Since 2013, over 130 young people, teaching staff and parents have successfully been using multi me as a summative assessment tool. The individual profile format mirrors our approach of delivering a personalised and student-centred curriculum to all of our pupils. The ability to upload videos and photographs means that each one of our students is able to have their progress captured and celebrated equally. Multi me provides many features that allow for easy two-way communication between home, school and other professionals, helping give students and their families the opportunity to share successes and experiences from all aspects of their life. These include, physiotherapy plans, learning objectives being met or family holidays.

"Parents say that communication from school staff is now excellent... this is due to the effective use of communication books, regular newsletters and the implementation of online multimedia assessment."

~ OFSTED September 2018

Streamlining administration and creating an aide for sharing information

Multi me has streamlined teachers’ working practices when assessing and reporting. Once we have uploaded our assessments to multi me they can be used in a multitude of ways. For our termly review evenings, each pupil’s multi me profile acts as the starting point for conversations about their progress. By accessing pupils’ goals, stories and so on we can provide families with a comprehensive picture of their child’s education. Furthermore, these assessment entries can then be used during annual reviews to report on that child’s learning for the entire year. Rather than rewriting reports or starting from scratch, we have structured our multi me assessments in such a way that they can be directly transferred to any reporting documents that we use as a school.

Unambiguous assessment

When videos are uploaded alongside text in an assessment, we have absolute clarity of what a child has achieved and how they have achieved it. We know that our children will often learn in small, incremental steps, so to ensure that these stages are accurately captured in forensic detail is crucial to the way that we educate our children and track progress in their learning. This has had a significant impact on the depth of conversations that we have been able to share as a teaching team where we have been able to use videos uploaded to multi me as a starting point for discussions about learning. As a result, this has had a positive impact on professional development across the school as we probe much deeper into the ways we can best educate our students.

Therapist involvement

When a child’s therapist is part of their community on multi me, they can upload up-to-date information regarding specific plans that are in place for that child. For example, if a child has a movement plan that needs to be carried out at home and school, said plan can be uploaded to the site so that everyone involved in the child’s development has access to the same information. This enables us to achieve consistency and clarity when delivering programmes that have been specifically tailored to meet the needs of individual pupils.

E-mail alerts

Each time an update is uploaded to multi me, e-mail alerts can be sent to those people who are subscribed to a particular goal. Therefore, school leaders can be made aware when teachers upload assessments to enable timely analysis, and families can be made instantly aware of their child’s success and progress as soon as it’s online. Furthermore, if a story about a trip is uploaded to multi me before the end of the school day, families will be able to readily communicate with their child about their day when they greet them at the school. As noted above, for many of our pupils who experience challenges in relaying messages, this enables them to share a greater breadth of topics to talk about with their families, who can use multi me stories to scaffold and support their conversations. Previously, achieving the same level and quality of information transfer via conventional paper diaries or phone calls would be time-consuming and impractical for our teaching team.

Sharing achievements beyond school

Many of our families have shared the positive experiences they have enjoyed with their children when sharing their multi me pages together at home. Children with additional needs may experience challenges with recall or communicating messages, which may prevent them from giving their families accurate feedback on their school lives. However, multi me enables our children to share their school-based successes through text, photos and videos that can be accessed anywhere. Furthermore, because families are being given regular updates on their child’s achievements, they have the option to practice these skills at home, too. Of course, the process works both ways and families are able to share with school achievements outside of school also.

Consistent and meaningful record keeping

Our teaching team worked to create a template for the assessments that we would upload to multi me via the ‘Goals’ function. This way we have ensured that assessments are organised in a logical way, their content is thorough, and progress for each pupil is easy to track. Within each curriculum area, we can see each pupil’s progress through specific strands of their learning and use this information to plan for the most appropriate next steps in their education. One of our teacher’s reflected that:

‘“As a teacher, when a student joins my class I am able to trace their learning journey within a particular strand of the curriculum. The video evidence allows me to see exactly how a student approached a specific task and to see them demonstrating the skill...... ensuring that the learning journey of all students can be successfully continued. It also helps teachers to quickly and accurately pitch learning for their pupils, ensuring that progress is maximised.”

Effective school to home communication

Over 96% of our parents stated that they receive valuable information about their childs progress. With multi me they are able to see with complete clarity what they have achieved and how they have achieved it. This transparency has been valued by families who have been able to engage with their child’s education and understand their development.

Ease of moderation

Providing they have an Internet connection, at any one moment school leaders can access the assessment records for any pupil in any curriculum area across the entire school. This makes moderation an extremely straightforward process, as we can access said records and data quickly and conveniently, cross referencing them across classes, key stages, and seeing each pupil’s learning as a chronology.

We are happy to share the way we work with multi me. Anyone wishing to know more should contact the school on 01869 242182 and book an appointment

(telephone or in person) with John Riches, headteacher.