Parent Guide

You can find a printable version of this guide HERE

So, you’ve got your Learning Journals login details – what next?

Learning Journals is a tool for your nursery or school to be able to record significant learning of children.

For you, this means you can log in to your profile and see these events and comment and contribute.

You can access your child’s profile in 2 ways – using the web interface or through our Parent app which is free to download from the Apple Appstore or google Play Store (search Learning journals for Parents)

On the web

Your school or nursery will have already sent your login details. If you don’t have them yet contact your school or nursery and they can send them out again for you.

Observations

Observations are records of significant learning linked to curriculums and frameworks. These are what the staff at nurseries and schools use to evidence progress and development, but just as importantly, easily share with parents all the hard work and  effort that goes into educating children.

You can click on the Outcomes tab of each observation to see which outcomes have been demonstrated in the observation.

Stories

Stories are a really nice and easy way for a nursery or school to share something with a parent. Not as comprehensive as an observation, they allow staff to quickly share a a nice moment – it might be a fun day, a birthday party, sports day or some other even or activity that you’d love to hear about.

Like and Comments

There is nothing a nursery or school wants more than for you to contribute to the observations. It’s so easy for parents to do; you can simply click on the like button to acknowledge that you’ve seen an update or, even better, leave a comment to let the nursery know how this observation links in with your home learning. Or even just leave a note to say how seeing the observation made you feel.

Leaving a comment really is the best way that you can interact with Learning Journals.

Parent Contributions

If you see a blue box on your child’s profile it means the nursery or school have set up an area for you to contribute even further to a child’s profile. You can use these areas for uploading your own ‘mini observations from home’. You might want to add in something about a new judo award, or perhaps you went hill climbing at the weekend.

These sections can be named by the nursery or school so you might see titles like “Achievements from home” or “Wow moments”

Exporting and saving your profile

When it comes time for you to move on or leave the school you can export everything that has ever been uploaded. This means all your observations, stories, parent contributions as well as every  photo or video.

Just click on the Convert Profile To PDF button. You’ll then just select from some options, e.g. do you want everything or just the last 2 years?

The system will then create a PDF for you which will become available from your downloads tab.

Please note, this feature cannot be performed using the Parent App

 

Using the Parent App

You will need to login through the web interface first, this is how you set your security details. Once you have done this you can then access your account using those same login details.

The parent app has a basic interface to allow you to do the following:

  • View observations and stories for any linked children
  • Add in parent contributions (if requested by your nursery or school)
  • View Daily Diaries (if activated by your nursery or school)
  • View your gallery
  • Receive messages

Home Screen

This is your Home screen and lets you access all the other areas of your account. You can use the blue buttons to access other functions.

 

Learning Events

This is where Observations and stories that have been added by school or nursery staff appear, you can leave a comment or click on the Like button here. some schools and nurseries choose not to activate the Like button. You can click on an photos and videos here as well to enlarge them.

Parent Contributions

If this feature has been activated by your school or nursery you can use this section to add in experiences from home. Parent contributions can mean different things to different schools and nurseries so speak to your child’s teacher for guidance on the kind of entries they might like to see here.

All you need to do is click on the +Add Parent Contribution button on the website or +New Contribution in the parent app.

You can then add in details of your home event and attache a photo (we’re afraid that videos cannot be uploaded by parents at the moment)