Kristina Hoeppner: 0:05

Welcome to'Create. Share. Engage.' This is the podcast about portfolios for learning and more for educators, learning designers, and managers keen on integrating portfolios with their education and professional development practices. 'Create. Share. Engage.' is brought to you by the Mahara team at Catalyst IT. My name is Kristina Hoeppner. Today I have an interview in person, live at a school in Germany with Antje Koenen, who is an English teacher here. I've met Anja last year, also in person in Wiesbaden; today, we are in Frankfurt at the Max-Beckmann-Schule, but we had been in touch online, though, emailing and been together in some webinars before having had the chance to meet her in person. S ince she has been using Mahara for quite a while, I wanted to have a chat with her, and now that we've walked around her fantastic school that has a lot of art deco elements, so it's been really great being in an actual school building with fantastic art around, now we are sitting in her library that she manages with one of her colleagues and students and have a chat. Welcome to the podcast, Anje.

Antje Koenen: 1:19

Thank you. I'm very excited.

Kristina Hoeppner: 1:21

Antje, can you please tell me what your role is here at school, and also, what do you do when you're not teaching?

Antje Koenen: 1:28

I'm an English and German teacher. We usually have two subjects in Germany. I've got plenty of different tasks here at school. As you already said, I manage the library with a colleague. I do projects with literature and with authors who come to read. We have events. We have projects with writing classes and stuff like that. So I manage that. We also do a lot of media. So I'm also responsible for part of the media education at this school. I'm also responsible for events. So if we have bigger events, like when we have the A levels, the celebration, I manage that. So I do quite a lot of things. I absolutely love my job. I do lots of things because I'm very curious, which I, by the way, think that's one of the most important skills a teacher should have, or competence, to stay curious. At home, I've got a large family. I've got three kids. They're all grown up now. I've got one disabled son who keeps me well in check, in a way, but it's still very, very nice. I love singing. I play the guitar. I'm outside a lot. I ride my bike. I ride my bike to school a lot. So it's like quite a long way, but I love it. Yeah, it's that's what I do.

Kristina Hoeppner: 2:38

You are also responsible for teaching other teachers about Mahara and also work for the Ministry of Education in the state of Hessia.

Antje Koenen: 2:46

Yes, I do. That's also important for my Mahara work because since 2016, about a third of my time I spend at the Education Institute, and I actually give workshops for teachers. The main thing is either Mahara or learning, and we call it 'Lernbegleitung', so anything that supports students in their learning process.

Kristina Hoeppner: 3:10

When did you encounter portfolios for the first time? You said you have been facilitating workshops since 2016, but was that your first time that you've learned about Mahara and portfolios or was that already much earlier?

Antje Koenen: 3:22

That wasn't much earlier, but it was two years earlier. It was 2014 when a colleague of mine, who's now my head, basically in the department, he asked me whether I wanted to join a bigger thing for two years working with portfolios, learning a lot about coaching and supporting students. It was a mix of media plus how to talk to students in the right way, so answer questions, strategies, communication strategies. I absolutely loved it. II still remember that my children really started laughing when I said I'm going to start working with digital media because I wasn't able to handle my smartphone very well at that time, and I needed help all the time. I was already quite old, you know. So I wasn't like one of the young teachers who does that. I was quite old. People were quite surprised, but I started it, and I just loved it. I came across portfolios, and I knew instantly that this is something that I've been looking for, basically, that was a solution for many things.

Kristina Hoeppner: 4:21

Why was it the solution for things? What captured your attention in the portfolios?

Antje Koenen: 4:27

The freedom that it offers. I have always been working with students in a way that I try to open up, try to look at their needs, their skills, what they can offer, and what I can support. Instead of top down teaching - I am the one who knows everything, and you have to follow my lead. So I was always looking for projects and other things to do. But where do you share it? Where do you put your documentation? Where is it? Where can you present it? I came across this portfolio, and I will never forget the first time I went into my class and I just accounted Mahara. That was 2014. I came into my then class that I was tutoring, and it was, I think it was my second class. So I was not so confident, but I was confident enough to say,"I've just encountered this brilliant platform. I really like it. Shall we try? I have no idea how it works, but we can try together." What did we do? We started with Mahara. Many things went wrong, so we started with only group portfolios because we didn't know that there were single portfolios. Suddenly we ran out of space, so we couldn't upload anything. So what did students do? They started searching and finding out, and then they told me, 'Oh, we have to do this and that.' So we did it together. The first thing we actually did, was just documenting our class trip. We put all these pictures up, and that was Dublin. When we had open house, they presented it, and they were really happy. It was great. That's when my love for portfolio and Mahara started.

Kristina Hoeppner: 5:50

I'm reminded of what Sigi Jakob-Kühn said, who started with portfolios in Baden-Württemberg that she also didn't necessarily know everything at the beginning, but that the students helped her, and the students found out these things...

Antje Koenen: 6:03

Yeah, exactly.

Kristina Hoeppner: 6:04

... really learned together, and that, I think, is the nice thing about a lot of media and educational technology that the boundaries of the sage on the stage are broken up, and you're becoming more of a learning partner...

Antje Koenen: 6:16

Absolutely.

Kristina Hoeppner: 6:17

... and work things out together.

Antje Koenen: 6:18

That was my aim all along, to be a learning partner rather than a teacher in that respect. It just helped me getting on a level where I can say, 'Yes, I'm here to support you. You support me. You're learning from me. I learn from you. We can study things together.' And it works. I'm still learning a lot. One of the moments where I thought this is great was actually when they were helping me, and after a while I was helping somebody else, and they said, "You know, Frau Koenen, she can really do things." It was not because I was brilliant in technology. It was just because I was trying out, and they realised, I'm trying out and I can do things. It was such a compliment at this moment. I really liked it.

Kristina Hoeppner: 6:55

Especially for somebody who was labelled as the non-techy in the family.

Antje Koenen: 6:59

Absolutely, as the one who can't deal with anything, you know [both laugh]. And it was great. It still is. Now, people come to me and ask me all the time [laughs]. It's just nice the way you develop skills with technology in a way that is very satisfying as well.

Kristina Hoeppner: 7:15

Sometimes you don't even notice until you stop, think back, and realise,'Oh yes, I have learned these things.' And then you can, of course, in portfolio fashion, also reflect on that...

Antje Koenen: 7:25

Yeah, absolutely.

Kristina Hoeppner: 7:26

... what you've learned and how you transfer that knowledge, things you learned in Mahara, transferring them to Moodle, not being afraid of that platform, or any of the other modern technologies that might come along.

Antje Koenen: 7:36

I think one of the biggest and most important things in being a teacher is being pragmatic. You have to have a lot of pragmatism because if you don't, things will fail. If you're fixed, you get static. If you get static, things don't work. So I have to be very flexible, and one of the things in portfolios, for instance, that I can have times where I do a lot, and I have half a year where I do nothing. I just accept it and I embrace it. And I say, 'Oh yes, now I've worked with AI, so I need a page where I can show off what I can do with AI,' and then for a while, don't do anything. I have a picture on my portfolio. We had a celebration here at school, my 50th birthday. So we had the celebration. It was summer holidays, so you get a speech, and then this picture where I watched the speech is on this portfolio, and it always reminds me of the times when I started everything. It's really nice to look at it. I have a few student portfolios on there as well, so I can look back screenshots. I'm just getting bit nostalgic sometimes. It's really, really nice, and I can see my progress. Same for those students, they see their progress.

Kristina Hoeppner: 8:37

Yeah, we are making that learning visible.

Antje Koenen: 8:39

Yeah, absolutely. That's it, this making it visible. Also on my portfolio at the first few pages somewhere, I have a few quotes I like, and one of them is Roosevelt. She says, "Do something every day that scares you." I think that's a great quote to say, 'Okay, I face challenges and I like them, and I embrace them.' Portfolio work can really help you with that. As you start something, you have a project, you have something you're not sure about, you put your plan down. You say,'I'm planning something. What do I need?' You have a blog where you write about, oh, I don't know. And then you just make it all visible. It really helps other people to follow your process and say, 'Oh, maybe I could do the same. It's interesting.'

Kristina Hoeppner: 9:16

The first portfolio that your students created were group portfolios. Do you also now have them create personal portfolios?

Antje Koenen: 9:24

Yes, absolutely, yes. Usually they create more personal portfolios than group portfolios. We use the group portfolios, of course, as well, because when they collaborate, it's easier with the group portfolios, and if they have bigger projects in the group of course. But what they always do is they copy the group portfolios into their own portfolio, and then they have their own evaluation.

Kristina Hoeppner: 9:43

So you evaluate the portfolios of the students then as well?

Antje Koenen: 9:48

I think the best way to explain it is in my portfolio work. When I really have a class for a longer time, they just do the portfolio all the time. Normally, most people here use it in a way that I have a task, a bigger one, then they have this one task, and then they do a portfolio with this task. What I do is, usually I say, 'No, you have your portfolio all the time. Whenever we do something that is worthwhile keeping, or something you have written down, or it's a picture, or whatever, you just put it on your portfolio.'

Kristina Hoeppner: 10:16

Your students create their portfolio throughout class. Does it mean they keep one portfolio for an entire class or for their entire school year?

Antje Koenen: 10:25

Well, they don't have one portfolio as such. I mean, you have your profile, and within their profile, they have the unit Shakespeare, then you have a Shakespeare portfolio. Within the Shakespeare portfolio, they either have different pages, or they have journals, whatever they like, and within their Shakespeare part, they have tasks, or sometimes they just have information, or sometimes they have something else they don't necessarily evaluate that. What they do evaluate is their tasks. So if they have bigger tasks, like this complex learning task, usually I say, 'plan, do, check, act', and they have the certain questions that they should answer, they can also say, 'No, I don't want these questions. I will come up with something else.' That's fine. But as a guideline, they have these questions. So they then, if they have a bigger task, they have a planning section, and then they use mind maps and other advanced organisers. They even sometimes write something about themselves or whatever they like. Then they have the project itself. So the outcome, the product, if there is a product as such, and then either presentation or a video or a podcast, whatever they have produced.

Kristina Hoeppner: 11:28

Do you then also grade their portfolios?

Antje Koenen: 11:31

Yeah, I do, sometimes, not always. I have a system that when I work with them for a longer time, and there are my classes or my courses that I have for a longer time, it's usually simply oral mark. So I say 50% of your oral mark is Mahara, and that's it. In this way, I grade it within the oral mark, I grade their performance, whether they do the things, whether there's progress, whether I can see an effort. I do not necessarily always grade the outcome, more the process.

Kristina Hoeppner: 12:00

Do they then also need to talk about their portfolio?

Antje Koenen: 12:02

Yes, absolutely. They often have something like, you know what gallery walk is? Gallery walk is a method that I use quite a lot. You have groups that are working, and when they present their stuff, say you have five groups or six groups, then you have six stations. You split the group in half. So half of the group walks around from each station to each station, and the other halves present their stuff. Then you swap, and then the other half presents, and the others walk around, and they usually have feedback sheets. Then I give them time to look at portfolios again and write down their feedbacks for the portfolios. So they also use the comment section in Mahara to give their feedback. I'm still working on that, because the feedbacks are still like, 'Oh, you have a great page. Very nicely done.' Typical student style, which I understand because they would never criticise other students. For them, realising that they could be helpful, that is a step that hard for them, but I'm on the way [laughs]. I'm still learning how to do it better in all these years now. Sometimes, I really think, oh yes, it's working. And sometimes I realise, well, maybe that was too early. I try to give longer, nicer feedbacks, forward-oriented feedbacks, seeing their skills. In coaching, you always say, look at the things that work and don't look at the things that don't work. I'm really trying to say in my feedbacks, even if there is a portfolio which is bare and, you know, ChatGPT text and stuff like that, I will still try to find ways of saying, 'Yeah, you have done your first page. You know, you've created your first page. That's really nice, and you embedded a picture. Well, next step, and at least you have found a good prompt for the ChatGPT, and so this shows that you can manage. It also shows that you're not giving up still. You're trying to do something.' So I'm trying to find good ways, and this is what I'm working on with the students as well, that they showcase their stuff, but at the same time, are able to appreciate others.

Kristina Hoeppner: 13:55

Do you have a reflective framework that you use or reflection questions that work really well with your students?

Antje Koenen: 14:01

Yeah, I just have a few questions, really, and I think that works best because I've also talked to a lot of colleagues and colleagues who are younger. At university, they are forced to do reflection work. If you're forced to do that, it doesn't work. So I'm trying to come up with just a few questions, which are usually what work well, what didn't work? Well, what am I proud of? What would I do differently next time? Something like that. And the best question, I think, is, imagine your future self in half a year's time. What would you like to say to your future self now? The outcome is great - what they say about themselves because they totally realise what they should maybe change, but they also are good at saying, 'I'm quite good at this.'

Kristina Hoeppner: 14:43

Are you then the only teacher here at your school that uses portfolios or are they others?

Antje Koenen: 14:48

I think I'm the only one who uses it at a regular basis, but I have at least three colleagues who use it for tasks. I was surprised now, because Mahara is moving, so I send a message to all the students. And quite a few students said, 'Well, I need to move my pages now.' I was surprised that so many students actually have pages. Few colleagues are using it, not as regularly as I do, but...

Kristina Hoeppner: 15:09

Are they also English teachers?

Antje Koenen: 15:11

One is chemistry and politics. One is chemistry and mathematics. Two German teachers use it, and some English teachers.

Kristina Hoeppner: 15:20

Wow, chemistry and mathematics. I'd love to hear how they are using it in their classes. Do you know?

Antje Koenen: 15:27

I think a lot of times they just use it for complex tasks in terms of trying to explain something. So what they do usually is that they have a task and the students on the portfolio page, they try to explain their way of getting through it and explaining what they've done. Sometimes they also include videos like explain videos and stuff like that, even from platforms or from other teachers who put them on platforms. And they just find ways of documenting their learning process in mathematics, which I really like, I must say. In chemistry, they use it, for instance, for presentations of processes like if you have fatty things and oily things, and how the structure and stuff like that. And I've seen pages of that. I really like that. In politics, he actually does things like create a campaign for a party on a page.

Kristina Hoeppner: 16:18

Project work, documenting the learning, and then seeing how that can also be transferred in other areas. You work with a lot of teachers across the state in your capacity as facilitator for Mahara and introducing the topic of portfolios to your colleagues. How did that come about? What does the training entail?

Antje Koenen: 16:38

It started actually, with the idea of the state of Hessia to say that all teachers should have a portfolio in terms of digital media education, media education in general. It was a law, actually, in 2017, but it was voluntarily. You can do it, but you don't have to. So nobody did it. But the Teachers Academy said,'Okay, we need workshops for that because if people have to start using portfolios, they need to know how, and we recommend Mahara because it was already there.' So we give workshops for teachers who are interested in doing their portfolio work with Mahara. We need to show teachers that you can use Mahara at school at the same time, when you're using it for your own portfolio. If you can use something at work, you also use it for your own stuff. This is how we develop the whole idea of workshops. We do a lot of workshops that are only one and a half hours long, which basically just show how Mahara works and give some examples. But we also do longer things, like three afternoons with a task for next time, which includes coaching, supportive questions, feedback, growth mindset. All these things are included. So we combine portfolio with Mahara, with'Lernbegleitung', i.e. process-oriented learning. Then we usually have schools who book that, and then they have, like three afternoons. We have a lot of online sessions where we just say, 'Okay, you want to have a look into portfolios? Go ahead, we show you how.' Then there is the next session that focuses, for instance, on literature and portfolio.

Kristina Hoeppner: 18:11

What did you do with your teachers then in that workshop?

Antje Koenen: 18:13

We had this roadmap idea. So 'Macbeth' is new in the curriculum now. We had "Othello" for a long time, Shakespeare's 'Othello', and now it's 'Macbeth'. And I showed them how I work with sonnets with portfolios, gave them ideas about Macbeth, and we also brainstormed a lot of ideas, and we were always trying to combine the idea of this portfolio with Shakespeare's work and complex learning tasks. I have a complex learning task for sonnets, for instance, which I showed them, where the students first learn a bit about sonnets, and then they have to choose their own sonnet. They have to explain it. That's one task, and then they have to recite it. How they do is entirely up to them. So they choose the sonnet out of 154 sonnets by Shakespeare. They choose one. They decide on how they come across it, they decide on how they want to explain it, and they decide on how to recite it, or whether they combine everything in one go. I had podcasts, pictures, I had drawings, I had a video. I just try and open up the minds of the teachers who work with that to say, portfolio enables you to work individually in a very broad sense, in a very sense of not telling them exactly what to do, but giving them their freedom because they document the work. In the end, students can decide whether you should see the portfolio in the process or whether you should see it in the end. I always say, 'If you want me to support you, I need to see the process.' So we have deadlines in between where they can show me their work, and then I give feedback in between. Or we also go and say, 'Okay, share it with a group. Or start with a group portfolio, whatever you like,' and then the others can always look at your portfolios in between, get their own ideas, and they did. They said they had ideas because others had ideas. Some, for instance, said, 'Oh, we had good contents, but our page looked terrible. Then we looked at the other pages, and then they thought, Oh, they're so creative. So rearranged everything.' This is the idea of sharing, working, sharing, getting more ideas, being inspired. I just try to open up other teachers' mind of embracing that. It's hard for teachers because we want to be in control. Lot of people would say, 'Yes, I have to be, because I've got all these things that I have to fulfill - 'Lehrplan'(curriculum), you know, all these things. Yeah, but I say'What? I'm working at a Sixth Form College, which means I get evaluated every year. Every course I have ends up in a final exam, which is a written exam with certain tasks. If my work wouldn't work, they'd fail, wouldn't they, but they don't.' I always say, 'they are not better than others, but they're also not worse.' So I do completely different things, but the outcome is still okay, which means it works.

Kristina Hoeppner: 20:52

Your students have that bigger freedom and also work in that learning community where they learn from each other. So from what I've heard is that your students do share their portfolios, not just with you, but also fellow students to get that feedback, not only because you tell them to give the feedback, but also because they want to learn them from each other.

Antje Koenen: 21:13

And you have things like, I often start in 11th grade with writing little texts, and they write their own short stories. They're really keen on it. I mean, you could say, 'now all ChatGPT writes it.' No, no, no, they like it. We have comments like, "Why don't you just start writing novels because that's what you're obviously good at"[laughs]. I just yeah, things like that. Isn't that wonderful? Just appreciating what the others are doing. A lot of times you get things like, 'Wow, what a good idea. It didn't even occur to me to do something like that next time, I'll try it out.' Or they come across this new digital tool that they use. 'Oh, yes, what is it, and can you explain?' So we talk. I think being a teacher - one of the biggest things that you need, apart from curiosity, as I said at the beginning, the other thing is the communication and the relationship with your students, and I think all teachers would agree on that. You need to have a good relationship, and portfolio work really helps you with that. You have time for the students. You can talk to them. They work in groups. They do their tasks. I don't give them so much'homework'. A lot of the times, I just let them work in the lessons because I don't want them to struggle at home. So we try and do everything we can basically in the lessons. If they don't work in the lessons, then they have to do it at home. Okay, fair enough. Yeah. If they choose to do so if it's finished, then when it should be finished, fine. I can walk around. I can talk to them, you know? I look at the portfolios while they're working. I give them feedback while they're working. When they struggle, I have time. When I look at the portfolios, I also learn a lot about their skills. I really do. In my own classes, I often encourage them to create their profile page in a nice way, and you learn so much about whether they have budgies, or if they're skateboarding, or if they play the piano, do things like that. They do internships in 12th grade. As a tutor, I always say,'if you like, make a portfolio of your internship. It doesn't need to be much. It's okay if you just have a few pictures, a bit of reflection, your curiosity, why did you choose this one? and really nice outcomes as well' A lot of them also, are also blogging about their internships. So they have this diary. If they do that, I let them present in class. It's not compulsory. They can choose whether they want to do it. They have to do it in English if it's an English class, then you learn even more about them.

Kristina Hoeppner: 23:24

What do they like about the portfolio?

Antje Koenen: 23:27

I think they like that they can show off [laughs]. That's one of the things. If you'd ask students here about Mahara, they always say, 'Oh, Frau Koenen and her Mahara pages. It's really annoying,' but the more they work with it, the more they like it. A lot of times they say, in 13th grade, especially, that they can watch their learning process. They actually watch themselves growing. They like the sharing bits. They like to see what others are doing and what they can do themselves. They also like that everything is there for them. It's a way of organising themselves. I think that's a big part of it, this idea of being I'm organised. I've got my stuff together. It's my portfolio. I know where things are. And it's not only for studying, it's for me just to look at things again. Oh, we did Britishness. What was it again? Did we have an interview? Yeah, where was it? Oh, yeah, it was on that page. Oh, Paula had an interview. Ah, where was it? Henry had an interview. Where was it? I really like that. So let's go back to Henry's page, which is shared in the group, and then they look at this again, and they really like it.

Kristina Hoeppner: 24:25

Where do you see are the challenges in the German school system to work with portfolios effectively?

Antje Koenen: 24:34

That's a bit tricky to answer because I believe that you can work your way around it as a teacher, but you need to want to do it. One of the challenges is that we still have a system - if you were a teacher 100 years ago, you would land in school today, you could still teach. This is also why it doesn't work a lot of times, because people. Are the framework, the mindset, the old.

Kristina Hoeppner: 24:54

That's why I like the project that you're a part of at the Ministry, to break that up and to make digital media part of the entire learning environment, make it more commonplace, take away the scariness, and also offer those workshops because we can't expect teachers to know how a portfolio works, how to give effective feedback, how to do coaching without any training in it. That's what I really like about your work and the work of your colleagues who are facilitating those workshops, that you make that new part easier for others, so that they are more willing to take it on, can also experiment for themselves and realise, oh, this is maybe how I want to work with a portfolio, what Antje has shown me, I would like to try that, or I'd like to try something entirely different, so that they do have also that time to experiment and explore themselves.

Antje Koenen: 25:47

For instance, when we work with Mahara, I give templates. I make templates for the teachers, and say, 'you can use them if you want to start and you're insecure, use a template here. You've got one. You can copy it. Your students can copy it. They can work with it.' So we're really trying hard to make it as easy as possible, as accessible as possible. But mindset is a problem which can be overcome by constantly showing good results. Tricky because the framework is not a framework that you could say, oh, I can open up and I can work freely, and I can really do this and that. You've got this 45 minutes lessons, you know, so and so many times a week, then you've got the 'Klausuren' system, exam system, so you have to write two exams in an advanced class per term. They have to be written. You have to do some teaching to the test in between. That, of course, throws you back in your work. When you have a project, it takes time. Your work takes time. That's one of the biggest problems. But also, a lot of people say, 'Oh, it all takes time, takes time, and I have to do my work.' And I say, 'Well, but your work is work around it. That is your work now.' The bottom line is still, I teach. As long as you have this bottom line, 'I teach' is work, my tip is, get involved with your students. Stop teaching.

Kristina Hoeppner: 27:02

Individualising the work for the students, let them explore the topic and document their learning. In Germany, data privacy is a very important topic because it is extremely important to protect the student data and also teacher data on anybody else's data. How do you ensure that your students' data is only available to those that should see it? Do the students learn about data privacy and how they can or should protect themselves?

Antje Koenen: 27:31

I love that about Germany that we have this strong data protection, and I think we are exceptional in that case, which also puts up a lot of barriers at the same time, of course, but still again, bottom line, brilliant. So what do we do? Mahara, for instance, here, is incorporated in the'Schulportal', which is a big platform which the state of Hessia offered and supports. Mahara is incorporated there, and nobody has access to it, only students. I like about Mahara, for instance, that your portfolio is your portfolio. If you don't share it, nobody can see it, so it's very data safe. At the same time, you have the possibilities to share. If you share it's in a protected group, usually, so you share it with groups so nobody else can just have access to it, so it's safe. If they have the secret URLs - I promote secret URLs because I think to have a Mahara portfolio and be able to show it to anybody who wants to is a possibility that should be there. For instance, if you have internship reports or something and you want to show them to your next job manager, it's good to have it. Then we, of course, have to deal with the question, which pictures do you have on it? Do you have any personal data on it? Do you have your resources? Where do they come from? Do you have your CC license on it? So that's also something Mahara does that you can have a CC license, the Creative Commons license. So you protect your own work, and once you protect your own work, you think about work of others, and you suddenly know what a Creative Commons license means. That is something we also talk about when we do the portfolios. We also look at other portfolios and we check, oh, there's a picture of the family on it; should not share it, or before you share it, make sure that the faces are invisible, blur the faces, or do something else with it because we have portfolios, for instance, when we do Britishness, we often do a lot of your family. Where do they come from? Multiculturalism. In Germany, we have a lot of multicultural families with various backgrounds, so they make their pages and show them to others, proud of their heritage and their cultural background. But of course, these portfolios are difficult to share because they give so much away. We talk about it. Also, when they use pictures for their portfolios, we explain research pictures, license. You cannot take every picture, just like that. Can't. Music. You create a podcast. Where do you get sounds from that you can use? So find sounds that are free.

Kristina Hoeppner: 29:50

That's great, that you can teach. All of that in the context of portfolios, and therefore make it an authentic learning task.

Antje Koenen: 29:57

It's definitely authentic.

Kristina Hoeppner: 29:59

We talked about a lot of things before we had the interview...

Antje Koenen: 30:02

... but it was worth it, wasn't it?

Kristina Hoeppner: 30:03

Which was really important and so fantastic to be here with you in person. So let's look at the last question before we get into our quickie answer round, Antje. What do you wish everybody knew about portfolios?

Antje Koenen: 30:16

Joy - the joy of sharing work, presenting work, and the joy of seeing how you grow.

Kristina Hoeppner: 30:23

You exuberantly [Antje laughs] demonstrate that joy and also live that joy because when we walked through your school building, students just came up to you, talk to you about things, talk to you about their problems, immediately knowing that they can talk to you, that you have an open ear, that you really also want to engage with them and that was absolutely great to see.

Antje Koenen: 30:43

Thank you[laughs].

Kristina Hoeppner: 30:44

Now to our last three questions. Which words do you use to describe portfolio work?

Antje Koenen: 30:49

Portfolio work is rewarding because you see growth. It's also rewarding because you document something, and you get organised, and you also keep focused because you've got something to focus on. And it's also community.

Kristina Hoeppner: 31:11

What tip do you have for learning designers or other teachers that are creating portfolio activities?

Antje Koenen: 31:17

Throw yourself into it and just try out and don't be scared. That's the first thing. Enjoy - work with your students together. You get to know your students. Embrace that, that you get to know your students, and work with that portfolio work is something that gives you time. It takes a lot of time, but it gives you time at the same time. And really see that if you do start with easy things, you know, start with easy questions. Don't give them a template that is full of hundreds and 1,000s of tasks and questions. It's just overwhelming. Start with your class trip. Start with their profile page. Start with something simple. You just move on from that. One thing I really have to say because it's something a colleague of mine, Jannetje, who started with me working out, she had this wonderful explanation of how to change tasks. She said, 'Okay, imagine you have an English book and you want to do the past tense. You have a school book. There are three pictures, Paul on his skateboard, Paul eating something, Paul whatever'. And then the task is write down what Paul did yesterday in the past tense. No, change it. Say, take your mobile take pictures of your day, put it on the Mahara portfolio and write down what you did yesterday. You need to know the past tense for that. So one skill you have to learn. You have to learn how to upload pictures on Mahara. You maybe have to learn how to do a gallery. You can also say, okay, you can use a presentation and put the pictures in to show them. And then you need to be able to create text. You need to be able to arrange it on the page. You need to share the page. You need to show it to others. You can give feedback to others. And suddenly you have a complex learning task. A simple task to begin with, but it's a wonderful task for the students, because they like it. It has something to do with themselves.

Kristina Hoeppner: 32:59

Exactly. It's that authentic learning. They can bring themselves in because they might not be able to relate to the activities that Paul did, but they might want to talk about or show off, about what they've done.

Antje Koenen: 33:10

And showing off. Here we are again.

Kristina Hoeppner: 33:12

Yes, not to forget the showing off.

Antje Koenen: 33:14

It is called'showcasing', and 'show' is in the word. So here we go.

Kristina Hoeppner: 33:20

The last question then for you, what advice do you have for students who create their portfolios or also for your workshop participants, the teachers?

Antje Koenen: 33:30

Enjoy. I say to my students, 'if you want to be proud of yourselves, how do you do that? When are you proud of yourselves?' Then we talk about that, and then I say, 'Well, look at your portfolios. Are you proud of yourselves?' And then they are. So my tip often is, again, start simple. Don't start with multitasking, video, whatever. Do something nice. I often let them create a nice page. And at the beginning, content is not as important as creating something visually nice because they enjoy it so much. Then you can say, 'Okay, now the content with the visually nice things together, what does it mean for you?' And they often say, and that's also my tip for them, what do you think if you see something nice and you study it, does it help? And most of the times, they say, 'Yes, if I arrange something or do my - we call it 'Lernzettel'. They always make pages where they write everything down, and a lot of sometimes they even do some nice lettering and stuff. I say,'Well, you just, you know, transfer it to your portfolio work, and you have it there for yourself all the time.'

Kristina Hoeppner: 34:30

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Now I can only wish you have a great school trip that is coming up, because, yeah, you're multi talented, multitasking all the time, and still need to prepare that. So we'd better stop our interview here so that you have time to get all things still sorted before you have to head off on Sunday...

Antje Koenen: 34:49

... in two days.

Kristina Hoeppner: 34:49

Thank you so much, Antje.

Antje Koenen: 34:51

Thank you for coming here [laughs].

Kristina Hoeppner: 34:54

Now over to our listeners. What do you want to try in your own portfolio practice? This was 'Create. Share. Engage.' with Antje Koenen. Head to our website, podcast.mahara.org, where you can find resources and the transcript for this episode. Our next episode will air in two weeks. I hope you will tell a colleague of yours about it so they can listen as well. Until then, create, share, and engage.