(January 22, 2018) – Edsby®, the most comprehensive learning and analytics platform available for K-12, has introduced powerful new ways to capture and report on evidence of student learning. The new features are particularly beneficial to early K-12 years that have traditionally been underserved by learning management vendors and targeted with unintegrated standalone apps with limited capabilities.
Because kindergarten and early elementary educators don’t assign traditional grades to young learners, they have to take unique approaches to track student progress, including assessing student learning through 1:1 conversations, projects and interactions with others. In partnership with teachers, Edsby designed and implemented a new subsystem in its already robust K-12 learning & analytics platform to facilitate these types of assessment.
Edsby’s new evidence of learning features enable teachers to easily take pictures or record videos, tag them by standards or learning goals, share them with parents and organize them to document growth and streamline reporting on student progress. Through the system, young students can showcase their work to peers and parents.
“Edsby’s new features save me time, because I don’t have to re-enter the same information repeatedly,” said Christine Jeffery, a kindergarten teacher at Greater Essex County District School Board’s Margaret D. Bennie Public School who uses Edsby to capture pictures, conversations, audio clips and written observations in her classroom. “When reviewing evidence in Edsby, I can easily organize it in ways that are most beneficial to me. For example, I can look at it by date or the standard I’m assessing across the classroom.”
The new features’ strong performance on mobile devices enable teachers to capture digital artifacts in the classroom from phones and tablets. Mobile support also ensures equity for families seeking to follow their children’s progress at school even if they only have internet access through a tablet or smartphone.
Edsby’s new evidence of learning features are helping early year teachers collaborate at York Region District School Board (YRDSB), one of Canada’s largest school districts. As teachers often work in teams in early years, a team of educators at YRDSB under the leadership of the district’s Assessment Services team worked closely with Edsby on the new features to ensure co-teachers could review each other’s evidence in Edsby, organize it as needed and stay in sync with parents and each other. Early year teachers at YRDSB now have a set of tools specifically designed for their unique needs built right into the district’s digital platform.
“The new evidence of learning features are now a base part of Edsby for no additional charge and available to all teachers at all Edsby sites, not just early years teachers,” said John Myers, president of Edsby. “As K-12 schools continue to focus on 21 century teaching and learning, qualitative analysis of student learning is becoming crucial in assessments. Edsby is now the best system for capturing and reporting on quantitative and qualitative datapoints in K-12 districts or across whole regions.”
In contrast with standalone systems intended to capture and manage evidence of learning, Edsby’s evidence capabilities are part of a larger integrated learning and analytics platform. Edsby already connects tightly with other systems, such as the authentication system, student information system and more. The evidence system leverages that information, while ensuring that parents and teachers still only need a single app regardless of students’ grade levels.
To learn more about Edsby’s evidence of learning features, please visit https://www.edsby.com/evidence-of-learning.
About Edsby
Edsby is an award-winning SaaS platform that engages students, parents and teachers on all of their devices. It enables personalized learning experiences and gives school districts, states and provinces or national governments powerful new ways to facilitate their digital transformations. Edsby is developed by CoreFour, a team that has been building scalable, reliable software systems for education organizations around the world for 30 years using latest technology and standards. Edsby is a registered trademark of CoreFour Inc. To learn more about Edsby, please visit http://edsby.com/.
