EYFS Recording

Many years ago when I was based at the CLC, we ran a pilot project using ICT to record pupils’ experiences. The idea was to equip some EYFS practitioners with hardware and software that would capture notes, videos, pictures and sound in one place. We hoped to put and end to the complicated process of taking pictures with a camera, downloading them, copying them into a Word document and writing it up, saving it, printing it and then filing it.

We opted for Windows-based tablet PCs, with handwriting recognition and One Note software- which did all of the above. Well, it seemed a good idea at the time, but it didn’t really work for a number of reasons. Firstly, the tablet PC was a bit of a beast to lug around. The clue was in the accompanying strap to hang it off your shoulder! The battery life was pretty poor and although the handwriting software was fine, it took too long to annotate things. Great idea, but the technology just wasn’t up to it and for these reasons the pilot slowly lost impetus and it quietly faded away. I assume folk went back to their tried and trusted methods of recording.

Wind forward to the present and we have mobile phones, iPod/Pads and Android-based devices, all with cameras built in. All that was missing was something to do the job of recording EYFS pupils experiences.

Well, I wonder if we’ve found it in the 2Simple EYFS app- available for Android and Apple devices. I downloaded a copy and put it through its paces. It’s very simple to operate. Once you’ve added your users, you just take picture- which is timed and dated, give it a title, add your learners and pick from the list of age related objectives that are built into the software.  I don’t have a group of EYFS pupils to hand, so my grandson is my unwitting volunteer for this app.

Once an activity is completed, you email it and a pdf arrives in your inbox ready to be filed.

The trial version is free and allows you 5 photos. I’d recommend EYFS practioners take a look at this app. It even has a feedback button so you can email the developers with suggestions for improvements.

You can find more information with this link.

Anyway, after all that reading, here’s a video.