In this guide learn about:
Learning sets
Learning sets are a collection of learning tags, organised within folders.
Admin educators can add and adapt existing Storypark learning sets or create new learning sets from their early learning service’s Learning sets page.
Once an admin educator has created, added or adapted one or more learning sets, your team can add the corresponding tags to any story or plan.
Services that belong to a network (a multi-site organisation) on Storypark may have two types of learning sets - Head Office Learning sets and Centre learning sets. Both can be applied to stories and plans, but differ in how they are managed.
Head Office learning sets are created and maintained by the organisation’s management and are view only from a centre's Learning sets page. Centre learning sets are created and maintained by Storypark admins from the centre's Learning sets page.
Learning tags
Learning tags are like labels or keywords that you can attach to learning stories. They generally relate to elements of your curriculum, outcomes, goals, dispositions, schemas, values, culture, interests or subjects.
You can add your own tags to a story or add existing tags. Each tag consists of a tag name and an optional description.
The tags you attach appear to the right of each published story:
The optional description, which might be your own words or a website link is visible to educators and families when a tag is clicked on:
Tags are useful for a number of reasons:
They let you ‘tag’ and explain an aspect of a story that relates to a specific learning outcome or strand of your curriculum (eg. Te Whāriki, Early Years, International Baccalaureate etc).
They give educators quick access to curriculum resources so writing rich learning stories takes less time.
They deepen parents’ and family members’ understanding of how a child’s behaviour within a story relates to learning outcomes or the curriculum.
Adding learning tags to your stories lets you group stories since you can filter or search for the learning tag and view all the stories that contain it. This enables you to track learning over time.
On an early learning service’s page you might, for example, filter stories by the tag Written literacy to show all children’s stories that have been tagged with Written literacy.
On a child’s page you might, for example, filter stories by the tag Relating to others and see how a child develops in his/her relationship with others over time.
On an educator's profile page you might, for example, want to see a list of the tags that have been used in that educator's past stories so you can see where any gaps are and develop capability in future stories.
Add learning tags to a story directly within the story editor.
Admin educators can manage learning sets and tags from your early learning service’s Learning sets page.
Common FAQs
Q: Why don't I have have the ability to create or edit a learning set?
A: Only Storypark admins can create and edit learning sets. Non-admin educators have a read only view of the Learning Sets page.
It can be helpful to have one admin educator responsible for creating and managing your sets and tags to prevent multiple sets of the same tags from being created, and to keep them up to date.
Additionally, if you are at a centre on a network, check if it has a green, globe icon to indicate it is a Head Office learning set:
Head Office learning sets are view only from a centre's learning set page.
Q: What happens to the learning tags on a story/plan if the learning set is deleted?
A: Tags from the deleted set remain on published stories and plans unless an educator chooses to edit the story or plan in any way. If the story or plan that has those tags is edited, the tags will disappear automatically.
Tags from the deleted set do not remain on draft stories or plans that have not been saved. These tags will disappear as soon as the learning set is deleted.
Q. What is the difference between an active, inactive and deleted a learning set?
A:
Active - Available for use in stories and plans.
Inactive - Unavailable for use in stories and plans, present in reports if active in the past and can be changed to active at any time. If active in the past, learning tags from this set stay on stories and plans.
Deleted - Permanently removed from Storypark. If active in the past, learning tags from this set only stay on publish stories and plans if they aren't edited in any way.
Q: How many learning sets should my service have?
A: We suggest working with no more than 6-8 relevant learning sets which can be a mix of ones that your service has created and those selected from the library of Storypark learning sets.
Having too many sets can make creating stories confusing, and the results less meaningful.
Consider the following types of sets to highlight children’s learning and development:
local/country curriculum
dispositions
philosophy
school curriculum (to support transition)
theories
Encyclopedia of Early Childhood Development
style or methods of learning that are relevant to your service e.g. Montessori, Reggio, Steiner, Language nests etc.
Consider the following types of sets to highlight centre and educator development:
teaching standards
appraisal goals
centre philosophy
ethics
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