eyLog is early years Log, an EYFS compliant and secure online learning journey. It is an integrated web and tablet based secure application for nurseries and childcare providers to easily capture observations and manage the learning and development journey of a child in an electronic format. eyLog is helping nurseries transform the process of recording observations and creating a child’s learning journey – drastically reducing the time and effort spent on capturing and maintaining observations manually, and enabling practitioners to focus more on providing the best early years education, the ultimate aim of both nurseries and parents.
eyLog is an application that runs on a tablet PC (or simply 'tablets') and on the web. Nursery staff can use the eyLog practitioner app on tablets to capture photos/videos/audio clips, complete an observation of a child and link the observation to EYFS. These observations taken on the tablets are saved to eyLog’s central servers and become an integral part of the child’s learning journey which can be accessed from anywhere. eyLog also provides a 'web application' i.e., an application accessible through your web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Google Chrome). Nursery staff can view the observations saved from the tablets here, update and/or complete them at a later point in time as required. Room leaders and managers can also login via the web application to update and review these observations. eyLog also provides a one-stop view of all the observations recorded and extensive reports to the nursery owner and administrators for all the settings within a nursery chain.
eyMan is early years Management, our web-based innovative and integrated nursery management solution that helps nurseries manage new child enquiries and enrolment, offers simple and flexible session scheduling and occupancy charts, provides automated funding and invoicing and simple payment processing (including Direct Debit), staff management and much more.
Our dedicated eyLog Parent App aims to engages parent and help them to understand their child’s development on a more regular and real-time basis, through their child’s learning journey. Nurseries can keep parents informed and involved with comments, home observations, daily diaries, reports, accident/incident sheets and messages. When integrated with eyMan and payment gateways, parents also have a full overview of their account and can view and pay invoices online.
Nurseries
Yes. eyMan and eyLog use the WiFi connection to connect to the internet and to upload the data to the eyLog servers. However, the eyLog tablet application also works in an offline mode which allows you to record observations even without internet connectivity, for example during outdoor visits to the garden/forests.
No. All that is needed is a web-browser (such as Internet Explorer or Google Chrome) and you can access eyMan and eyLog from anywhere where there is an internet connection.
At a minimum we recommend having one tablet per group or room. At the other extreme, you can have one tablet per nursery practitioner. If a room has more than 2-3 nursery staff, it may become difficult for the staff to share the tablets, in which case you might want to have at least two tablets in such groups.
Yes. The eyLog tablet application runs on both iPads (iOS 9 and above) and Android tablets (Android 5 and above). The eyLog Parent App is available on mobile phones and tablets on both iOS and Android platforms.
eyLog offers, as an optional purchase, Android Samsung Galaxy tablets with a lock-down software where only eyLog is accessible. This helps prevent accidental or deliberate misuse of the tablets - for example, it would not be possible to use Facebook to post observation photos or to send such photos by e-mail. These tablets are covered by a one year manufacturers warranty.
No, we don’t see any need to! The idea is to eliminate post-its and paper cuttings and for all observations to be taken on eyLog. We have a feature to mark an observation as 'Spontaneous' when you just want to capture an interesting moment and support multiple early years assessment frameworks which eliminates the need for any paper based observation/assessments.
No. You do not need to have a separate camera to capture photos. Practitioners can record rich format and high quality media directly to their observations using the tablets. This means no more printing and cutting out photos to attach to their observations!
Yes. Practitioners can capture photos, videos and audios to a child’s observations. More so, multiple media evidences can be added to the same observation.
Yes. eyLog allows you to customise the observation sheet and its elements (Observation, Analysis, Next Steps, Notes, Assessments) as per your nursery’s requirements. This enables you to move online smoothly and helps you and your staff to continue focusing on a child’s learning and development without getting used to a new observation format.
In addition to the compulsory Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), eyLog also supports: Characteristics of Effective Learning (CoEL), Leuven Scales for Well-being and Involvement, Early Years Developmental Journal (EYDJ), Montessori, Phonics, British Values, Schemas and we have recently updated our Every Child a Talker to the National Strategies.
Yes. The eyLog tablet application works in an offline mode which allows you to record observations from anywhere. Once you return to the nursery or as soon as a WiFi connection is available, the tablet will automatically be synchronised with the eyLog server and all data will be saved as normal. Some of the features on eyLog, such as the progress trackers and daily diaries, do not work offline as they require real-time information from our servers.
Observations can be saved as a draft at any time where they are then available in the Draft List on any tablet to be updated at a later point in time. Draft observations are not included in the learning journey of a child until they are published. eyLog has a built in review process which enables room leaders and senior staff to review the observations recorded by more junior staff members before they are published to the parent.
Yes, indeed! eyLog allows nurseries to share a child’s learning journey with parents. Nurseries can grant access to the parents by registering them on eyMan/eyLog. Multiple parent logins can be created to share the online learning journey with grandparents, carers and other relatives if required. Not only can parents view their child’s observations recorded at the nursery, they can also contribute and add their own observations to eyLog. Parents can also add comments and interact with the practitioners in real-time about their child's observations. With eyMan and payment gateways integration, parents also have a full overview of their account and can view and pay invoices online.
Parents can only see the child(ren) against whom they have been setup as a parent by the nursery manager/staff. They cannot access the learning journeys of other children at the nursery.
Parents
Check with your child’s nursery to see if they are sharing the learning journey with their parents. Most nurseries do! The nursery need to register you as the child’s parent on the system which will send automatically send you an account activation link by e-mail. Once you have activated your account you can use any web browser or our dedicated eyLog Parent App to view your child's learning journey and much more! * In case you haven’t received the activation email, please also check your Junk/Spam folder as some mail servers may accidentally mark our system emails as spam.
On the login screen, there is a link labelled 'Forgot Password?', click on this and enter your e-mail address. If you are already registered on the system, you will be sent a reset the password link by email. Click on the link and follow the instructions to reset your password.
Yes. Up to six people can be registered as parents/carers of a child and all of them get full access to the child’s learning journey and much more. Whenever the nursery publishes information or observations for the child a notification will be sent to all the registered parents.
No. If you are registered as a parent for both the children, then once you login to eyLog, you will be able to view all information or observations for both the children through the same login.
Observations added by parents need to be reviewed by the nursery staff before they become part of the child’s learning journey. Check with your child’s key person at the nursery if your observations haven’t been reviewed after a few days.
Security
All data is stored on secure cloud-based servers which are hosted in a UK data centre.
We use Rackspace which is the UK’s leading cloud provider, please refer to Rackspace’s Security and Compliance policies for further details. Only the core eyLog team have access to the individual production cloud instances.
All communication between the tablets/servers/browsers is through HTTPS and encrypted using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). You will see the green bar in the browser indicating HTTPS (encrypted) communication.
No. The names of children/practitioners, etc., are all stored in secure databases which are not accessible to any search engine. All access to nursery data is protected by user-IDs and passwords preventing any search engine from crawling them.
When a child leaves their childcare setting, the nursery has the option to make a child inactive or remove the child from the system. Whilst a child is inactive, the nursery or the parents (depending on the nursery’s policy) can download the entire learning journey including photos/videos/etc., as an e-Book. Inactive children's data will be stored for 12 months before being automatically deleted. Once the child is removed from the system either by the nursery or automatically, their data is permanently deleted and the nursery/parent will lose all access to it.
Yes. All data is regularly automatically backed-up at data centers located here in the UK. The back-ups are stored on separate servers and not on the production server.
There are a fixed number of previous backups saved at any given point in time and the older ones are over-written as new back-ups are created. Access to these back-ups are available only to the core eyLog team.
Pricing
No, all our prices are exclusive of Value Added Tax (VAT).
Yes. We have a minimum 12 month license contract for all our products.
Yes. We have top-ups available for every 50 children beyond 200 children at £5/month or £50/year per software. This translates into just £1 or less, per month per child. Please contact us to customise the top-ups as per your requirement.