Online Journals

[AnonyMouse_48226]

I know this subject has been done to death but please humour me :1b

 

I am a leader at a small village Pre-School with 5 members of staff and no more than 20 children so have been looking into the various online learning journal systems around. My Chairwoman has sent me details of BabysDays and I have been playing with that today. The overall feeling I get is that this is mainly used by Childminders and looking through old posts and various other message sites this system had a bad write up a couple of years ago. Do you still feel that way about this site?

 

How different is Tapestry to this?

 

BabysDays does seem to be able to do all the invoicing yada yada yada so will Tapestry be able to do this one day or will it only do learning journals?

 

I'm sorry for rambling but am unsure of what exactly we need. My staff have problems filling in written journals so I don't want to spend money on an online service which they are not going to fill in either.

 

One last thing - can Tapestry be accessed from multiple computers i.e staff computers at home and can the permissions be set so they can only do their own children?

 

I hope somebody can make sense of this and hopefully give me the answers I need or at least point me in the right direction.

[Guest]

Sorry, I am not answering your question but asking another, which may seem ridiculous - many pre school settings seem to be using Tapestry (looks amazing), are Reception classes also finding it good too. Thinking about taking the plunge, if I can access all those early tutorials, it seems to develop at a rapid rate with new exciting bits added by the day!

How easy is it to 'browse'? My Reception class love sessions where we get out paper copies of learning journals - promotes so much discussion - not sure I could do this with Tapestry (but I know there are so many more positives!)

[Steve]

Hi Tracey - and welcome to the FSF!

 

I can't answer your questions regarding BabysDays, but Tapestry is unlikely to incorporate a Nursery Management component - we have enough on our hands with developing this service!

 

The purpose of Tapestry was originally to enable the preparation of fast, convenient and attractive learning journals, that would be immediately available to parents and relatives. We've developed a system that can allow parents to regularly keep up with their child's time at a nursery, to comment on the entries in their journal, and to add their own - in the same way as many settings currently encourage through their paper based journals. Parents are notified via email of new entries, and managers are notified when parents have added comments or observations.

 

Over the last few months we've been adding to this core function, to enable the progress monitoring and analysis that managers are also asked to show evidence for. So, to the core learning journey observations, you can add EYFS development matters assessments, Characteristics of Effective Learning and, (imminently) Leuven Scale assessments. These are collated and processed by the Tapestry system, to present a very flexible series of views to help with monitoring your provision.

 

The way you upload these observations is also quite flexible. You can use a digital camera and PC/Mac, in the same way as many settings currently do (although without the need for printing the photographs out and sticking them in a book). Or you can use tablets and other mobile devices to add them. In answer to your query, yes you can access the system from as many different computers and devices as you like, and you can set staff to only have access to their own keychildren.

 

Hope that helps, but let me know if I've misunderstood any of your questions.

 

Hi Iri -

 

There are many reception classes using Tapestry now - some of which were made of it by their feeder nurseries and pre-schools. As a result of this, we're currently developing a function to enable nurseries to pass on their learning journals to other settings, so there is some continuity between years. Hopefully one of these weavers will find their way to this conversation and let you know how they are getting on.

 

Currently, although it's quite possible to flick your way through a learning journal with a child, it's not safe to actually leave them in charge of it (eg with a tablet). This is because there's no 'protected' view, and you know how uncannily adept children are at finding their way to the 'edit' buttons of a program). However, we've been aware of this need for a while now and will be adding a way to 'lock' individual learning journals so it can be browsed but not edited.

 

Incidentally, in case you missed the recent discussion, we're also finishing off a new feature which will enable you to prepare and submit EYFSP returns, in electronic or paper format suitable for sending to LAs.

[Guest]

Thanks Steve, sounds like it is morphing continuously - do you lot work on this 24/7? Rapid replies too!

I presume once you buy into Tapestry updates are automatic?

[Steve]

Hah - it feels like it at the moment Iri. Hopefully things will settle down as the list of features we still want to implement are introduced.

 

Yes, updates are introduced universally, so there are no differences in versions for different settings.