August 26, 2016

New Entry For Pre-Schoolers

With many small children spending a great part of their day in the care of others, particularly in the pre-school environment, out of sight shouldn't necessarily mean out of mind and unrecorded. For many pre-school teachers, the challenge though is in relating what's happened in the child's daily life to parents in a practical way. Hurried notes, and an even more hurried handover at the crowded end of the day, means that many of the milestone moments in the child's life pass unremarked.

Dear (But Not Costly) Diary

With a background as a pre-school carer, Vanessa Bileu understands the importance for both child and parent of regular updates on progress from the classroom. When she and her partner Joao moved to Ireland from their native Portugal, they pooled their respective talents to develop the ChildDiary software that enables carers to quickly and easily update parents in real time throughout the day.

Vanessa joined our host Tara Duggan and me on Kickstart Your Business this week to tell us about how her new enterprise was helping carers and parents to keep updated on the essential goings-on in the classroom.

Early Language Skills

Our host Tara and me, both parents with memories of the rushed handover at the end of the busy day, immediately warmed to the idea of a dynamic journal where essential details could be recorded throughout the child's time in pre-school.

I suggested that Vanessa and Joao might reflect the key triangle of child, carer and parent better throughout their promotional resources, in particular their website. They appeal separately to carers and parents, but need to begin the conversation squarely in the space shared by the three from the homepage onwards. This picture from elsewhere in their websites is a great example of how this triangular relationship can be illustrated effectively.

Time To Make Your Mark On ChildDiary

How do you suggest Vanessa and Joao get the whole pre-school world recording the essential details of the child's classroom life in ChildDiary?

Listen back to Kickstart Your Business and tell us what you think? We'd love to hear from you.

Kickstart Your Business is broadcast at 6.25pm every Thursday on The Right Hook on Newstalk, and is available immediately afterwards on playback on Newstalk.com.

11 comments:

Noel said...

I wish I had that at our Creche. As a parent I feel it's more like a memory bank that I can revisit in the future.

Unknown said...

I love this idea. As a parent who left their daughter in crèche all day long, I would have loved to have more information and updates on my daughter throughout the day. At the end of the day all you would know is what they ate and how many nappies, as a parent you are craving to understand more about your childs day and to have seen a photo would have made my day. I would have loved to have this type of facility. Hopefully it will be a success and lots more creches can do more to keep parents informed! Aisling

Unknown said...

Great idea! I really looking forward for the success of this idea. Lots more creches can improve their ways of work and do more to keep parents informed about their kids.

Unknown said...

Great idea! I really looking forward for the success of this idea. Lots more creches can improve their ways of work and do more to keep parents informed about their kids.

Unknown said...

As a child care professional i think this is a fantastic idea. I have been aware of it for a while now and am communucating the idea with my colleagues in the crèche that i work in. They all think that it would be a great service to have and would be more environmentally sound also. The end of day handover when you're in a busy room and trying to communicate with parents while keeping an eye on all the busy tots running around, it is near impossible to communicate all the little details of the day from new words to new mannerisms that you have noticed. I would love for this service to be part of the busy childrens centre that I am a team member of.

Anonymous said...

We use it in our creche. It is the best thing we have ever done. We get to spend more time with the children and the children love seeing pictures of themselves on the tablet about what they get up too. It's a great way to pass messages to the parents and them to message us.

Noreen said...

I teach children with autism (who are mostly non-verbal) in a mainstream primary school. This would be a fantastic tool to help me to keep parents informed of day to day interactions and to help us collaborate more effectively to help the child make progress.

The Department of Education & Science should really look at this tool - it would make a huge difference in bringing parents into the learning process - something that research on autism identifies as hugely important.

Noreen

Thomasina Maguire said...

My daughters creche gave us little notes from a receipt book on our child's daily activities, which must have been so laborious from their end. To have this info available in real time, would bring huge improvements for parents, and the added bonus of a photo of a happy child assuages much of the guilt parents can feel when using creches. This is a wonderful initiative and one I would certainly have appreciated when she was younger. The photos are great for the family to look back on and to have a real window into how your child spent their day. I really hope creches will avail of this technology to make staff and family life more interactive.

Unknown said...

This is a great idea, I would love to have something like this on my child creche. It would probably save time for the creche, and would allow me and my wife to have all the useful information and photos of my child at a distance of a click.

missMTC said...

Fantastic Idea!
As a Mom I wish schools here in Ireland adopt this system.
Sounds really easy to send notes and messages about our little ones, and so interactive that couldn't be better to our modern lives. I Hope it´s a success.

Ana Jorge said...

This is a great example of innovation: it is not reinventing the wheel, but simply improving an existing process, in an efficient, user and eco-friendly way. Childdiary is one of those simple ideas that can, for sure, revolutionize an industry and influence the way people work in education forever.