Students create a portfolio of stories (highlighting attached external documents or written into Educa), which is reviewed by a teacher and then shared with parents and extended family - in real time. It's a way to celebrate student success and create a mindset of growth and achievement.
The student workflow for creating and publishing a story is:
Student creates story, including external work, e.g., from a Google Drive
Student links to Goals and to Frameworks to show context
Teacher can edit or add reflections to the story
Teacher reviews story - can request rework or approve
Student publishes story - to portfolio and to share with family
Students need to be logged in before they can create their own stories.
Story Creation Tips
First, a title. Many teachers will set some standards for the title, such as including the subject, to help you organise their portfolio at the end of each term.
The story could be a reflection of an activity, a space to record their homework or other assignments, maybe even an image of a poster or other work. They can upload videos, photos and attach files to support their learning.
To complete the story, students might be required to:
Link to a Group (or Not!). If the story is for their special subjects like Kapa-Haka, Performing Arts, Technology, etc. select the group. If the story is to be submitted to their room/class teacher, leave the group blank.
If a student created a story and it has gone missing, it did not go to the form class teachers as intended, the most likely reason is that a Group was entered instead of it being left blank.
Link to Goal(s). Students will see all of their linked goals in the Goals dropdown. Goals are turned on for schools by default but can be turned off by an Admin in Settings.
Link to Frameworks. Students can link to soft skills, subjects or any other framework activated on your site.
Once the story is complete their action choices are:
Cancel will close the story without saving it.
Draft will save the story to the student's Draft Stories on their profile page. These drafts can be accessed by the student and their teacher.
Submit for Approval will send the story over to the student's teacher to be approved and published. Once the story is submitted the student cannot make any changes until the story is publish or it is returned by the teacher.
Story Approval and Rework Flow
The story approval workflow is a student-teacher conversation and opportunity for teaching moments.
When reviewing the student's story, the teacher can decide to Approve the story, which will publish the story, or they can send it back to the student to continue working on it by clicking "Rework." This is where a teacher can add comments.
If a teacher returns a story for Rework, it will be stored under the student's Draft Stories - available in the left hand sidebar on the student profile.
When students select the story, they will see the teacher feedback. They can respond to the feedback or ask questions if they are confused and/or edit the story and submit again for approval.
Teachers can find stories needing their approval (called Pending Stories) under "My Stories" in their Teacher Profile (available from the Educa sidebar) and under "Pending Stories" under "Students" in the top menu.
Any questions? Get in touch with our Support Team at support@geteduca.com.