Kasvan is used primarily by students, teachers and parents. However, it provides value also school management and administration
Student
With Kasvan I have been able to increase my understanding about my own learning. That helps me to manage my learning also by myself. Understanding my targets, building portfolio of my learnings towards those targets, and getting feedback from my teacher enables me to manage my own learning.
Kasvan provides me constant feedback, when I’m learning or setting or modifying my targets. I always know what grade I’m targeting at in different topics, and how far I am, in reaching those goals.
Kasvan stores my learning path and my portfolio, so that it will always be available for me to browse my history and see how I learned before. Even when I’m changing school, the data can follow me, and the new teachers will be able to know me better to support my continuous learning.
Teacher
Learning can only happen if the target is at appropriate level in comparison with the student’s capabilities (Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development - ZPD). Thus it is important that I as a teacher know where the students are in their learning, so that I can guide them continuously to set their targets at ZPD.
Kasvan makes all the learning goals in the curriculum tangible and visible for me and for the students. This enables me to plan my teaching in a very goal oriented manner, both at the individual and at the group level. I can constantly see, in real-time, what grade each student or the group is targeting at, and how well they have been progressing.
I’m easily able to apply portfolio learning with Kasvan. I can easily get the students to understand their goals, setting individual targets and assessing their learning constantly. It is so rewarding to see how the student are active actor in their own learning. I’m then able to verify and qualify the self-assessments based on the portfolios the students have created during the learning.
With this understanding about the learning I can communicate with, coach and support the students efficiently, and optimize my time based on each student’s need. This also enables me to communicate the same with the parents and other teachers.
Kasvan provides me with tools to easily manage learning units with multiple goals. That helps me to organize any combination of learning goals from single subjects to cross disciplinary units and the 21st century skills. I can plan and manage my teaching easily and later on see which teaching method has been the most efficient.
Parents
With Kasvan I can clearly see the goals set by my child and by the school. I can monitor my child's progress and learning in real-time. I see the instructive feedback given by the teacher and I know how my child is supported as an individual in the school. This helps me to understand when my child needs support and guidance from me. I can now better support her success. This increases my interest of my child’s education.
Principal
With Kasvan I can be sure that the entire curriculum is being followed and all teachers and students are working towards the same goals.
As a principal, by job is to constantly find new ways to provide more value to the school stakeholders like the students, the parents, the national education administration, and the school board and owners.
As parents gets better understanding what the students are learning and what to expect from the student and the school, the perceived value from the school is higher.
Kasvan is readily available with the Common Core Standards, the National curriculum in England, or the Finnish national curriculum, but can be applied with any custom curriculum. The school can even modify existing, or create its own curricula.
Kasvan produces large amount of data of the learning and the teaching as a “side product”. This data enables a variety of analyses of the learning and teaching. The data (once collected enough by the school) can also be utilized to predict many things, such as, success in school, learning difficulties, and even social exclusion or potential drop-outs.
