I’ve spent the last couple of days talking about the basics of documentation; why it’s important, and different kinds of documentation.  Today I want to get a little deeper, so I’m going to talk about defining your audience and directing your documentation to the intended audience. When I post documentation I consider two distinct audiences; adults (parents, family members, lab students, school staff), and my students.  I do things very different for each audience, because they respond to different kinds of documentation. When I want to draw adults to documentation I place it at eye level for an adult.  I am more likely to create panels for adult viewing, because…

Yesterday I talked about why documentation is so important in the classroom, so you know what it does, but it’s also important to get a grasp on what documentation is. The way that it has been best explained to me is that documentation tells the story of the children’s learning.  This means that anything that shows evidence of the learning process can be considered documentation. Documentation generally falls into two categories; Documentation Panels: These are professional works created by a teacher to showcase specific learning experiences.  They generally include photos taken by the teacher during the investigation and captions or a description of the experience.  Panels are created to be…