in-folio blog

Beginnings

We first got to grips with In-folio at Henshaws at the end of the last academic year when we hosted a roll out event for Techdis. In order to do this I spent time creating a test In-folio for myself to find its scope. Bearing in mind that I have only just come across the guide to using Clippi I was using the system with no knowledge of it’s application. After hours of trial and error using the normal and admin sides of the system, I discovered the template function and this is where it started to fall into place as to how we could use this at Henshaws. The structure we came up with was creating the following tabs with headings on the next level.

1) All About Me
Dreams and Ambitions
Interests and Hobbies
My Family
Personal Information

2) My Future Plans
Leisure
Residential
Occupational

3) My E-CV
Things I’m Proud Of
Work Experience
Accreditation

4) Key Contacts
Outside Agencies
College
Home

The  tabs  were mapped against the ‘Transition Passport’ which is a paper based record containing  important information relevant for when the student left Henshaws and moves on.  As we wanted the tabs to go in a certain order, I  figured that the tabs would go alphabetically if I numbered them.   By using the template we effectively gave the students a structure to work within, whereas before we felt that it was too vast and could be confusing as to what to put on it.  This is not to say that this is set, as we continue to use it I’m sure we’ll making adjustments to it, and allowing students to create tabs on their own In-folio if they wish to.

As it was close to the end of term we knew there was limited opportunity to try it out with students so we asked a handful of students to begin to explore their In-folios.  We found that they were mostly able to navigate the website with ease and with the tabs it gave them the stimulus to fill parts of it in,  in contrast to when we first tried it.  It had been trialled without the templates prior to my exploration of In-folio and we found that having set templates allowed the students to work more independently as they knew what information to input  in contrast to the initial trial where we had to be on hand to offer inspiration and ideas for content .

The Next Stage

In-folio is now into the second stage of pilot system at the college with a timetabled session called ‘Portfolio Building’ where selected students access it for 2 hours on a weekly basis. We still have the aforementioned template system in place but in order to give further context we’re working with the Vocational Department and using In-folio to house work placement diaries, which the students have been completing by hand/verbally before. I created a Word Template with the questions the students would answer in the old style and have them fill it in and save it as a document. I did this to develop students general computer skills, as they would have to copy and paste from Word to In-folio, but it’s also to  safe guard against In-folio crashing, which we have found when working on it this year. Once the work diaries are pasted in, we then have the students work on the other sections. We do have some students accessing it using JAWS and whilst it is a bit confusing to do, this is a common issue when accessing any website as whilst those with vision can focus on what that need, JAWS tells you everything that is on the screen. To combat this I have put together a booklet which states what will be said when needing to access the work placement diaries. This is also useful as we have enablers (support workers) who help the students to fill in the diaries and access In-folio and understandably their IT skills are not as advanced as those who teach it so it offers them guidance. I’ve uploaded this document at the end of this blog so take a look, it’s only been created recently so it may still have some creases to iron out but it seems to be working so far!

I hope that’s given you an insight into how we’re using In-folio at Henshaws at present, I’m sure there’s more I can say on it but I do have to stop at some point. I’ll try do an update at some point as we move forward with In-Folio.

John

in-folio-guidebook