About the developer

The Daily Diary is a user-friendly web-based documentation and communication tool allowing teachers to securely share classroom activities with families. The Daily Diary is being used in a growing number of Early Learning Centres, Kindergartens, Family Day Care facilities and Primary Schools across Australia. I would like to share with you a little bit about how The Daily Diary came to be…

My name is Julie Hilton. I’m a Melbourne-based mother of two, and a qualified Primary School Teacher. I have a degree in Social and Behavioural Sciences and a Bachelor of Teaching.

As a teacher, I would take regular photographs of my students participating in classroom activities and then spend many hours a week putting together display books and posters, and emailing images and messages to parents. I hoped that by sharing information in this way, parents would feel more involved in their children’s learning. I hoped it would encourage them to talk with their children about their classroom activities and help reinforce the valuable classroom learning.

When my son Brody, at the age of two and a half, started at a local Early Learning Centre, the teachers painstakingly recorded classroom activities and had a display book outside the room for parents to view – just as I had done.  Dedicated teachers spent up to an hour each day compiling documentation, which many parents never even got to see. I knew that there had to be a way to save valuable teaching time and still make children’s activities accessible to families.

Technology and the Internet provided the opportunities to create a more efficient, secure and effective communication tool.

After 18 months of research and development, The Daily Diary web application was born. And in April 2010 The Daily Diary went ‘live’ into its first Prep Classroom – St Joseph’s School in Rochester, shortly followed by its first two kinder classrooms at Mount Scopus Memorial College. Today, The Daily Diary is being used as the communication tool of choice in an ever-growing number of Early Learning Centres, Kindergartens, Family Day Care facilities and Primary Schools.

My aim is to see The Daily Diary used as the preferred communication tool in classrooms across Australia, New Zealand and ultimately, around the world. As The Daily Diary grows, I aim to continue to provide a high level of personal customer service to all teachers and parents. I also aim to ensure that the site remains simple and quick for teachers to use, and is continually enhanced with functions relevant to the growing demands of pre-schools, schools, families and communities. And by doing all this, I hope to provide special, lasting memories of the early education experience for students and their families.