Now that you have started adding content to your Reporting Space, how can you use this content effectively?
The Reporting Space is a highly flexible optional add-on for SpacesEDU Pro. Our goal is to help support individual teachers' diverse methods of documenting learning, assessing mastery, and communicating with families. The Reporting Space allows:
To access the Reporting Space for each student:
Click Spaces at the top of your class, then View Reporting Space.
If you haven't already configured the Reporting Space settings, you'll be prompted to do so - we recommend doing this first, and setting up your Areas of Learning to report on. You can go back and edit them later on by clicking the gear icon at the top right.
To access the Reporting Space for any student, click their name along the left-hand side of the screen.
To update the Summary Statement, Area of Learning comments and proficiency levels, or Additional Supports for a student, click Edit Report after clicking on their name.
Selecting Posts
The Reporting Space is an ideal companion to Proficiency Scales. Over the course of the year or a term, students will accumulate many posts with different curriculum tags and proficiency levels; however, teachers may only want to consider specific posts and tags for final assessment.
By assigning specific posts to your Reporting Space, you can view the average proficiency level for each student at a glance, organized by curriculum outcome on the right-hand side of your screen.
The Reporting Space allow teachers to streamline cumulative assessment across all spaces in their class. The Reporting Space can not only make final assessment easier, but provide invaluable context for families beyond a report card comment and final mark.
Ultimately, the Reporting Space could be used to replace a traditional report card altogether, if that is your goal!
Pinning Posts
By default, posts in the Reporting Space appear in chronological order, with the most recent at the top.
Once you've selected posts in your Reporting Space, you have the option to pin up to 3 items. You can use this feature to highlight your students' best work, their biggest areas of growth, or whatever you'd like to emphasize!
To pin a post, simply click the pin icon at the top right of a post in the Reporting Space, and select whether you'd like to pin it 1st, 2nd, or 3rd.
To unpin a post, or change its position after it's been pinned, simply click the same button again.
Working with Summary Statements and Areas of Learning
Within your Reporting Space, you can create one or more Summary Statements for each student that provides a custom overview of their learning journey. Simply click ‘Edit Report’ and apply a Summary Statement or Areas of Learning.
After adding the Areas of Learning, teachers can update the following details for each student by clicking their name, then clicking Edit Report:
One or more Summary Statements, describing the student's progress during that reporting period
Up to 10 Media attachments: these are linked to the Reporting Space for that student, separately from any posts that you add to the space
A Summary for each Area of Learning: this could be used to comment on a student's achievements in a particular subject area, for example, or for a specific unit if the Class is for a one-subject course.
A Proficiency Level for each Area of Learning
Any Additional Supports which apply for the student
These assessments complement the evidence of each student's learning that you select and add to their Reporting Space, to provide a far richer portrait of their growth than a traditional paper report card.
Note that while you are editing the report for a student, it will be locked for editing by other teachers.
Before editing students' reports, you will need to configure any areas of learning and additional supports you want to use.
These options can be accessed with the gear button at the top right of the reporting space, or using the Settings link within any student's report.
Printing and Downloading
After adding Summary Statements and Areas of Learning for your students, you can also download a PDF version:
Click the Download button near the top right of your Reporting Space
Select the student(s) you'd like to download, or All Students
Students with a blank summary statement will be flagged with a red exclamation mark on this screen
Select the Areas of Learning and/or Summary Statements you wish to include in the download
By default, all are selected, but you can uncheck any that you do not want to include in the file
Click Download
This will download a printable PDF version of each selected student's summary statement, areas of learning, and the comments entered for each area. You can also save a PDF for an individual student by clicking the smaller download button at the top right of each student's reporting space feed (next to the Edit Report button).
Logos & Reference Images
Districts and independent schools can also brand their Reporting Space PDFs and printouts with both a logo and a reference image (for example, a visual depiction of the proficiency scale you're using).
We can only apply one custom logo & reference image across all schools within a district, and one logo & image at a time for independent schools not associated with a district.
Recommended dimensions are 200x100 px for the logo and 1000x400 px for the Reference Image. We can assist with resizing your image files as needed.
If you are a lead with a school or district licensing the Reporting Space, and you'd like to add or update your logo or reference image, please reach out to your SpacesEDU implementation contact or start a chat with us in the corner of your screen.
Reporting Space Visibility
If this feature is available to your school, each class you create will automatically include a Reporting Space.
By default, the Reporting Space is hidden from students and families. To adjust the visibility settings:
Open the Spaces tab from your Teacher account
Click the Students or Family button to the right of 'View Reporting Space' (if you have already opened the Reporting Space, it will appear in the top right of your screen)
There are two options when configuring visibility for students and families:
Make the space Visible, allowing students to view posts in the Reporting Space, including comments. Note that by default, students will not be able to add new comments to the post.
Once the space is Visible, you can toggle the ability for students or family members to add new comments to posts within the Reporting Space.
What are some different ways I can use the Reporting Space?
We've kept things as flexible as possible, so it's up to you to decide what works best for your class! The customizable visibility settings of the Reporting space allows for a range of uses. Depending on your approach to assessment, you may choose to:
Keep the Reporting Space hidden from students and families, and use the feature to support preparing your own assessments. This may include adding private comments visible to teachers and co-teachers only
Allow visibility for students and linked family members, while keeping comments disabled. You may use the posts within the space to facilitate discussion at a parent-teacher interview or student-led conference
Allow visibility and commenting for both students and family members to foster an ongoing dialogue around a curated selection of each student's best work
Use it as a space for discussion and feedback visible only to families, and not students
You may also change visibility settings at any time, adding content and feedback throughout the year, opening comments to students at a later date to comment and reflect upon their own progress.
SpacesEDU currently has one Reporting Space per class. If using SpacesEDU for formal reporting for semesters or trimesters, teachers can:
Download and save their Reporting Space Summary as a PDF and then update the summary statements and Areas of Learning for the next reporting period.
SpacesEDU recommends that teachers add their PDF as a media file to the Summary Statement for easy reference.
Alternatively, teachers can label their Summary Statement and Areas of Learning with semester/trimester delineators (i.e. Semester 1: Science, Semester 2: Science, etc.) to maintain earlier comments within their Reporting Space over the course of the year.
What's next?
We are hard at work on exciting future updates to continue to support authentic assessment.
To learn more about what's coming soon, take a look at our product roadmap.
We welcome your feedback! Submit a feature suggestion through our roadmap page, or by starting a chat in the bottom-left corner of your screen.