Early Learning Kiosk: ChildSteps app

Activities lead through assessment

With the KnowHow app and the Toolbox elements, the ChildSteps app forms part of the Early Learning Kiosk, a tablet shared by preprimary teachers, allowing them to continuously build their capacity and improve their practical skills offline. Knowing the developmental status of each learner is crucial for a targeted stimulation. The ChildSteps app offers a broad range of small or big group assessment activities, leading the teacher step by step through each activity and allowing him to record the observation directly on the tablet (see picture here or in the viewer at the bottom).

All aspects continuously monitored

The tool covers all developmental domains and subdomains, avoiding emphasis on just a few developmental aspects. Social-emotional development is equally important as literacy (see picture here or in the viewer at the bottom). As soon a certain minimum number of assessments are done, the teacher can use a dashboard to see which areas might need more focus.

Recommendations for further actions

Children develop in a non-linear manner and at their own pace. Still, it is important for the educator that he can stimulate children who have not yet reached a certain level for a specific developmental aspect. The app allows to do this in a targeted way by pointing at the most relevant developmental aspects and by suggesting additional teaching activities in this regard (see picture here or in the viewer at the bottom).

Aligned with the national curriculum

Assessment activities and teaching activities are not different in nature. The activities listed in the ChildSteps monitoring tool are presented in a way that it is easy to identify one which is fitting well one into the lesson plans and they are also phrased in a way that they are completely in line with the country's curriculum (see picture here or in the viewer at the bottom).

Strengthening the education reporting

In many countries, there is a reporting system which brings aggregated data from the school level up to the national level. Typically, these paper-based systems are slow and inform decisions to the benefit of children's development only in a limited way. In the long-term, tablet-based data capturing has the potential of becoming part of electronic data reporting systems. However, the immediate effect of capturing data electronically (see picture here or in the viewer at the bottom) is the possibility to present the data for various purposes and audiences, most importantly to share the information on a child's development not only with the school administration, but also with the next grade's teacher and the parents.