The restore process is currently underway (Sunday am). We will be bringing Tapestry back up shortly. However the restore process will take some time to complete, and until this has finished (it may take a few days to completely restore) you will notice that certain media are missing from your Tapestry account:

•             Setting logos may not be present until the restore process completes

•             Parent and staff profile photos may also not be present until the restore process completes

•             Photos and videos in your observations from 20th November onwards will not be present initially but will re-appear as the restore process continues.

However, a certain amount of data will not be recoverable due to the gap between the last backup and the time the technical issue arose. Videos and photos taken on 8th January are unlikely to be recoverable. Observations, including notes and assessments, to which these media were attached should be unaffected.

We’re very sorry for the frustration and inconvenience that many of you will be experiencing as a result of this issue. We know how important your Tapestry data is to you, and work extremely hard to ensure that it is safe and accessible at all times. This is the longest period of unavailability of the Tapestry service we have ever experienced, and the first time we have found ourselves with permanently lost data. Our investigation of the reason for the technical issue is ongoing, and we will let you know as soon as we are confident we have found the cause. We are also planning improvements in back up scheduling, and researching distributed media storage to further reduce the chance of this occurring again.

across the assessment periods. You can find this on your snapshots screen.

on the children's postcard profiles- from the children tab

Parents can now download their child's learning journey- you no longer have to give the LJ to them on a disc etc.,

or print it out for them. They can do that themselves!

Just make sure in your settings screen 'options:relatives' you have ticked the box that says 'Allow relatives to download generated journal PDFs'.

We have a tutorial that explains the process.

and select the child and assessment period.

choose the assessment period and child (or group of children) and you'll be able to

view the statements you've ticked for each child.

• Tapestry 12- remains unchanged at £30 + VAT
• Tapestry 20- a new package size- £40 + VAT
• Tapestry 40- £50 + VAT
• Tapestry 60- £75 + VAT
• Tapestry 90- £110 + VAT
• Tapestry 120- £145 + VAT
• Tapestry 150- a new package size- £180 + VAT
• Tapestry 180- £220 + VAT
• Tapestry 240- £300 + VAT
• Tapestry 300- a new package size- £420 + VAT

And many of you wanted to be able to view all the observations created by a named member of staff, irrespective of his/her key children. This is now available from the page filters at the top of the obs screen.

The most obvious changes are on the home page. First of all, you will note that the filters have moved from being next to the 'Observations' heading, to the very top of the screen. By clicking on the filters box, you will be able to choose which types of observations you see and the order in which you want to see them.

Another change to the home page is the notifications icon. You can click on this to see your most recent notifications in a drop down list.

The Children's tab has also changed slightly. Now, instead of having the Two Year Check on the profile card, you will find it in the Reports section - within which you can add new, summative reports at any time you like. It may also interest you to know that you can now print these reports, and add documents to them.

'All About me' has also changed a bit. You can now add your own fields to it, and set it so all parents can edit their child's form, rather than having to go and tick that box in every 'All About Me'.

Parents need to elect to receive emails daily, weekly, or not at all, after a new observation has been added to their child's journal. They can do this from their preferences screen.

You will also find a change in the Snapshots tab - a P scales version of summative assessments is now available.

• You can now move directly between observations in the detail screen using the left/right cursors at the top of the page, rather than return to the list page. If you do this having searched for an individual child you can page through his/her journal

• You can now select multiple photos from the camera roll for a single observation

• Comment counts are now available from the list screen.

This tutorial will walk you through it. NB - currently (September 2014) there's no PDF print option. We'll be introducing this with our main Tapestry update in mid-October.

Take a look here at the discussion that prompted it and the outcome.

Anyway, another little addition that we hope will help all our 'Weavers' when using Tapestry

Sue

In the past we've suggested using the snapshots feature, but this makes the times at which you can take a baseline a little rigid, so we've created a dedicated version of a snapshot that you can assign to an individual child.

You can find each child's baseline from their individual record, and export to PDF as a report.

Lauren's prepared a tutorial describing how this feature works - any comments are welcome! :1b

• Key Stage 1
• P Scales
• ECaT
• Aistear (for our Irish users)

These aren't enabled by default, so you'll need to go into "Options: Assessments" and check the relevant boxes to start making assessments.

I'll just add a couple of things about the changes here:

To help keep the page uncluttered, the P Scale assessments won't be visible until you add a child with SEN to a page.

The KS1 framework is the curriculum effective from September 2014.

We'll be adding to the new functionality in the coming months, for example we're just testing the addition of P Scales to the snapshots tab.

Let us know what you think!

Chris

• Table of contents - you can reference by page number rather than observation title, or exclude a contents table altogether if you wish. This is useful because now more than one observation can fit on a page (see below) it can shorten the table considerably.
• One limitation of the old system was that extremely short observations would still take up a page, leaving a large amount of white space. You now have the option of allowing more than one observation on a page. Observations will split over a page, but in hopefully sensible ways (ie you won't get headings divorced from the following content).
• Observations are split quite clearly, with a horizontal graphic separating them.
• The old system used to find it difficult to cope with larger journals, making it necessary to split the production of journals. This should now be largely overcome.

Hopefully you'll find this enhancement of the creation of Journal PDFs useful. Let us know what you think!

We have also just added a new tutorial describing how to move children's learning journals to a new setting. You can find it here.

Brief list of new features:

Next Steps

Next Obs

New Analysis features

Snapshot feature (for baselines and periodic summative assessments)

New controls for inactive parents

New controls for what assessments parent can see

New controls for parent observation submissions

For a more detailed overview on where to find snapshots, next steps and next obs, see this video. 

• allows an observation to be added for more than one child (add as many members of a setting as you wish in one submit operation)
• enables all parents to view that observation as if it was their child's observation
• enables the manager to then customise (split) the observation for each child, so that it becomes an individual observation (ie EYFS assessments can be individually tailored, photographs can be cropped or removed, notes can be individualised etc)
• enables the manager to determine that photographs uploaded for group observations can be pixellated, removing all detail
• allows the manager to decide whether parent comments should be enabled or disabled for group observations.

To view the tutorial for this, please click here

**NB** Current subscribers to Tapestry, ie those who have a subscription that began prior to 1st December 2013, will be unaffected by this price change. Any renewals over the next year will be charged at the same price as their initial subscription.

Over the last year we have been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm with which Tapestry has been greeted, and are very grateful for the suggestions for features and refinements that have been offered. This has meant that Tapestry has become a very different creature from the simple learning journal it started out as. The introduction of analysis, and different types of assessment, varied views of the data and many other features, have ensured that Tapestry has rapidly evolved in sometimes unexpected ways.

In order to facilitate the continued development and support of Tapestry into the future, we have made the decision to increase the prices as shown. However, we also want to respect those who have placed their trust in Tapestry over its first year of existence, which is why we made the decision to freeze their subscription price for at least another year.

If you're not a current member of the FSF and want to know if your Local Authority has arranged free access to the FSF, please visit this page, which lists the relevant LAs and gives relevant information on how to join.

A brief account of the new features is included below:

• Persistent groups - will allow you to create your own permanent groups, and also to enable you to add more than one keyperson to a child. You can thus create different classes (for example in a multi-class entry primary school). You'll also be able to perform analysis on these new custom groups to compare against other groups.
• Events log - a screen to show a list of most individual events that Tapestry allows - eg adding a child, adding/removing a child to a keyperson, adding a child to a new group, etc.
• The font used for notes is popular with some but not others. Now you can select one of six fonts to use in the notes area.
• Analysis has been moved out of the management area. Staff can now therefore also use the analysis area, and the manager can permit or deny access to individual staff via the staff management pages.
• The three assessment types (EYFS, Leuven, Characteristics of Learning) can now be individually deactivated for those who do not wish to use any or all of them.
• The three assessment types (as above) can also now be made visible/invisible to parents individually.
• Permanent deletion of children - the new category of deleted children which was included recently will now be 'switched on' so that children marked for deletion will actually be deleted. Currently they are showing the 30 day countdown but not being deleted from your database.

A number of less important changes and bug fixes are also included.

To download, just open your android device and go to the play store. Search for 'Tapestry Mobile' and select the app with the Tapestry icon you can see at the top of this screen (there may be more than one).