Return of the Learning Story

The Return of Edsby’s Learning Story

Edsby’s Learning Story feature is back.

In the new school year starting in September 2018, in an attempt to harmonize the user experience between Edsby’s browser interface and its mobile apps, Edsby began making shared evidence items visible in students’ portfolios, an area where significant enhancements had just been made in the mobile apps. The Learning Story concept was intentionally excluded at the time.

Edsby has received feedback from educators about the benefits of separating out formative evidence assessment data collected by the teacher, which has a pedagogical component and demonstrates effort, progress, achievements and competencies within a term. The portfolio, educators argued, should remain student curated and be used to invite peer review or simply showcase personal academic achievements. So the Learning Story concept has been reintroduced.

Learning Story Access

Edsby now provides an easy way of accessing the Learning Story and Portfolio on all devices.

In the web user interface: A new panel is now available on the home page (below the Classes panel) to provide easy access to both the Portfolio and Learning Story. This is the same for both students and parents.

In the mobile app user interface: Convenient buttons for the Portfolio and Learning Story are now provided on a new mobile home page. Parents can see links for these in each child’s section in their parent mobile home page.

Learning Story Content

The Learning Story presents students and parents with a scrolling list of shared evidence items. Newest items are shown first.

Each item includes the teacher’s observation, any conversation with the student (if captured), and the media (usually one or more pictures). Items also show a list of the learning expectations/standards associated with the item which are displayed when students and parents hover on the item.

Finally, there is a conversational feed to enable the teacher, the student, or the parent to reflect and discuss the learning associated with the item.

Dallas Kachan

Dallas Kachan is VP of Marketing at Edsby. He has led, worked with or consulted to dozens of technology firms in Silicon Valley and Canada over thirty years. He was the original vice president of sales and marketing for SoftArc, developers of FirstClass, credited as one of the first internet-based LMSes. Dallas was managing director and head of global marketing for the Cleantech Group, the organization that founded the cleantech investment theme, and served on the board of the U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business’ Cleantech Institute. He is the author of the travel and adventure novel, The Starship Diaries.