Month: August 2021
Shifting to Storypark
Moving to Storypark was something that had been on our minds for a wee while, years really! Within the realm of early childhood, many other kaiako and whānau are using Storypark with rave reviews. A quick search through any early childhood facebook forum will tell you it is super popular. Our team always wondered what they were missing out on,...
Sharing children’s care routines with family
The importance of sharing children’s care routines Let’s talk about children’s care routines. A key component of working effectively with children and their families is the exchange of information and communication which is essential for you to truly work in partnership together. Over time you have no doubt found strategies and ways to share with each other by: Sharing learning...
Building Trusting Relationships with Families
Building Trusting Relationships with Families 2020 and 2021 have presented us with many challenges, due to Covid-19. Although each of our challenges have been unique to our learning communities, there are some that are faced by many learning services all over the world. We caught up with Nicola and Dan from The Learning Enrichment Foundation in Toronto, to hear about...
What is Storypark Child Mode?
What is Storypark Child Mode? If you are an iOS Educator App user, you now have the ability to safely record children’s reactions, voices, views and thoughts about their learning via audio or video using the new Storypark Child Mode feature! This exciting new feature enables you to capture not only children’s voices but their language, expression, intonation, emotions and...
The Importance of Family within the Early Learning Environment
Located in the Ottawa Valley, Petawawa, Ontario is home to Garrison Petawawa, one of Canada’s largest and busiest military bases. The Petawawa Military Family Resource Centre (PMFRC) provides a wide-range of programs and services for the families of Canadian Armed Forces members, including several full and part-time child care programs. Our early childhood educators work hard to support military families...
Supporting high quality ECE outcomes in Toronto
The Quality Early Learning Network (QELN) is a group of leading not-for-profit early learning and family support agencies who are dedicated to the impact they make for children, families, educators and communities in Southern Ontario. Although the organizations who are part of the QELN all operate independently, they share ideas and support each other in their pursuit of quality outcomes....
Canada’s leading Educators are using Storypark
Andrew Fleck Child Care Services has been Ottawa’s leading family-oriented charitable early learning and family support organization since 1911. This blog post from their Executive Director, Kim Hiscott (RECE), shares her observations from using Storypark. “We’ve always taken a leadership role in the child care community and in early childhood education. Over the past century, in response to the changing...
Will implementing a digital documentation solution result in more parent engagement?
A new research study completed by Dr M.E. Picher on the use of a digital documentation technology (called Storypark) in Ontario’s kindergarten program shows that this technology had a positive impact on parents’ engagement in their children’s learning. The study, conducted by Picher for her PhD thesis at the University of Toronto, included 220 parents who used Storypark to receive...
North America’s First Independent Assessment on the Impact of Digital Documentation in Full-day Kindergarten
The use of digital documentation in early childhood programs is becoming more and more commonplace throughout Canada and the U.S. Many of these platforms talk about the benefits that they offer, but until recently, no known studies had been published on the impact of digital documentation in the early learning context in North America. Moreover, when I reviewed the...
Settling children back into your learning service after lockdown
Settling back into your learning service Having a strategy and procedures in place for transitioning children (and their families) back into your learning environment is of utmost importance right now. Many children will be straight back to business as if they had never been away. They may have had a great time, living their best lives at home in their...