Teachers Can Now Share Video Portfolios Securely Outside Edthena

Why create a video portfolio?

Some skills are better observed than described. This is especially true for teachers, who often need to demonstrate their abilities in the classroom for people who aren’t peers or coaches, and who can’t physically observe them – people such as prospective principals.

That’s one reason we’re excited to announce that we’ve developed a feature to meet this need. It’s called Portfolios, and it enables teachers to securely share up to three teaching videos with external parties, such as principals looking for new hires or organizations accepting applications for scholarships and awards.

Learn more about how to create a video portfolio with Edthena.

How it works

“Our new portfolio feature makes it easy for teachers to put together a video resume demonstrating their skills,” said Adam Geller, founder and CEO of Edthena. “But it’s not just for teacher hiring. Teachers can also create a portfolio for awards submissions, conference proposals or for any instance where they need to share videos of their classroom work with people who are not already using the Edthena platform.”

Edthena users can construct Portfolios in conjunction with the platform’s other features. Using our video commenting tools, teachers can annotate the videos they include in their Portfolios at specific moments in time to direct viewers’ attention, or to provide additional context about the classroom environment. Each moment can also be tagged to the rows of a proficiency framework or set of standards.

The principal or other hiring professional, when viewing the video portfolio, will see the tagged skills prominently displayed.  In addition to the video itself, the reviewer will be able to access documents such as lesson plans or samples of student work that may have been attached by the teacher.

Safe and Secure

In creating Portfolios, we wanted it to be easy for teachers to share their videos with people who were not registered users of Edthena. But this meant that a new security model needed to be developed as well.

“Privacy and security are paramount, so we created a dual layer of security. We wanted teachers to feel confident that every step has been taken to keep their videos secure. There aren’t any other platforms that offer this level of security for sharing combined with this level of ease,” said Geller.

When teachers create a video portfolio, they receive a customized URL along with an access code that can be added to a resume or award application.

After reviewers type the access code into the form on the custom URL, they complete an email verification process to receive a login link which expires automatically after two weeks.

The teachers can see the email domain (but not the name) of everyone who has access. This allows the teacher to monitor which organizations have access and revoke the permission at any point in time.

“Our hope is that having a video portfolio will allow teachers to stand out from other candidates for a job or an award,” Geller said. “Teachers often have a lot of video of their professional skills inside Edthena, and now they have a way to showcase those skills to people outside the Edthena community in a secure and easy way.”

Want to learn more? Click to see a sample video portfolio.