Storypark Erfahrungen

Wonderful Communication - Feels Like I'm There!

Kommentare: Overall, I loved using Storypark. I felt like I was literally at daycare with my nephew day in and day out. Anytime I wanted to check in on him, all I had to do was open the app! No need to call and ask about what he is doing or learning!

Vorteile:

I used this software to keep up with my nephew's progress while he was at preschool. On the app, I was able to see pictures, updates, and more. This made the line of communication so easy between me and the teachers, as I was able to post updates and ask questions, while they were able to post updates and respond to comments if necessary. It kind of felt like a timeline with graphics.

Nachteile:

I can't say that I really found any cons with story park, except that maybe there should be a feature where you can turn off comments on photos.

Using Storypark from a Early childhood teachers perspectives.

Kommentare: Overall I love it, I love how it is free for parents to continue to use once they leave kindergarten and I love how parents are able to contribute to their child's learning.

Vorteile:

I like that the product is fairly user friendly especially going from the internet. I love how I can upload videos for the parents to witness what their child is saying and doing, video is much better than a photo to tell a story, however I will add photos also.

Nachteile:

The picture are easy to upload, however you can not do anything else with them apart from putting them straight up. I know another program we used to use allowed us to put the picture onto an angle and with stars around them etc. Not very happy with using the app as sometimes the picture just don't go up, however I just don't use it as often as I do going through the internet. As we are using tablet and windows computer, I struggle to be able to move pictures from one story to another. The photos go black and I have tried getting help a couple of times, not sure what I am doing wrong there.

Storypark pros and cons

Kommentare: Once we learned to found our way around Storypark and used the mindset of not being scared or time poor to try things out, we haven't looked back.
The webinars and online videos are really useful. The help feature is great! Storypark operators are really prompt and we have used them often.
Keep improving Storypark.

Vorteile:

Storypark has been a fantastic way to engage with parents and whānau. Educators put a lot of passion into writing assessments. When I get a notification from a parent or extended family member ( sometimes from the other side of the world) about something I've posted about a child, it feels like formative assessment and not just another story in their portfolio. Community posts have been a great way to reach all of our parent community, or particular groups with information about upcoming events, readings, newsletters etc. Planning feature. Plans can be added too and shared with parents and seek their input. We share agendas and minute our staff, health and safety and termly planning meetings. We create individual plans for children or positive guidance plans to share with parents. Great to be able to link to stories, photos, notes and pdfs etc! We use child notes to communicate privately with parents. Each term we invite parents to share their aspirations and many do. Our kindergarten association has a community too and we receive posts from them about professional development, policy reviews and other important information that used to clutter up our inboxes. We share a monthly plan on here with our GM as a strategic update to help communicate what is going on in our individual kindergartens. We now do our appraisals on Storypark planning and are now looking at using the portfolio feature for evidence gathering.

Nachteile:

There needs to be a better way to edit our assessments when printing to utilise A4 paper efficiently. Make them aesthetic, they look awful on paper. More than 2 photos and the photos are too small. and there is 1/2 empty page! My colleagues all use 'Pages' to get a nice looking assessment and then upload pdfs, but that is time consuming. We want to be able to edit our online documents to create nicely printed documents. This would really maximise the time we have for writing assessments. The filters in the planning tab are limited and we struggle to find what we want. When you have a lot of plans as we do, it would be great to be able to put them in folders. The All about Me Plans (approx. 70 ) take up a lot of room. Also when we archive our meeting plans each term, we have to do that individually, is there a way we can select a number to archive at once? We have lost information by not clicking save on each cell-annoying Between our own learning tags and our association's (for appraisals), this area seems cluttered and we have to scroll through an awful lot in a very tiny box, to find what we need. Can they be organised better under headings that only open when you click on them? Portfolio section, maybe organise by Professional Standards? We want to filter our documents to easily identify how different indicators meet Professional Standards and Code of Conduct? Perhaps the Quality Practice Template from the Education Council could be a template for the portfolio?

Helping to create a school culture of open communication

Kommentare: Overall we are very happy with Storypark. It is making communication easier and more efficient. It is helping us to reach family members that in the past have been difficult. It fosters open and reciprocal information sharing.
With our children that are non-verbal, it gives families a chance to see pictures and videos and share in their child's day.
It is great fro reaching both sides of a split family in an equitable and open way.

Vorteile:

I like how easy i9t is for my staff to share wonderful lessons and daily experiences with families. It is also a great way to communicate with families on a more personal basis, it is easy for most people to access and is more secure than texting or even email.

Nachteile:

Some of our families struggle to use the app on their phone. We try to help but technology can be confusing. I can sometimes find the menus a bit complex and information can be hard to find.

Storypark - Learning Community

Kommentare: Time management, involving families in their child's learning and simply communicating with families. Streamlining documentation cycle.

Vorteile:

That I am able to link all of my documentation suite together and share this easily with families. It means we can easily collaborate and set goals for the children.

Nachteile:

At times the planning feature can be difficult to format so it fits on one page for printing. Sometimes you need to click through several steps to get to the information you need. It would be good if you could collage photos within writing stories to group photos as one image - as when portfolios are exported the file size of photos is huge.

Perfect for educators and families

Kommentare: Parent interaction has been made so easy, families from all over the world, country or State can use the app to follow their child's / grandchild's day at care.

Vorteile:

I love that parents / families can see in real time their children's activities, just upload and families receive a notification and can interact immediately. Also using on any device makes sharing stories so easy, laptop, tablet or mobile phone.

Nachteile:

Sometimes when uploading photos into a draft, it fails to load and you loose those photos that could have been taken using the camera feature. I always try to use my devices camera and upload from my device and not from the story.

Best Investment Ever!

Kommentare: Since beginning Story Park 2 1/2 years ago my programming time is used more appropriately. I am able to focus on evaluations, individual children and reflective practice as my stories are done in real time, with the children. It is so time effective and Story park has given me back my focus on my curriculum and what i want to achieve.

Vorteile:

I love how story park has provided me with the opportunity to bridge the gap between my program and our families!

Nachteile:

I feel that the app does not give the benefits of the full program for the families. Not all families log in on their PC or via safari and therefore miss out on the programming aspect.

Easy and Clear

Kommentare: Very easy to use, families love that they can receive so much information on their child. They love that they can use this as a way to contribute to our curriculum and be involved in their child's early learning journey.

Vorteile:

Storypark is easy to use and is clear for all educators and families. It allows me to link my documentation together to ensure each child and group has a cycle of planning. I can attach supporting documentation such as PDF files, photos, videos and voice memos.

Nachteile:

I would like to be able to edit the stories a bit more to make them more engaging.

Versatile

Kommentare: Wonderful in strengthening the partnership between the families and service. The experience has been very beneficial for our centre.

Vorteile:

The ease of use for all staff. It takes very little time for an educator to become accustomed to the software.

Nachteile:

Any issues with how I wanted the software to work within our service was responded to in an efficient manner

Storypark for families

Kommentare: I find the platform easy to use and seamless between devices.

Vorteile:

This is such a great platform for us and our educators to be able to communicate effectively with families and to share about their childrens learning and development in a meaningful way. Families are also in turn able to communicate with us and share some snapshots of their lives creating a more well rounded holestic view of the child.

Nachteile:

That the app is unable to complete child notes or planning.

Bringing Our Learning Together for Tamariki, Parents, Whanau and Kaiako

Kommentare: We love using Storypark but as individuals and as a team. Our whanau are able to comment instantly and it has improved our ability to seek feedback for this reason. Parents can access their child's learning all day, every day and share with extended family.

Vorteile:

It has so much potential that we are still needing to explore. It is instant and we are connected to our families directly through Storypark. It also allows us as Kaiako to link our planning and reflections to our children and to our own learning as kaiako. We can record so many aspects of our Centre and how we work within Storypark. It's training element in form of webinars and workshops can also enable us as teachers to further our own knowledge about our role as teachers.

Nachteile:

I still have been unable to add macrons to my writing within Storypark. I also would like to be able to save content in Child Notes prior to posting it. It can be a work in progress but then I can't save it to return to later. I also wish that the stories could be customised a bit more and so I find myself preparing them in Publisher and then posting them as a PDF.

Storypark

Kommentare: As above

Vorteile:

The one aspect that we have really loved is the fact that parents get instant notice of stories/messages and can respond accordingly. We use the Community Post option for all of our notices/newsletters etc so I know that no-one gets missed out. We also use the most of the Planning Forms. I like the way we are able to adapt the forms to suit our needs. Meeting minutes are also taken on Storypark. It is our "one stop shop" with everything all in the same place. It has also limited our paper use immensely.

Nachteile:

From what I understand from colleagues who use other services Storypark lacks a few of the "extra" services for editing and formatting. I also personally find editing a story difficult, such as changing the font and the limited number of fonts and colours available. Also when I need support I usually have to wait 1-2 hours for a response.

We love Storypark

Kommentare: We all love Storypark and I don't know how I'd cope without it now! Keep up the good work guys!

Vorteile:

I love that all information can be shared by not only our families but within the centre as well. It's a great tool for shared planning and documentation. Families find it easy to use and really enjoy the photos and videos we post. I would say that the educators use this to track learning and documentation while our families enjoy the visual presentations more. I have had wonderful experiences with staff when I've needed support and have found their responses fast and extremely helpful.

Nachteile:

I would love to see children's names as links to their portfolio page. This would be so handy. I would also love to be able to link family input to a story that I have written. I link child notes to stories all the time but would love this to be more obvious to families.

Storypark is great, But....

Vorteile:

I really like the way that is set up for our families to give us instance feed back when we publish a learning story for their child. I like the templates that are available for our teaching team to do our planning from and for us to document and record all the learning stories we are doing and the links that they have to one another. I like the way that we can duplicate a learning story as lets face it is a huge time saver.

Nachteile:

I really struggle with the lack of ways that I can beautify or add extra styles to my learning stories. It may just be that I am so use to Comic life and Strip Design programmes. I just find the selection of page designs a little limiting for me personally. I sometimes find the Storypark App to be not as developed as the wedsite version. Again especially when I want to glitze up my story.

Love Storypark !

Kommentare: Storypark is user friendly, easy to log on and off. It is appropriate for all staff at our service as well as parents and management to use. Its a easy way to document our observations, our goals, our daily events, photos and share ideas . We find it faster and a more accurate way of sharing information.

Vorteile:

That we are able to upload photos and videos with ease. Its user friendly we can log on and use it in the child care room as well as in the office or at home. Parents are able to view their childs day from their home or office as soon as we upload information and photos. Its an easy way to share information. the support staff are helpful and return messages the same day. We are continuing to learn more about the many features as we use it more.

Nachteile:

My only issue so far and its a very small one i would like the option to duplicate my drafts before uploading them. Everything else seems to be working fine at present.

Early childhood

Kommentare: I like story park it is easy to navigate and post information, centre reviews and stories for families and community. At the start of review they wanted an industry chosen. There was no option for Early Childhood/ Kindergarten so I had to choose primary. Why is ECE mot there when we are the biggest users of Storypark

Vorteile:

Quick and easy to use Families gave easy access to learning stories and centre happenings even when they are unable to come into centre. Families can share with extended family overseas Learning tags and plans make it easier to track childrens and teachers process

Nachteile:

Not being able to keep stories set up with uniform size photos and when printing If you change the set up to print it often alters your story set up style and spoils presentation. Being able to write stories with a nice background or border would enhance presentations rather than gavind to do stories on word or power point then converting to pdf to upload can be time consuming Not having an undo button when you accidentally delete a paragraph instead of saving it frustrating to gave to rewrite

Taonga's Review of Storypark

Kommentare: Using Storypark has made an enormous difference to our organisation; for our children and their parents; for our teachers in their own learning and in support of their reflections; great for middle management to utilise all the features as part of their leadership requirements and follow through requirements; great for me as the operations manager to see overall what is going on (or not going on) through out the Centres.

Vorteile:

User friendly for all concerned/interactive for teachers, parents and management; data/report capabilities; meeting forms; prompts - love the prompts; love the blogs, which I use often for inspiration and for workshops and reflections;

Nachteile:

I don't think I dislike anything really; it's not FB but its comparable for what it provides for us.

Storypark has changed our parent feedback

Kommentare: See above

Vorteile:

Since beginning to write all our centre children's portfolios on Storypark we have seen a huge increase in parents and whanau commenting on the children's learning experiences. Our parents find the programme easy to use as they can have the app on their phone. Its easy for them to log in and see the new stories that are written, even while they are at work. We have some families who come from overseas, or have whanau in other parts of New Zealand. Storypark allows these extended family members to be part of the child's learning and have up-to-date knowledge of whats happening for the child whilst at daycare. When these family members visit the child they often want to come in to daycare as they feel part of the centre community already. Storypark has definitely improved our relationship with the families in our centre.

Nachteile:

Would love there to be more options to make the presentation more "fancy" For example add boarders, creative fonts, place pictures on angles etc. Whilst I realise you can upload a PDF from Publisher or Word it would be nice to not have to double-up... being able to do this direct on SP would help.

Fantastic Program for Early Childhood Educators!

Kommentare: Definitely worthwhile overall - this was my first choice even starting up my family day care recently after having used it at my previous service.

Vorteile:

Easy to use and understand, educators are able to share stories, photos, plans, conversations and notices with families. Paper-free being online, so better for the environment. Can use on any device, any time.

Nachteile:

The app which is available to families is quite limited, so they are unable to see plans, which is where I share most day-to-day information. Unsure if families can have conversations on the app either (I haven't used it from the family end, but this is what I've been told from other educators and families).

Family Friendly

Kommentare: Allows teachers to send messages and have conversations directly with parents and families when otherwise it might be difficult to meet up face to face.

Vorteile:

Storypark is a wonderful way to keep parents and families involved in the centre and allows them to send us immediate feedback as well as stories from home. It is easy to use and allows centres to add their own tabs to link daily stories to.

Nachteile:

Would like the option of selecting more than one photo at a time to delete from a story. Once families leave centre they are unable to access the planning section of their child's portfolio where we have placed their child's summative assessments.

Hands down amazing

Kommentare: I’ve used it for a few years know and just love it! It’s so helpful everything/documentation is in one place.

Vorteile:

Love that you can share with family. Excellent for teacher registration Programme planning is vital for group and individual planning evidence Communication with families

Nachteile:

A tad technical with some features Would love more examples even though they say there’s knows set way but a base is always helpful to exe d on Would love the ministry to approve it as someone that works in it says they don’t know how it works so I am worried they might not approve of how we do things (just a thought)

Communication tool

Kommentare: Most centres are using storypark and most families are connected so it is a practical and quick method of communication
I am still learning about the many uses and will eventually use the programming platform in a more efficient way l am still learning

Vorteile:

This tool allows instantaneous communication with the families about their childs day and learning. We ca provide visual feedback and can also stay connected when families are on holiday. Planning can now also be done on storypark which l have yet to fully utilize

Nachteile:

The inability to save work if using comunity posts. The app versions limited funtionality.

Story Park Expereince

Kommentare: This is a great way to communicate with parents and to present children's experiences .
Also it is a great tool to share your teacher planning with colleagues. I use the Teacher Portfolio and would like to be able create different folders, so my work can be organised better.

Vorteile:

User Friendly, it is easy to use even for the moderate IT user.

Nachteile:

Limited font sizes and options . Limited columns. When I do my weekly teacher planning I prefer to have more columns than what is allowed in this software. Also when I print my plan - there is no option of font size hence I have to print in A3 paper in-order to be able to read.

Storypark review

Kommentare: I enjoy using Storypark to inform children about those special learning moments in their child’s day. I like how I get a quick response in the help chat box

Vorteile:

I like that parents get instant information about their child’s learning journey. I like that parents and teachers can log in from anywhere, and also parents can log in and reflect on their child’s learning long after they have left the centre and keep their stories as a learning record.

Nachteile:

The iPad app could be more versatile, where we could edit stories, add children and put photos in the comments section.

Tharawonga Mobile Resource Unit

Kommentare: I love it, but I have moved my service over to Xplor as they advertised themselves as being inclusive of daily programming and Observations and administration in one site. The observation side of Xplor is not nearly as popular with staff as Storypark is. I still use Storypark for my admin posts as I can easily add photos and newsletters where I find Xplor only allows me to add words.

Vorteile:

My staff found Storypark very easy to use once they had become accustomed to it. Parents were able to interact with staff to discuss daily education programs. Administration staff communicated with parents easily and efficiently.

Nachteile:

It was unable to be used when out of internet service which is a lot of the time for my educators as they work in remote locations as a mobile service