Something that can simplify the way you record, reflect and report on early childhood learning outcomes can do much more than save time, but often that’s the first thing users like about a Childcare Digital Platform. As far as the technology driving such game-changing software, there’s still a lot of variance in the market.
So while you’re searching, here’s the sort of questions you might want to ask:
Does this Childcare Digital Platform help us meet or exceed legislation compliance?
Don’t overlook the fact that your data MUST be stored on Australian servers for Legislation & Compliance purposes. Check before you buy. (At Kindyhub™ we invest a lot of time and resources into Legislation & Compliance, something we are indeed proud of.)
Is it easy to use?
A Childcare Digital Platform can be innovative and still be easy to use. (Kindyhub’s advanced features are simplified to assist a quick uptake and adoption rate.)
Compatibility & Customisation. Is it compatible with or can it be customised to your Centre’s specific systems and procedures? Most systems are unable to adapt to the many different requirements and preferred reporting styles, but Kindyhub can.
6 Things your Childcare Digital Platform must have:
The latest technology to simplify daily admin processes. It should be simple to navigate and functionally rich.
Inbuilt video tutorials and a support team, so it’s easy to learn.
Compatibility with current systems and procedures. Most important.
An all-in-one platform where educators can observe, plan and reflect on a child’s learning & development, in tandem with the curriculum and Centre’s philosophy.
The ability to help early learning centres to reach and exceed standards during their assessment and rating process. Kindyhub is known to greatly impact Quality Area 1 (Program & Practice), and QA5 (Partnerships with families).
Functionality that creates an easy connection with families, helping families become more engaged in what and how their child is learning. Kindyhub gives families 24:7 access to their child’s journey and can send push notifications direct to a device when something new has been shared. Families are able to communicate with the centre and the child’s educators easily in return.
Look for flexibility
A Childcare Digital Platform should be flexible enough to accommodate an existing style of reporting or allow educators to create their own style of reporting. Educators need to contribute to documentation and programming. They need to think about the meaningful learning that is happening as well as working on learning goals and outcomes. A flexible program will assist this.
The beauty of an advanced Childcare Digital Platform is in the way it simplifies what an educator does by providing the means to express and share a child’s journey. On a human level, perhaps its largest asset.
Ready to buy a Childcare Digital Platform? Use caution and buy wisely.
Child Care Assessment and Rating is a national process whose objective is to maintain a set standard of care for Australian families and children in the early learning phase of their growth and development.
On the surface, childcare assessment and rating gives early childhood centres the opportunity to showcase what they do and what they want to do better and have the results officially recognised, making it a valuable motivational tool. Officially assessed and rated centres are encouraged to meet standards and given elements to work on. Importantly the assessment is marked off against a set standard of care with an opportunity to have results officially recognised and made available to children and their families.
Teresa Willet from Clovel Childcare & Early Learning Centre shares her experience with assessment and rating
Why is assessment important?
In an official capacity, it’s important to maintaining a standard of care and ensures that services are self-assessing and reflecting on their practice proactively. It shows where and how they can improve their rating. This process of childcare assessment is designed to have an impact.
It’s more than the day of assessment
Centres that achieve a best practice rating will tell you that it’s about the interpretation of the assessor. And to win that, you have to prove everything.
Everything you’re doing, you need support and evidence of. You cannot do that in a day or two of preparation before the assessment. Self-assessment needs to be a constant companion and reminder of what your aims are.
Ideally you should go into an assessment confident because you know you’re doing a good job and you’re doing everything you can. You can only achieve that with a prolonged year-round focus on achieving outcomes. You need to understand the national quality areas and elements of each and use them to ask what can be done better, where are the opportunities for quality improvement?
Can programs like Kindyhub™ accelerate best practice?
Centres that use Kindyhub can plan, program, capture, generate, create, communicate and organise each child’s growth and development, with everything recorded and historically filed for fast and accurate retrieval and referral. The ability to support and prove ratings assessments can be efficiently organised with the implementation of this compatible new way to work, embraced by administrators and educators alike.
Owning it and making it yours
A flexible program like Kindyhub can be adapted to individual philosophy and ethics, driving a sense of ownership and passion for future outcomes. It can be tailored to give everyone involved a complete understanding of direction. Educators can get involved in planning and developing, and centres are able to demonstrate their unique qualities.
Work on ways to complement the assessment and rating process
Programs like Kindyhub make everyday operations and results easier to plan for and implement, simpler to record and communicate and faster to retrieve and demonstrate – streamlining daily operations in important ways that complement the Child Care Assessment and Rating process.
Improved quality and efficiency paves the way to better growth and development in early childhood. It contributes to higher approval ratings and raises the national standard.
With no shortage of child care apps available to explore we examined a few specialist apps to identify the essence of child care apps that are popular with early learning educators and child care centres.
The best child care apps are still the ones that continue to simplify tasks for educators. A holistic child care app like Kindyhub™ for example enables educators to document the individual story of each child’s journey throughout their early learning education and share that journey with their family on a daily basis while building a record of documentation.
5 child care apps used in early learning services
Splice by GoPro is a simple, easy to use video editing and movie-making app allowing educators to create videos and upload easily. It’s an excellent, free example for your collection of child care apps.
PicCollage is another example of a child care app that educators can use to create image collages which might include a child’s birthday, a group activity, and a daily or weekly snapshot of a child’s life during their hours at preschool. A useful, time saving child care app that encourages users, families and communities to express, inspire and interact with pictures.
Google Photos (Picassa) could be used as a child care app for photo storage and organisation. The app allows you to find photos easily and create photo collages in seconds.
Reading Eggs by ABC is an interactive school and child care app used for developing literacy and numeracy for children. Its highly interactive touch activities and motivational features make learning to read fun and it is gaining popularity in preschool programs.
Dave and Ava is a song app. Centre Manager and teacher Cara Flynn is a fan of this chid care app. She says “I find it educational because it has the written words that change colour linking to the words being sung.” adding “This is a $30 app but once downloaded you have access to all updates and new releases. You don’t need to pay more. It can also be used without internet once downloaded.” Watch Dave and Ava on YouTube.
Child care apps that take it to the next level
Child care apps like Kindyhub go beyond simple tasks and revolutionise the way educators track and plan childrens learning and then share the childrens experiences with their family. A few of the many features included within Kindyhub:
Add photos and video and easily associate them with a child, a room, an educator and link learning outcomes and curriculum
Create personalised reports and observations, record important milestones and learning stories and share what you want with families
Simple storage and management of all media added to Kindyhub where educators can create slideshows for display on smart screens, computers or TV screens
Communicate and collaborate with families. Send and track messages, newsletters, medical alerts and reminders and easily view these communication threads with families
Track and plan experiences across a variety of your own key learning areas by creating your own custom activity types. Link your planned experiences and automatically populate a program
Why should early learning educators embrace child care apps?
The biggest impact of child care apps is their ability to simplify tasks while creating the means to individualise a child’s journey and invite interaction from families.
Children are now exploring iPad’s and other digital devices within their early education as they do with pencil and paper while educators are assuring this interaction is purposeful and appropriate. Child care apps and modern technology are positively changing an educators day and how they educate children from an early learning age.
Thank you to Cara Flynn for her contribution to this article.
A good kindergarten software package like Kindyhub™ will do a lot more than save time, but it does give educators more time to spend teaching, observing and reflecting. Even better, it will spread those savings out across the day.
Using Kindyhub as an example, here’s 4 ways that kindergarten software will impact your day:
One: Daily Snapshots
Kindergarten software takes the best of today’s technology and uses it to replace things like scrap books and glue bottles. Kindyhub collects the images of the day and automatically pulls them into a slideshow with the captions recorded at the moment they were captured.
Sharing snapshots of the centre, the room, each child in this way engages families in the day to day workings of the centre and most importantly, in a very real way it gives them a snapshot that involves them in their child’s day. Recorded snapshots using kindergarten software can also be revisited to reflect on the learnings that have taken place throughout the year.
Two: Communication Channels
Kindergarten software keeps everyone in touch at the touch of a button. Kindyhub makes communicating with families a very simple and effective process. Centre managers can share a message with the entire centre or just a specific room on a specific day. Better, more targeted messaging saves time and keeps the avenues of communication between home and the early learning centre open.
Three: Trackable History
One of the most valuable ways that kindergarten software can save educators time is the ability to organise learning and experiences. All documentation on Kindyhub is completely trackable. Every child’s learning journey can be viewed at any time, without having to flip through paper folders etc. Family responses can be recorded to sent documentation and kept together, giving educators a trackable history that can be used to extend a child’s learning.
Four: The Parent App
It’s not just educators and early learning centres that kindergarten software is having an impact on. Pick-up and drop-off time is not the best time for families to speak with their child’s educators as they are generally in a rush to drop the other kids off and get to work, or pick them up and get home. Kindyhub’s Parent App enables families to engage with and give feedback on their child’s day at a time that is convenient to them.
Anything that saves time in an early learning centre environment is a valuable commodity.
By revolutionising the way educators track and plan children’s learning, kindergarten software also enables families to easily share in the growth and individual development of their child.
If your kindergarten software can achieve all that and still save you time, any wonder software programs like Kindyhub are positively changing the way we work.
For information on how Kindyhub™ assists educators to document, share and engage families contact us or call on 02 8916 7421.
Capture special moments by sharing Video snippets of children’s learning with families.
The top menu bar now has additional drop down menu options to Upload Photos and Video and Manage Captures.
Charts: New to Reporting
Set up your own daily record charts or utilise our examples. Educator’s can directly enter records, routines and information. Ideal for Meals, Sleep, Bottles and Nappy Changes.
Centre Manager’s can create and manage custom chart templates via Settings.
Chart entries can easily be included in your Daily Report and privately delivered to each family.
Dashboard: New look Home Screen
Educators now have a complete overview of their day’s attendance and scheduled Organiser activities from the home screen. Simple, effective and organised!
What to know more?
If you would like further information on the new updates, please contact our friendly team for assistance.
Quick, easy and safe – Kindyhub’s Daycare Software frees educators from paperwork and gives parents a porthole into their children’s world away from home. The Australian owned and operated web-based system simplifies and streamlines documentation and enhances communication with parents. By allowing educators to quickly link to early learning frameworks and standards Kindyhub also improves outcomes for children.
Planning and assessment
Just as each child is unique, so too is every daycare centre. Program planning varies widely, with some centres planning one week at a time while others prefer three-month program blocks. The Organiser within the Kindyhub Daycare Software platform allows educators to produce personalised programs to suit their centre’s schedule and reflect the interests of the children in their care.
The Organiser provides a central place for educators to record all the information needed to plan and execute experiences and learning opportunities. Those activities can be linked back to learning frameworks and ensure standard are being met. Importantly, the information stored within The Organiser can be accessed via topic, room or child making it a powerful tool during Assessment Rating.
Parents join the journey
A common dilemma for time-poor educators is finding ways to streamline documentation and strengthen relationships with parents. Kindyhub’s Daycare Software allows educators to provide a more comprehensive picture of a child’s development and better engage families in the learning process.
Photographs, observations and progress reports can be easily uploaded to Kindyhub’s secure, digital platform. The information can be viewed at any time by parents from any Smartphone or tablet. The service is also an opportunity for centres to showcase their work to families.
Says Kindyhub user G8 Educations General manager of Operations Terry King “Our parents value the daily touch points with their child/children and Kindyhub helps them to see what a fantastic job our educators are doing. It’s that simple.”
Data is safe and private
Security is paramount at Kindyhub. All passwords are encrypted and processes are in place to ensure top-level administrator passwords are strong and updated regularly. The data is only ever available to relevant carers, managers and their families and is viewed via protected logins. Each centre using Kindyhub Daycare Software retains ownership of all the data. The photos and records can be exported manually at any time, even if the centre decides to opt out of the service.
The personal touch
A flexible approach keeps Kindyhub Daycare Software ahead of the pack. The service recognises that a one size fits all attitude doesn’t always work, instead providing a platform that individual centres can mould to suit their requirements. It also gives interested centres the chance to “get noticed” via branded apps. The app offers a marketing edge by featuring the centre’s logo as the app icon both within the app itself and in the App store.
To learn more about how Kindyhub is taking the lead with effective Australian daycare software call us on (02) 8916 7421 or contact us online.
Something that can simplify the way you record, reflect and report on early childhood learning outcomes can do much more than save time, but often that’s the first thing users like about a Childcare Digital Platform. As far as the technology driving such game-changing software, there’s still a lot of variance in the market.
Can programs like Kindyhub™ accelerate best practice?
A good kindergarten software package like Kindyhub™ will do a lot more than save time, but it does give educators more time to spend teaching, observing and reflecting. Even better, it will spread those savings out across the day.
