Whilst you can export children’s learning journals as a whole, we know in some cases, such as for moderation, it is helpful to be able to create a PDF of specific observations or a selection of them for different children. In this tutorial I will show you how to bulk export observations from both the Observations and Assessments pages, and how to download the observations once you have exported them. We’ll start by looking at how to export observations.
Exporting Observations
Firstly, I will show you how to do this from the Observations page.
When you first login to your Tapestry account you will be taken directly to the Observations page, but if you are elsewhere on your account, to access this page you just need to click on the Observations tab on the left hand panel.
Once you’ve done this you can select the observations you want to include in the PDF by ticking the boxes at the end of the row of the observations. If you want to select all of the observations on the page then you can click the Select All button.
A maximum of 200 observations will be selected, starting from the latest added. Further observations can be selected by scrolling down the page and ticking the box to the left of them.
However, if you want to narrow down the observations you see on this page, you can use the page filters to do so. Once you have selected the observations you want to include, you will see a pop-up box at the bottom of the screen.
From there select Choose Action and click Download observations.
If you only want to see observations for particular assessment frameworks, area or aspect, you can use the Assessments tab. You can find this on the Observations page by clicking where it says Assessments at the top.
Here you can select an assessment framework and then further narrow this down by subject. Which categories you can refine the observations down by will depend on the assessment framework you have chosen.
You will then see the observations displayed in a slightly different way than on the Observations page, you won’t see any notes or media, but rather the focus is on the assessments. This is, you will see the name of the observation, the children included, the author of the observation and the assessment/s that are included. You can also use the page filters on this page if you want to see specific assessments for a specific child.
Although the observations appear in a slightly different format on the two pages, they will still export in the same way in the PDF.
On this screen, if you want to select all of the observations on the page then you can use the Select All button on the right hand side. By default you’ll see 20 observations per page. If you want to increase this number then you can also choose between viewing 50 or 100 per page.
From the pop up on the bottom right, select Export as a PDF > Go.
Once you have pressed the Go button from the pop-up menu on either page you will then get another pop-up from which you can choose the export options. These include:
- The file name of the export
- The title that will appear at the top of the PDF
- The format of the PDF. There are three formats you can choose from. These are default, which is intended to reflect the look of Tapestry itself. As such this will include larger photos and larger text compared to the following formats. Background colours will be maintained with this format. The next option is compact, which will make the photos smaller and therefore make the whole journal more compact. The last option is printer-friendly which is like the compact version where photos are made smaller but also with this option any background colours are removed.
- What information you want included in the PDF. The only difference when exporting observations between the two pages is that on the Observations page you can choose whether or not to show any of the assessments, whereas on the Assessments page you have the option of only showing assessments that you have chosen to filter by or to show any assessments that are included in the observations.
Downloading Exported Observations
After you have clicked on the Export selected observations as a PDF button on the pop-up you will need to go to your Downloads section to download the export when it is ready. You can follow the link in the export queued message, or find your downloads by going to Documents & Downloads > Downloads.
Here you will find the PDF.
Once the PDF is ready to be downloaded you will see a Download button next to the name of the PDF. You just need to click on that to download a copy of this to your device.
And that is how to bulk export observations! For support on exporting a child/ren’s full journal or for guidance on how to export just their media, follow the relevant guides below.