Learning & Development ICT: Logging in

As every nursery practioner knows, it is a requirement of the Early Years Foundation Stage to keep a record of each child's individual progress. Many early years settings choose to record these assessments through a learning journey, which usually takes the form of a scrapbook and includes photographs and comments by the child's teacher or key person about the child's progress in relation to the EYFS early learning goals.

To date, these diaries of children's early learning, development and experiences have usually been kept in a paper format. Many are rarely updated by parents and carers except, perhaps, at parents' evenings and review meetings.

At Nightingale First School, we felt we were missing such a big part of our children's story, as we were providing few opportunities for parents to record what our childen were achieving outside our setting. What about the contributions that could be made by our parents who saw their children both at home and out and about in the park, at the beach, in the company of family members and friends - what were they seeing? The story should surely be about the whole child after all, not just what practitioners witness in the setting.

Our headteacher, Jackie Loughlin, felt that an electronic learning story was the answer. Our vision was to develop an electronic diary which allowed all those involved in a child's learning journey to participate in a safe and secure way. So we decided to move our children's learning story into the 21st century.

With a lot of thought and hard work, we created a format for individual e-learning stories - unique to each individual child in the Foundation Stage - using the DB Primary platform to store the information in the cloud (see More information).

The result is a bright, colourful, easily stored record that starts in the early years and is developed as the child progresses through school and is encouraged to become an independent learner.

VITAL INGREDIENTS

The virtual learning stories contained the same vital ingredients as the paper records: photographs and comments about the child's progress in the setting and targets related to the EYFS learning goals. But they also provided so much more.

Using this medium opened up a variety of opportunities for including video and sound. Children could be seen and heard counting to ten, telling a story, describing their toy and, vitally, their parents and carers could see them too.

Most valuable of all, parents could log in to the learning story whenever they wished to and contribute. They could add their own comments about how their daughter counted her birthday candles or how their son made bread with his grandma and remembered all the ingredients - they could even share a photograph.

What's more, if parents decide to share secure log-in details with relatives living away or abroad, then they too can share in the journey. A good example of this at our school was the father of one our children, who worked on the oil rigs. He could still see and keep up to date with his daughter's learning despite being away for weeks at a time.

It is also worth noting how such a collaborative approach to the learning journey involves the child too. There is no longer the age-old answer of 'Nothing' or 'I don't know' when a parent asks, 'What have you been doing today?' Instead they have the stimulus for discussion at their fingertips, a proper window into their child's world that can be shared, discussed and built upon together and follows the child's learning journey throughout their time in school.

Jack's Journey

Jack's home page is where he can share news with his friends via a blog. This can include text, drawings or video messages. He can also see comments from his key worker.

Jack can access his 'learning story' by clicking on the tab. This area is locked down so only Jack's family and his key worker can see. Families have shared passwords with grandparents and even family abroad.

Jack's page is set at the fun and 'space' theme. There is also a 'fairytale' theme. These make the profiles come alive with colour and are very child-friendly. The children are able to change themes and colours, making their profile personal to them.

MORE INFORMATION

DB Primary is a learning platform for primary schools and operated by Editure UK, part of the Editure Group, www.dbprimary.com/

Kerry Hastings is ICT co-ordinator and Louise Young is ICT technician (school and nursery) at Nightingale First School, Norfolk