all our users.

For teachers who are always on the go, we also have an Edthena iOS upload app.

Streamline video analysis

One of the defining experiences of edTPA is analyzing video evidence and picking specific moments in time to highlight within the written commentaries.

Analyzing video and tagging specific moments against a framework is one of Edthena’s core competencies.

So for candidates building an edTPA portfolio inside Edthena, they can annotate moments in their edTPA video selected for use within the portfolio. Then they can export comments to use in the written commentaries.

At one presentation, teachers and their professor called it edTPA Task 2 Without Tears.

Master all the small details

Our portfolio builder is set up such that the instructions from the edTPA handbook are available for each task part. We include copies of templates as needed. Program resources, like a standardized lesson plan template, are also available.

Our task parts are configured to only accept the file types allowed per the assessment specification. This means an audio file can’t get accidentally uploaded to a document task part.

Edthena also supports the labeling of files before transfer for official scoring. We also make sure that all files names include the required labels. This happens automatically before the transfer.

Know progress at-a-glance

There are lot of things to assemble for an edTPA portfolio. We help candidates pinpoint where they are in the process with an easy-to-read dashboard that shows progress to submission. And if a transfer is initiated, we include the status right on the page.

Transfer quickly and securely

Coordinate your edTPA with ease

This post is mostly about how we help teacher candidates. That’s because we care tremendously about the experience for teachers when using our technology.

But a close second is supporting the programs who support and train the teachers.

We’re skipping most of the details to how we help programs, but rest assured that we offer many bells and whistles to make your life easier.

Dashboards? Reporting? Document management?

We do all that, and more.

Our commitment to teachers

We’ve built these tools because we’re committed to helping teachers become better at teaching.  Everything we do is grounded in and inspired by this commitment.

We were already partners with several programs which were using edTPA, so building edTPA tools was the natural next step for us.

Because supporting edTPA doesn’t “cost” us a lot in support effort for new organizations, we can offer it to all programs at no cost.

Sure, we’ll admit to the fact that we hope some programs will choose to adopt Edthena more widely in their program. But that’s really just a hope that programs will aspire to integrate practice-focused evidence throughout their training continuum.

Some of us here at Edthena were teachers ourselves, and we know how important this work is. Likewise, we know how difficult it can be.

That’s why we’re excited to continue supporting teachers in all areas of their professional learning — from assembling edTPA artifacts to developing inside the classroom.

Please let us know if you’re interested in learning more about our edTPA features by sending an email to [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

(Edthena is an approved edTPA Platform Provider and supports Local Evaluation as well as transfer to the edTPA platform for official scoring by trained and calibrated scorers.)