What is a learning journey?
A learning journey is a special space where educators capture all the important moments in a child’s development, from observations to reflections and planning. Mana's 'Journeys' feature helps educators to:
Track the growth and development of their children
Celebrate the achievements of their children
Plan exciting new learning experiences for an individual child
With Mana, you can easily follow a child’s progress and create a meaningful record of their unique learning journey.
How do learning journeys work in Mana?
How do learning journeys work in Mana?
Using our 'Journeys' feature is a wonderful and highly effective way to stay on top of each child's learning and development.
What makes Mana extra helpful is that it automatically tracks each stage of the cycle of planning: from observation to planning, implementation, and reflection. This means that educators get a clear picture of how they are growing and what is coming next.
By covering all stages in the cycle of planning (ensuring that no stage is missed), we focus on helping your centre stay compliant with the planning process. You’ll be able to see exactly where a child is in their journey, so nothing falls through the cracks.
What value will I get out of using Mana Journeys?
What value will I get out of using Mana Journeys?
Track progress over time: With Journeys, you can easily follow each child's learning development, celebrating their growth and milestones every step of the way.
Stay on top of stages: Mana helps you manage the stages of the planning cycle, ensuring that each stage is documented and keeping you compliant with regulatory requirements.
Plan with purpose: With every observation and reflection, you can create tailored plans that fit each child’s learning needs and goals.
Reflect and grow: Each stage of the Journey encourages thoughtful reflection, helping educators and families understand a child’s experiences and make informed decisions about their learning.
Using Journeys in Mana keeps you informed and organised, ensuring that your centre stays on track with each stage of the planning cycle. You’ll not only see a child’s progress but also be more supported to stay on top of compliance, ensuring a smooth and complete learning journey for every child.
Understanding recent changes to Mana Journeys
What has changed with Mana Journeys?
We have recently introduced changes to Journeys in Mana through our Winter Launch (currently available on the browser version of Mana and soon to be released to the Mana app). The key things that have changed (or will be changing soon when our application update rolls out) include:
Shift to allowing only one journey per child
Each journey (1 per child) can now have multiple goals mapped to it
Automatic document categorisation against a journey/child (there is no requirement for manual linking/association of docs to journeys/children going forward)
Why can I only have one journey per child now?
We believe deeply in the value these changes will bring long-term, but we also acknowledge the time it has taken to establish your processes around journey management in Mana. The thinking below underpinned our re-design of Mana Journeys:
In the past for example if you had 3 journeys for a child, these acted as 3 separate journeys in Mana, each with their own set of documentation. In practice, this meant more manual work for our educators to keep on top of each journey.
Based on feedback we received on Journeys and our observations of how Mana was being used, we began to feel like our Journeys feature (in its previous state) had the potential to add to the administrative burden on educators. And being Mana, we absolutely did not want this to happen!
We made a bold decision to change our approach to Journeys: going forward, each child will be able to have one journey open at a time.
We want you to think of a Journey as a period of time, rather than a singular goal.
For example, each child could have a Journey for a period of 3-6 months, with 1-3 goals sitting underneath that journey.
On top of making things simpler, more centralised and easier to engage with, Coach Sue will now be able to provide recommendations that relate to or support multiple goals associated with a single journey.
We know this is a big change. We want each child's journey in Mana to reflect a full cycle of planning in the one place. We want educators to feel supported using Mana, not overwhelmed or exhausted. We have been actively refining Journeys over the last couple of weeks to take on board user feedback that will help us improve the Journeys experience even further.
Accessing support for updates to Mana Journeys
Now, we know these are big changes...and we are here to support you every step of the way. We are running some friendly, open training calls across July and August 2025 where you can see new features (Guided Journeys is absolutely on the agenda) in action and ask any questions, big or small. If you are interested in attending one of these sessions, select a suitable session by following the links below:
Otherwise, if you are keen to learn more about how to do the full cycle of planning using our Journeys Feature on Mana, book in for one of our weekly free training sessions.