There are a whole range of ways you can get the most out of Storypark!

The following are a list of tips and suggestions to help you and your team get the most out of Storypark. Each tip links to a help centre resource, and these can be shared with your team all at once or one-by-one over time.

Share resources and discuss new ideas after attending professional learning and development (PLD) or conferences

Storypark’s Conversation feature supports the sharing of resources amongst teachers, either teacher-to-teacher, in a small group of teachers or with the full team. Only those invited to the conversation will have access to it. It’s a great way to provide teachers with access to documents, videos and photos. You can share policies, procedures, newsletter ideas, team meeting agendas for team review and feedback. PLD documents can be shared and discussed amongst the team along with internal communications, reminder notices and thoughts for the day. Resource links

● What are conversations (video): https://help.storypark.com/general/conversations/what-are-conversations

● Add Youtube videos to conversations: https://help.storypark.com/general/conversations/add-youtube-videos-to-conversations

● Add files, images and video conversations: https://help.storypark.com/general/conversations/add-files-images-and-video-conversations

 

Review stories prior to publishing

Story approval enables peer review and QA of stories, providing confidence that quality standards are met for individual or all teachers stories. This feature is great for teachers that have not yet gained confidence in writing stories. Story approval also supports those teachers who prefer to have their stories checked before publishing a story live for the child’s family to view. If story approval is turned on for a teacher, instead of ‘Publish’ they will see a ‘Submit for approval’ button. Resource link

● Story approval: https://help.storypark.com/for-teachers/inviting-and-managing-teachers/story-approval

Teacher on iPad2

Monitor the development of comments from families and teachers

The reports feature of Storypark provides data and evidence of various activities within your service’s account. It can be worth tracking how frequently teachers are responding to parent comments in order to ascertain your service’s success in acknowledging and promoting parent engagement. Parent engagement through comments often start with general appreciation but if acknowledged and responded to by teachers this can quickly develop into a focus on learning and development. Asking parents questions about their child’s current interests and learning can yield a deeper understanding of the child and possible ways to extend their learning with all voices being heard. Resource link

● Activity reports: https://help.storypark.com/for-teachers/early-learning-service-profiles-and-reports/activity-reports

There are so many other ways you can utilise Storypark to work and communicate more effectively. Take a look at our other “Storypark” tips articles for more ideas.

Posted by Sonya McIntyre

Sonya was born in Lower Hutt and went to Rata Street Kindergarten and Petone Kindergarten. A qualified ECE, she studied at Victoria University in Wellington and has worked with home-based educators, in community-based childcare and in kindergarten. With childhood memories of reading books and writing stories, combined with her passion for all things social media, Sonya segued into her role with us at Storypark as social media manager.


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