My name is Tobi Steiner and I have been the Director at Kids’ Care Club Child Development Center, a NAEYC Accredited Center, for 17 years. My passion has always been to create a safe, nurturing, and educational environment for children to develop in. I believe it is important for early childhood educators to stay current with updated teaching techniques, technology within the classroom, and academic based curriculums. I am always looking for ways to improve and enrich the quality of our program for the children, families, and teachers.One of our school’s biggest successes has been the way in which we communicate with parents. Prior to using the Learning Genie program we provided descriptive dailies to share and highlight information with parents about their child each day. In 2013 we decided to be a pilot school for Learning Genie. I knew from the beginning that the company had great ideas to improve upon the procedures we already had in place. Not only did Learning Genie bring our dailies to life for families in real time, but also made it more efficient for teachers to track each child’s development through portfolios and observations. The program aids in bridging the gap between school and families by its ability to share pictures, media, and links for special moments that occur at school each day.

My name is Cheryl and I have been a teacher since 1996. I have taught kindergarten and now I teach Jr. Kindergarten to children who are ages 4 and 5. Working with children is lifetime dream that I had as a child. I wanted children to grow and learn in a fun environment that they could go home and tell their families about. Communicating with the families can be a challenge if you don’t see them at the beginning or end of the day. The Learning Genie has helped to complete this task.When the Learning Genie was introduced to me, I was very excited about sharing with the parents what I was teaching to the children on a more personable level. One of the most valuable features that I used was taking photos of the children doing activities and being able to send the pictures electronically to the parents on a daily basis. The parents were very excited each day to receive their email and see what their child had learned. The parents would use information we provided on a daily basis and talk about what they learned at school. This was a great conversation starter. Most children would come home from school and ask their child what they learned at school today and most would say “nothing I just played”. With the daily information I found that the children showed what they learned at school sometimes teaching their parents some things.The parts that I used during the day that helped me out when parents asked any questions would be what they ate, when they ate and how much they ate. We documented all this information a per child entry making the end of the day much easier for the teachers. The parents had all information that they were looking for available to them if we had left for the day. We could also let the parents know how the child’s emotions were during the day and whether they happy, tired, sad, or excited for the day. As a teacher I can make portfolios for each individual child with observations and photos of their work to save for parent teacher conferences and end of the year progress reports.After using the Learning Genie now for a year I have a better communication with the parents and truly believe that the parents love hearing more about the day of their child. The best part is that all entries are electronic and stored digitally which means no loosing the daily papers of what they learned. The parents are always looking forward to receiving their email at the end of the day!Thank you Learning Genie for helping teachers make their jobs more organized!!Cheryl

Learning Genie has improved the communication between teachers and parents in a tremendous way. Since I have been using the program the parents of my students feel more involved in their child’s daily activities and progressions than ever before. Learning Genie has enabled early childhood educators to give a detailed account of a child’s day and development in a convenient and simple format. This has been an invaluable tool for us when it comes to child observations, tracking developmental progress, noting behavioural changes or consistencies, documenting milestones and everyday activity, photographs and of course communicating with the parents. Learning Genie provides a way for teachers to document detailed information about each child without taking more time away from the classroom.ChrissyPreschool Teacher

Learning Genie is a very powerful tool to connect with parents and families. Parents look forward to the reports daily and they definitely let us know when their reports are not received. It is great to send something to parents that we know are anticipated and a sure ready daily.As a director of our programs, I used it to do a broadcast to all the families. When we celebrated our Teachers’ Appreciation Week this year, I was able to send a “secret message” to the parents to rally them to shower their child’s educator with love and appreciation. The result was amazing! Every classroom and every teacher was celebrated!Vicky, Director