By Damian Cowell
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When your child begins kindergarten or long day care it can be challenging, whether it’s your first time or not, and our educators support you at all times to feel involved in your child’s learning experience. One of the ways we do that is to connect you on a regular basis through Storypark. Storypark is a communication tool that helps you and your child’s educators record, share and extend your child’s learning.
It’s free, private and online, and you’ll be invited by your centre to join with an email link to set up your account. You can also download the Storypark app on your phone. Once you’re in, you’ll find a series of features:
Stories
This is where you can get a real sense of your child’s experience at the centre. Here educators post learning stories about children. In can be an individual child’s story – for example where a child has tried something new or met a new play friend, and what they learned in the process. It could be a story relating to a group of children. In each case, only the families of that particular child or children will be able to view the story and comment on it. You’ll get a notification that a story about your child has been posted, you can read the story, see photos or video, and if you want to, like, comment, or ask questions. Educators will often post learning tags, which show what kind of learning has been demonstrated as as part of this activity.
Community
Community is where educators post updates about the centre. This might include daily information for families – ‘the front gate is being repaired, please use the side gate’ or more general information, perhaps about the advent of warm weather and our recommendations for sun protection. You can comment or ask questions on this page also.
Planning
This is a page where parents can see educators’ plans for their children, either group plans or individual plans. Some services might use this page to share their overall quality improvement plan. A plan for a group might include broad term goals, family aspirations, special events or experiences to develop language and literacy. As with Stories, privacy applies, so families can only see plans that relate to their child. All services will have plans, but some may choose to produce them in written form rather than online.
Child Notes
This is a quick, day-to-day notification from educators to parents, for instance a short message about how your child settled in and enjoyed their first day, a reminder that they forgot to bring something, or a small but significant thing your child may have attempted – such as asking a thoughtful question during an activity.
Children
This where you can see all the content posted about your child, and here you can invite other family members to view it as well, or if applicable an external specialist such as an occupational therapist might want to access the content here. Inviting other family members is an activity only you can do because it’s your account. This also applies to any account changes you need to make such as changing your contact details. You’ll need to log into the Storypark website and request it, rather than ask us at the centre to do it for you.
Frequently asked questions
There’s lots of handy information on how to navigate Storypark on the website, including finding your way around, how to invite a family member or specialist and what to do if you’re a family member who has been sent an invitation.
Yours for life
Your child’s profile, including their stories and photos, is yours to keep for as long as you like, after they have completed their journey with us. This is a great way to retain memories of this special time. At any time, you or any family member you’ve given admin rights can request an export of all your child's stories and notes. This is a collection of digital files that can be saved to your computer. The export includes all of the stories and notes as they appear on Storypark, as well as a separate file of just the images. These can be printed or sent to your photo book provider of choice.
Through Storypark, you can be part of your child’s day no matter where you are, and retain a wonderful collection of stories, photos and videos about their journey. Through interaction with your child’s educators you can enable enhanced learning opportunities, give feedback and ask questions and revisit stories with your child to reinforce and extend their learning. It’s a communication tool, a learning enhancer and, if you want it to be, a time capsule.
