Technology and social media sites have enhanced the way in which teachers can connect and collaborate with others. Kinderchat is an example of that! Their goal is to be able to connect early childhood educators, professionals, parents, and policy makers and create a space in which collaboration, learning, discussion, and a sense of community are valued. Each Monday night, at 9:00 PM (EST), Kinderchat meets on twitter and addresses specific topics related to the Early Childhood field( for a list of upcoming topics click here).
While looking through the archives, I chose to browse through the chat on documenting children's learning through photographs. As technology becomes more advanced, documenting children's learning in photos makes it easier for teachers to create a classroom site where parents can log in and view what their child learned that day, what activities they were most interested in, and how the week has gone so far. One of the contributors mentioned how she "was surprised at how few teachers used photos" as a way of documenting learning. Other collaborators posted images of how they have photographically documented in their classroom; for example, the user @teachermeg took pictures of children's artwork, took photos of the children working on said artwork, typed up phrases children said during their work and took a photo of that. She then put the images together to create a collage that displayed the entire process from beginning to end. For her, incorporating the story of the artwork as well as the artwork itself was important. She also mentions that while this type of documenting may work for some others may find it too overwhelming so as "long as you are documenting...it's all good." The conversation also shifted into talking about the different types of resources available online for teachers who DO choose to document learning through photos. such as EverNote and 2Simple. These are sites that have certain free capabilities and can help with classroom organization.
What I found most interesting is that several people mentioned that documenting is a way for us to advocate for our students. The more and more I dwell on that I find this to be true. If we have documentation of a child's progress or lack of progress in certain areas this can be a useful tool in advocating for assistive technologies that may help that child or for funding for other materials that may be lacking in the classroom.
Regardless of the means that we use, it is important to know that documentation is key for assessment, to help with being a reflective practitioner and as a way to see a child's progress.
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