Examining the NQS within Digital Documentation: Staffing & Service Leadership (Quality Area 4 and 7)
Staffing arrangements and service leadership mostly cover administration and policy areas of early childhood education and care services. These include important areas like educator-to-child ratios, ethical and respectful practice, continuity of care and striving for continuous improvement.
For educators in an early childhood setting, communication is a vital tool.
With routines to be communicated and educators rostered over different portions of the day and sometimes in job sharing roles, it can be difficult to ensure that all educators are on the same page in terms of educational program provided to children, routines and family requests, and updates on changes to policies and procedure within the centre. Using Kinderloop, it is possible to create groups and tags that enable educators to quickly stay up-to-date on all changes that may occur on a day-to-day basis. It is also possible to utilise private posts to provide updates on routine changes that occur for individual children – sharing this information between educators that need this vital information.
Ensuring to-do lists are updated and followed up upon is also easy using Kinderloop, as each educator may edit posts. For example, following a team meeting there may be a number of Work Health and Safety issues that need to be addressed. These may be posted privately to educators and tagged with “To Do” and “Work Health and Safety” so all educators are aware of tasks required. That post can then be edited as tasks are achieved and deleted as needed. This is a powerful tool for ensuring that all staff are on the same page.
Sharing interesting readings is an important part of ensuring continuing education of the educators within a centre. With Kinderloop, an educational leader can post articles for educators to read when time allows. Comments may also be added to posts associated with these articles, allowing for staff discussion in a safe forum while time allows. This is also a great way of posting preparation articles and agenda items for upcoming team meetings.
Continuous improvement must now be embedded into everyday practice within early childhood education and care settings. Ensuring that all educators have a voice in the quality improvement plan can be difficult, however, as this document tends to be prepared by the director, educational leader and room leaders. With Kinderloop each educator can make a contribution to ideas for the quality improvement plan by creating private posts and tagging “Quality Improvement Plan”. This way when the director or educational leader is preparing the document, contributions are available from all educators, covering all areas of the centre environment.
As with all regulatory and compliance documents, security is paramount. Kinderloop provides high-level security for all posts. Families elect who may be invited to view their child’s individual Kinderloop. And the centre’s Kinderloop is protected by educators, with content remaining the property of educators. All accounts are password protected and best of all data is continuously backed up archived as needed.
Providing evidence of staffing and service leadership doesn’t need to be daunting, with Kinderloop it is easy to store a variety of vital information in one spot with specific grouping and search capabilities.
Grab your specific images mentioned in this article from here: Kinderloop Images
“I can’t use a computer” Early Childhood Documentation and Planning for the Digital Immigrant
“A digital immigrant is an individual who was born before the widespread adoption of digital technology. The term digital immigrant may also apply to individuals who were born after the spread of digital technology and who were not exposed to it at an early age. Digital immigrants are the opposite of digital natives, who have been interacting with technology from childhood.” (https://www.techopedia.com/definition/28139/digital-immigrant)
I am a digital native. I have grown up around computers and technology, and have had a passion for them for as long as I can remember. As soon as I entered the world of Early Childhood Education, I wanted to share this passion with the children and colleagues with whom I worked.
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!
