Orbit and other software packages
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  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rubybubbles View Post
    I use Tapestry it's brilliant! Completely suitable for childminders I have shown a few local childminders who have now signed up too I've been using it since April. Parents love it, and I love the fact I can do it on my phone, or main computer, for the first time ever I am always up to date with observations and planning (you can add next steps onto the notes/comments )

    Is this an app?

  2. #22
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    If your council is not on the eyfs forum list for you to use Tapestry, I think you can pay to belong to the forum which is an extra £20, then pay £30 a year to use Tapestry - I saw it trialled at an Early years provider cluster meeting on Tuesday - the Pre-school manager took a photo (using a ipad) of a lady chatting to colleagues - went into a pretend child profile (that she uses for training), downloaded the photo, wrote a sentence on "child chatting to peers etc), used the drop down box to select area / areas of learning, then choose appropriate sentences and ages - she said you could also link to characteristics of learning and leuvin scales (how engrossed child was during activity).

    I think it is great for Nurseries as they can do far more complicated analysis of data - parents are notified as soon as an observation is posted (as this pre-school have only been using it 3 weeks, the manager is still checking the observations before they are posted eg: for spelling), she said parents are replying with their own photos from activities from home eg: photos of children taking part in the town's carnival which was last weekend and writing more comments than they ever did before on info from home slips.

    I am registered with Orbit - but have only set it up as a practice activity so far, I don't find it very easy to navigate around and when I logged in yesterday to have a look to compare with Tapestry, I could see that I had done 3 observations on myself (as practice) and look at the areas of learning they applied to, but couldn't find my original observations and photos - said "no observations for this child" - but why could I see which areas of learning I had ticked for the observations then?

    I don't have a i-pad but my husband does, but I would still probably take my digital camera out with me on outings and it is downloading these that delays my observation process. As I can't manage to download them by myself just as I can't manage to log into on line banking without getting passwords wrong and locking us out of whole system!

  3. #23
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    Zippy you can still use it but you need to subscribe as an individual to FSF and then sign up for tapestry - its a £20 annual subscription for FSF membership - use of all their resources etc and then if you want tapestry as well that is also an annual fee for that which under 60 children is £30.

    I do wonder if its worth asking if there is a discounted rate for childminders as we would have well under half of that. The most I've ever had is 14 children!

    I would be really interested to know what its like. My LA aren't signed up but the local school and pre-school use it. I wonder if a group of childminders could sign up and split the cost between them - it would still be under 60 children. and there must be opportunities to have different 'classes' so the childminder would only look at their own group of children.

  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by hectors house View Post

    I am registered with Orbit - but have only set it up as a practice activity so far, I don't find it very easy to navigate around and when I logged in yesterday to have a look to compare with Tapestry, I could see that I had done 3 observations on myself (as practice) and look at the areas of learning they applied to, but couldn't find my original observations and photos - said "no observations for this child" - but why could I see which areas of learning I had ticked for the observations then?

    I don't have a i-pad but my husband does, but I would still probably take my digital camera out with me on outings and it is downloading these that delays my observation process. As I can't manage to download them by myself just as I can't manage to log into on line banking without getting passwords wrong and locking us out of whole system!
    I bought a second hand i-phone and it does the job. It has made it so easy not to have to download photos on to the computer every night and just add the assessment to the observation!

    As for Orbit - once you have done your observation it sits in the observation section. after you have done your assessment - that is added the Development matters or characteristic of learning it will disappear from observations and sit in the childs section under the assessments. It will say how many assessments have been done against each statement. if you click on the down arrow you can then click on the arrow each statement and it brings up each assessment and you can click on it.

    If for any reason when you click on the down arrows you still can't see the assessment check you haven't got an assessment filter on. If you have filtered down to age group 30 -50 months but all your assessments are in the 22-36 month then you won't be able to see them.

    If you want to see the assessments all together in chronological order click on the photo of the child and there is the option to click on 'learning journal' which comes up in pdf format - you can view, print or save it.

    Hope I'm not stating what you already know but hopefully will help you find the observations you have done.

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  6. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bluelion View Post
    Zippy you can still use it but you need to subscribe as an individual to FSF and then sign up for tapestry - its a £20 annual subscription for FSF membership - use of all their resources etc and then if you want tapestry as well that is also an annual fee for that which under 60 children is £30.

    I do wonder if its worth asking if there is a discounted rate for childminders as we would have well under half of that. The most I've ever had is 14 children!

    I would be really interested to know what its like. My LA aren't signed up but the local school and pre-school use it. I wonder if a group of childminders could sign up and split the cost between them - it would still be under 60 children. and there must be opportunities to have different 'classes' so the childminder would only look at their own group of children.
    I was also wondering if several childminders could do a joint subscription and log on at different locations - I know on the example I was shown at meeting on Tuesday that each keyworker could only see their own key children (as they share the ipads) but the manager can access everything - so whether or not in order to use other facilities you would have to have one person with "managers" access and trouble is then they could access all other childminders observations?

  7. #26
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    yes that would be it wouldn't it - due to confidentiality.
    Who would be the manager though - might need access at some point to keep the system running I suppose. I think you would have to check with tapestry if that was ok to have a group use it in that way. I would definitley consider paying £10-20 but £50 annually just seems a lot to me at the moment although in the long run its not I suppose.

    I really like Orbit though so for me the only benefit of changing to tapestry would be to link in with the local school and the one other pre-school that uses it - and if it was vastly better than orbit.

    Rubybubbles - is it possible to add more than one devlopment matters statement at a time? for example on the orbit one we had a trip to the library and I wanted to add 3 reading ones - handles books correctly, reads independantly and holds book right way up etc - I had to go back into it each time whereas a tick against all the different ones would have been great!

 

 
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