Metapholio: A Mobile App for Supporting Collaborative Note Taking and Reflection in Teacher Education

Abstract

Mobile technologies open up new ways of fostering reflection in teacher education. With the intention of tying reflection closer to the actions in the classroom, facilitating multimedia recordings, providing prompts for reflection and fostering discussions between pre-service teachers, experienced teachers and university mentors, we developed the "Metapholio" app and tested it in the context of teaching internships. This app supports pre-service teachers in collecting noteworthy moments in the classroom by providing functionalities for individual and collaborative note taking. Notes can be created in the form of written text, photography, audio recordings and video recordings. Each note can be commented on and discussed with invited peers, experienced teachers and university mentors, who can also record moments themselves. Furthermore, the app makes it possible to select notes and attach them to more general written or spoken reflections on teaching and learning. Theoretical frameworks and writing prompts that are part of the app serve as scaffolds for such reflections. Peers, teachers and mentors can be invited to join the conversation on reflections. With the help of this app, pre-service teachers can, moreover, create their own multimedia mobile portfolio, which acts as a hybrid space for professional development in teacher education.Mobile technologies open up new ways of fostering reflection in teacher education. With the intention of tying reflection closer to the actions in the classroom, facilitating multimedia recordings, providing prompts for reflection and fostering discussions between pre-service teachers, experienced teachers and university mentors, we developed the "Metapholio" app and tested it in the context of teaching internships. This app supports student teachers in collecting noteworthy moments in the classroom by providing functionalities for individual and collaborative note taking. Notes can be created in the form of written text, photography, audio recordings and video recordings. Each note can be commented on and discussed with invited peers and mentors, who can also record moments. Furthermore, the app makes it possible to select notes and attach them to more general written or spoken reflections on teaching and learning. Theoretical frameworks and writing prompts that are part of the app serve as scaffolds for such reflections. Peers and mentors can be invited to join the conversation on reflections. With the help of this app, student teachers can moreover create their own multimedia mobile portfolio, which acts as a hybrid space for professional development in teacher education.

Didactic Potential of Using Mobile Technologies in the Development of Mathematical Thinking

“…Many foreign scientists study the possibilities of using not only traditional digital resources (online courses, electronic textbooks, websites, simulators), but also mobile applications of the interactive game format in order to improve the quality of training. Petko et al (2019) experimentally prove that mobile technologies open up new ways to stimulate reflection in education. According to Záhorec, Hašková and Munk (2010) the potential of digital media is not only limited to student motivation, but also contains resources: for working with multimedia content, for timely and "targeted" hints in intellectual activity, for the exchange of experience of all participants in the digital educational space.…”

Learning to teach with digital media

“…Die webbasierte Führung von E-Portfolios eröffnet in Kombination mit der Omnipräsenz mobiler Endgeräte neue Optionen für Mobile Learning (Baran 2014; de Witt und Gloerfeld 2018). So erlaubt die an der PH Schwyz entwickelte App metapholio Studierenden, Praxissituationen und -eindrücke niedrigschwellig und ohne Zeitverlust als Text, Bild, Audio-oder Videomitschnitt festzuhalten, Dozierenden, Mentorinnen und Mentoren sowie Mitstudierenden zugänglich zu machen und diese Artefakte und hierauf bezogene Rückmeldungen später reflexiv zu verarbeiten (Petko et al 2019). Scaffolding-Prompts in der App sollen zusätzlich die Reflexion stimulieren und die Theorie-Praxis-Relationierung fördern.…”

Unterrichtsvideos. Neue Szenarien digitaler Praxisbezüge

“…Eine Weiterentwicklung stellen mobile E-Portfolios dar -z. B. die App metapholio, mit der Studierende in unmittelbarer zeitlicher Nähe zu relevanten Praxissituationen mit ihrem Smartphone oder Tablet Eindrücke in Textform, als Fotos, Audionotizen oder eben Videos festhalten, in ihr E-Portfolio integrieren und mit anderen Personen teilen können (Petko, Schmid, Müller & Hielscher, 2019).…”