Special Schools are now using the ‘Evidence for Learning’ app to enable staff to easily collect evidence of pupil progress
Wilson Stuart School in Birmingham, is one of many special schools across the world that have chosen to use the ‘Evidence for Learning’ iPad app to improve the way they collect evidence of pupil progress.At Wilson Stuart School there is a need to collect evidence of progress where no physical end result is or can be produced by pupils. In particular for their Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties (PMLD) pupils for whom progress occurs in very small and subtle increments.
We would definitely recommend ‘Evidence for Learning’ to other schools who wish to record photographic evidence in a structured way. The flexibility it offers through frameworks and the reports that are produced create a comprehensive end to end process that most school staff should welcome.
Aron Davies – Strategic ICT Operations Manager,
Wilson Stuart School (www.wilsonstuart.co.uk)
Far too many photographs...
The biggest issue staff at Wilson Stuart faced with evidence collection was the organisation, accessibility and relevance of photographs taken. According to Aron Davies, Strategic ICT Operations Manager ‘We often had far too many photos and we would find it hard to find the one that shows what we need. The only way around this was to get the photos into a text document where they can be annotated and linked to work. However that is very time consuming and produces inconsistent reports’.Evidence for Learning app – Provides a whole school solution
Aron had found a product that would allow staff to easily collect evidence but unfortunately this was only specific to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), and they needed a common solution that would allow his staff to use across the whole school. This prompted a search on the Apple App store. According to Aron Davies, ‘Evidence for Learning was easy to find as it is well named! We compared the Evidence for Learning app with a similar product that does the same thing for EYFS, and as Evidence for Learning supports pretty much any assessment framework it stood out as the more versatile and capable product.Free Trial
One of the other reasons Aron chose the ‘Evidence for Learning’ app (provided by www.theteachercloud.net)was due to the ability to take advantage of a free trial, allowing his staff to have an opportunity to use the app and see how it would work with their students. ‘Being able to trial the software before purchasing was very beneficial. In fact the format used for the trial (a limit on the number of reports) was perfect as it allowed us to assess the software fully without any functional limitations. This meant we were able to essentially roll it out from day one and have transitioned to fully licenced usage very easily. Staff took to the idea of what it does immediately, recognising its usefulness’.What makes the ‘Evidence for Learning’ app so great to use?
Without a doubt the biggest impact of using ‘Evidence for Learning’ is on staff time and organisation of information. The product’s price in comparison to hours saved represents great value.Wilson Stuart School use the app throughout school daily. In PMLD it is now an essential part of their recording process. According to Aron Davies, ‘We set up a lesson, add the pupils, record a photo for each pupil, add a comment, and then link to an assessment framework’.
The staff at Wilson Stuart School are now also starting to use the app across other areas of the school to evidence participation and add value to the existing photographic evidence that has been taken through the apps ability to add comments and link to schemes of work.
Supports ANY Assessment framework
The ‘Evidence for Learning’ app will support any assessment framework. It has a Framework Library that contains an 'open' collection of education, curriculum, and assessment frameworks from all around the world. You can choose to use these pre-loaded assessment frameworks or follow a similar approach to Wilson Stuart School by importing your own custom frameworks to meet your exact needs.
We have been able to import frameworks of our choosing very easily and find this feature to be essential now.
Easily Produces Reports
The ‘Evidence for Learning’ app also allows you to easily produce personalised reports on demand that can be sent either to a printer, email, a cloud-services provider such as GoogleDrive, Dropbox or SkyDrive, or directly to other Apps installed your iPad. Many other schools use this feature to not only help with the creation of student learning journals, but also to provide evidence to support the conversations at parents’ evenings, observation evidence for assessment moderation purposes, and even provide the invaluable information that can be sent to those new schools for when a child leaves.
We regularly generate and email reports which are then printed and filed in pupil folders. We can then use the folders to show evidence internally, to Ofsted and to parents.
About Wilson Stuart School
Wilson Stuart is located in Perry Common, Erdington in the north of Birmingham. It caters for 173 pupils aged 2-25 years. Some pupils have additional difficulties including sensory impairment, learning difficulties, communication difficulties or complex medical conditions. They have outstanding purpose built facilities and highly trained, enthusiastic and committed staff.
The nursery accommodates up to 12 children. They have separate Primary and Secondary Departments, with a sixth form programme supported by The Premier League and Aston Villa Football Club. They have a classroom at Aston Villa and students complete placements at the Club. September 2013 saw the launch of a vocational programme for students aged 19-25, which has been developed in partnership with University College Birmingham.
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