#eyls

I entered the Early Childhood Education sector at a time of great change for the industry: the EYLF was just about to be released, and the NQS was looming on the horizon. Change was coming to all aspects of the industry, and documentation and planning seemed to be lagging behind.

I was soo excited when I learnt of Kinderloop, and couldn’t wait to explore it! A platform that would allow educators to record children’s growth through pictures, movies and observations; evaluate them in the same space; provide quick and easy updates on the educational program; and to share that with families on a secure site, with an app for phone and tablet! Amazing! That first login was magical! The possibilities for engagement were endless! The challenge was to share my passion with fellow educators and nurture their engagement.

At each centre there are a variety of personalities and learning types within the educational team. Within my setting there were a number of educators who were quite excited to be programming and documenting children’s learning journeys on a computer/tablet, and others who wanted to continue the hand-written jottings that had been our planning system. Some educators took it upon themselves to explore the site, have a few test posts and just run with it for the most part. Others enjoyed the videos and guides available online (http://kinderloop.com/help.html), and found it useful to discuss the possibilities as a group before diving in.

Of the learning types, there was a clear divide between the “digital natives” like me and the “digital immigrants” who claimed they had no confidence with a computer and were sure that they were going to break something.

With a lot of hand-holding, wonderful help documents, a user friendly interface, and practice, all of the educators gained confidence in using Kinderloop. The educator that first told me “I’ll never be able to do that; I can’t use computers” became the most prolific poster!

Parent engagement increased dramatically as families were able to see in very near real-time what their children were exploring on any given day, follow long-term projects and contribute their ideas quickly to centre life.

Educators noticed a reduction in the amount of double handling of photos, with a reduction in the number of photos printed. Children’s learning was documented quickly and efficiently, with follow-ups recorded instantly. Over time, the depth of information gathered was able to assist us in keeping up to date with our improvement goals.

With Kinderloop, any educator can become a digital native and share their passion for educating children with colleagues and families!

How do we ever ensure everyone thinks we are delivering 'best practice' when their idea of what this is differs so greatly?

The key for me is communication. If we have good lines of communication between the management team, members of staff, children and parents we can all work together to ensure each child is getting what they need.  

How do we know what children need?  We watch them, listen to them, interact with them, imagine what it's like to be them, play with them, talk to their parents, grandparents, siblings and friends.  All seems quite simple doesn't it?  But what about if a parent is rushing from the setting to a school, onto their job or a child is communicating something through challenging behaviour, or we just have a lot of children's need to meet?

Then we need systems.  A planning observation and assessment cycle which ensures each child is recognised.  We have a good understanding of where their development is, what their next steps are likely to be and how we can support them.  This is all very well in the setting, but how do we get parents involved?  Parents know their child best and have a wealth of information about them but how do we tap into this? To be achieving 'best practice' we must be engaging with parents and using their invaluable insights in our practice. 

But there's something else.  I know as an Early years practitioner it is the process not the product that matters.  The thinking, imagining, problem solving, communicating, concentrating and negotiating children go through in play cannot be packaged up and presented at the end of the day for an anxious parent in the same way a painting or card can be.  A child may spend most of the day building a den outside, problem solving how to make it work, collaborating with friends, working out how to fix it together and then playing an intricate role play game with complex rules and story lines .  But what can we show parents?  There's no product to take home, nothing to show for the child's great efforts, skills shown and developments made.  Understandably many parents would like something to see at the end of the day, to get a flavour of what their child has 'learnt' or enjoyed whilst they've been away from them. But here's the problem,  this can lead settings to engage in activities which become about the end product and not the process children go through.  This draws us away from best practice.  The learning that comes from the process of playing and exploring is stunted.

This is where I get very excited about something that I confess I never expected to...technology.  We live in the age of communication and technology, how exciting that the Dans at Kinderloop-far cleverer than me-have combined the two!  

Because parents can see virtually real time updates of their children, the evidence of the involvement, enjoyment and learning is very clear.  Parents can see their child has been involved in this fantastic play, learning so much in all areas of development virtually as it happens.  But more exciting than this, they have their 'end product'.  The pictures and description as it happens.  The need for something tangible to take home at the end of the day isn't there anymore, freeing up the practitioner to enable and allow the child to explore what interests them with skillful support to move their learning on.  

So if we ask again what is best practice?  We could take the rules of thumb, balance of needs and wants combined with process not product and get a very simple answer.  Open ended play opportunities where children have resources which encourage investigating, collaborating, concentrating, negotiating, communicating and all of the other wonderful opportunities true play brings.  Good communication between the adults in children’s lives, and an understanding of how to progress children’s learning in a sensitive and appropriate way.