Here’s your chance to win your very own GIANT Betty’s 5.4 kg chocolate egg!
Get creative and decorate an egg as your favourite character, animal or in any weird and wonderful way you like. Then, make a picture of your egg and tweet it to @Webanywhere and see if you have won. The competition will end on Tuesday 22nd March.
Meanwhile, check out our latest infographic to discover some great DIY ideas for Easter.
Avenue HQ, 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, UK
Published:
It’s no secret that there’s a recruitment crisis in education at the moment. Fewer new teachers are joining, and those already here and leaving in ever-greater numbers. A recent survey found that 90% of headteachers were struggling to fill vacancies in their schools. Naturally, fewer teachers means the potential for less learning by students – no matter how dedicated or skilled those remaining are, they’re competing with high workloads and difficult conditions.
The Association of School and College Leaders have argued that the solution here lies in flexible working for teachers, and, in a manner of speaking, we’d be inclined to agree. What this situation shows, we think, is where a blended learning strategy can really come into its own. By utilising elearning, educators and their students can learn to do more with fewer (physical) resources.
A VLE, with its self-marking quizzes, learning analytics and endless customisation options, can prove invaluable in automating much of the drudgery and admin problems that so-plague the teaching profession. This leaves the teachers themselves free to improve their lesson plans and provide better tuition to their charges.
Additionally, with the heavy focus on one-to-one teaching – something which can’t be achieved with diminishing staff numbers – a VLE with integrated social platforms can prove a real boon. Give every pupil the option to engage directly with their teachers, and in turn give the teachers the option to give quick, easy and detailed personalised feedback.
Too often a VLE is seen as a “needless luxury”, something which takes time away from more pressing matters. We think this is missing out on a lot of the positives. While it’s true that getting used to a VLE can take some time, with a few advocates and the right attitude we know that one can work in any environment, joining up learning and facilitating ever-greater growth.
Avenue HQ, 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, UK
Category: Department for Education,Infographics
Published: March 7, 2016
Easter is fast approaching and primary teachers are looking for quick and easy ideas to engage students with DIY crafting. With that in mind, we created the infographic below, where teachers and pupils can find some of the greatest and simplest craft ideas for the classroom.
Many teachers are using our Resources app to store all the great ideas, documents and images they create or find online. This helps them to enhance the learning experience of pupils every Easter.
Avenue HQ, 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, UK
Category: Education Technology,Learning Management Systems,School Website Content,School Website Design,VLEs
Published: March 3, 2016
If a clunky VLE (see part one of this series) can cause no end of heartache to a teacher desperately just trying to get on with it (and consequently lead them to thoughts of abandoning all technology to draw slideshows on Shakespeare using a stick out on the muddy playing field), then one that works, and works well, is an absolute joy to behold. It can speed up and improve learning, increase communication and understanding, and act as a link between home and school (as well as a multitude of other things besides).
Also, on a purely selfish level, it can make a teacher’s life a heck of a lot easier.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I care about that other stuff as well – learning, kids, all that palaver, but I’m not above asking ‘what’s in it for me?’. If a system can streamline some of the things I do and make the day go by that little bit more easily, then I’m going to jump right on board with a ticket in hand. For me it doesn’t have to be ‘pedagogically transformative’ or ‘paradigm shifting’ (in fact, when I hear those terms, it often makes me die a little inside) but if it can augment my practice, then that often frees up time for some of the finer things in life. Finer things such as giving me some thinking space to come up with a way to get an idea across, or letting me create a resource that’ll be really useful, or giving me enough time to sit and have a second cup of coffee.
(The coffee thing is probably the most important quite frankly).
Because a good VLE system not only does the things it’s supposed to do reliably and with a minimum of fuss, it also acts as an enabler in relation to other aspects of the job.
Easy organisation and access of resources means you don’t have to chase a kid down to make sure they got the worksheet they conveniently ‘misplaced’ 4 times.
If you’re not chasing a kid down then you’re free to do other things.
Integrated organisational tools for the students allow them to take the impetus when it comes to the management of their learning, and not always look to you for guidance with the minutiae. If they’re doing it for themselves then they’re leaving you to crack on.
Tracking and progress tools lets you identify at which point a student is exceeding expectation or flags up when they might be struggling, without having to go through endless records to try and find that info.
If you’re not struggling with records then you’re doing something more useful (which is just about anything else apart from struggling with records).
A good VLE frees a teacher to concentrate on perhaps some of the more essential things that go on in schools; planning, relationship building, the drinking of coffee. It can shift focus from repetitive, mundane tasks to actual learning and, in the best cases, go further – it can help a teacher minimise unnecessary workload and get them out of the gates on an evening that much sooner. OK, so that’s not about the kids or the learning, but nevertheless it’s a very exciting prospect all things considered.
In my last post in the series next week, I’ll shift the focus away from wonderful teachers and place it on the students (who can be a little bit wonderful too, when they’re trying really hard).
Tom Starkey is an educator and consultant based in Leeds. He’s written for the Times Educational Supplement and Teach Secondary magazine. He tweets at @tstarkey1212 and writes at stackofmarking.wordpress.com.
Avenue HQ, 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, UK
You might have heard a lot of talk about School Jotter’s function as a VLE. While a repository to store learning materials is all well and good, a VLE really needs a way to actually assess students’ learning – it’s a good thing, then, that Resources and Learn (bundled together) offer this capability!
First of all, you’re going to need to go to the Resources app from your School Jotter dashboard (you can also create Quizzes from within Learn itself, but we’ll do it this way as it’s much the same method). Click Create Resource at the top of the page, then choose Quiz from the dropdown.
Avenue HQ, 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, UK
Published: March 2, 2016
We’ve talked in the past about staying safe online, but phishers use tactics specifically designed to get around the defences you build up. Here’s our top tips for avoiding getting caught out:
Avenue HQ, 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, UK
Category: Development,Infographics,Ofsted
Published: February 29, 2016
This is a tricky issue for non-experienced website designers. While wanting to save on costs by doing their school web design themselves, schools should make sure they meet the Ofsted requirements when it comes to website content and structure.
One of the problems many school website designers encounter is that they use too many colors making their content very difficult to read. What follows are some tips to help create a beautiful website design for schools in the UK.
Knowing your school’s brand and what you stand for will help you write the content for your school’s website. You need to understand the school’s core values as well as what your school stands for.
Then you need to understand what your school does well and what problems it can solve for its students. There are other key questions you can ask yourself before you start creating a content strategy.
That strategy will revolve around the answers to all of those key questions. Plus, understanding the purpose of your school will help you create a unique website look that stands out from the crowd.
What also is involved in defining your school’s brand will be the following elements:
Defining your school’s brand is a wide range of elements that help potential and current students know who you are. That makes your website more attractive than using a number of bright or other colours.
In the world of web design, there are a lot of options you can use to build complexity to your school’s website design. However, the old sayings ‘keep it simple’ and ‘less is more’ are key guides you should use when creating a primary school website design.
Yes, having fun things like pop-ups, interactive polls, and lots of videos can help but often those elements and other ones turn the user experience into something far more time-consuming than parents want to go through.
The key to building a good user experience on your school’s website is to follow these key tips:
Make sure the relevant information is easy to access and find. Those important issues of tuition costs, teacher contact opportunities, and school events all should be very easy for the current school parent to find.
Make your enrollment process a priority. Part of the school’s website design is to attract new students to your school. This can partly be achieved through your About Us web page.
This is done by having a clear school calendar on your website. Then make it easy to access for those busy parents who do not have the time to waste doing complicated searches or bypassing pop-ups, etc.
These include contact information, a news and media web page, and more. You want to keep your school web design interesting without making it hard for parents to navigate through all the pages to get the information they want.
Once you have understood your school’s identity and purpose, and then fleshed out a content strategy, now is the time to add some more interesting elements to your school website design.
Look for key features that can incorporate interactive activities. These will help engage both parents and students. Then make sure to have someone write excellent content that will be of interest to those school parents.
Content is still king and will help boost your school’s website in the search engine rankings. Bad content is one way to drive prospective students and parents away from your school.
Since 2003, School Jotter has been working with thousands of schools across the UK and worldwide to develop the best school website and e-learning software. We always make sure our school web design reflects the ethos of each school.
Contact us today to see how we can help make your school website design more attractive and user-friendly. Our experts will be glad to spend time working with you to enhance your public face.
Avenue HQ, 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, UK
From our emails, you might think that all we do around here is write blog articles, create websites and develop learning platforms, but there’s actually a lot more to Webanywhere than just that! We did a staff photo shoot this week for our new website (ooh spoilers!). Here’s some of the… beautiful outtakes.
Lawrence is one of our secondary elearning consultants. In this photograph we can’t quite tell if he is mid sneeze or showing off his selfie face. You decide.
Ellie is a Primary elearning consultant at our Webanywhere, we didn’t have the heart to tell her she was a bit late for the Great Ormond Street bad hair day.
Tom, a delivery consultant perfected this pose whilst on a first date at the zoo. We wouldn’t buy a hat just yet for that wedding.
Our Marketing Campaigns Manager Sally holds three world records in “hand surfing”. No-one else in the office has ever asked what that is.
Avenue HQ, 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, UK
Category: e-Portfolios,Education Technology,School Website Content,School Website Design,School Websites,Social Media,Technologies
Published: February 25, 2016
As discussed previously, integrating technology in the classroom helps to improve engagement, it encourages individual and collaborative learning, provides students with useful life skills as well as it benefits teachers in many ways.
Social media
Most students are already using social media outside the classroom. Embracing social media in the classroom can instantly engage with students and to make learning more fun. For instance, Twitter or Facebook can be used to start a discussion on a particular topic. You can also use social media for making school related announcements, posting reminders about deadlines, uploading pictures or videos.
Blogging
Blogging is a great way to promote collaborative learning and to encourage open reflection by letting students share their work with others. What is more, blogging helps to develop reading and writing skills. Blog can be used for homework, assignments or for discussing topics of interest.
Podcasts
Podcasts can be very useful for recording lessons or for providing students with additional learning materials. There are many ways that podcasts could be used in the classroom. For example, recording a class discussion, reviewing a book, conducting interviews or broadcasting classroom news.
Video conferencing
Using video conferencing in the classroom creates exciting opportunities. Students can make friends by interacting with other students in different countries or they can learn by participating in virtual seminars with guest lecturers.
Online resources for learning and assignments
Teachers can test students by using online resources or they can make studying more fun by letting students undertake online quizzes to practice different subjects online.
Use videos
Videos can be used for demonstrating practical examples related to subjects taught in the classroom as well as for providing different approaches to subjects. Videos are useful for making learning more fun and engaging and these are the factors that lead to increased knowledge retention.
Games
Consider elements of gamification to improve the way you deliver the teaching content. The main idea behind gamification in the classroom is to increase motivation through engagement by using elements of video games. Some of the ways to gamify your classroom include: gamification of grading, awarding students with badges, using educational games, implementing a rewards system or gamifying homework.
If you want to learn more about different ways of incorporating technology in the classroom, contact the Webanywhere team.
Avenue HQ, 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, UK
Category: Education Technology,Learning Management Systems,School Website Content,School Website Design,VLEs
Published:
Given the current focus in schools, colleges and other educational institutions on shifting resources online and the growing emphasis on sharing information digitally to streamline processes (perhaps freeing up some of that precious, precious time for teachers to actually go and and do some of that weird ‘teaching’ malarky they’re always on about), it never ceases to amaze me that, when I talk to fellow educators about their in-house VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments), the chatter is often about clunky, difficult to navigate, user-unfriendly (sometimes downright hostile) systems that seemingly do the opposite of what they were designed for.
Now, if I’m teaching, the very last thing I want to be doing is spending any extra time fiddling with a VLE to get it to behave. I don’t want to waste hours on end uploading and re-uploading and re-re-uploading resources because (for some reason only known to the system itself and Dave from IT who’s on long-term sick leave) it just didn’t take the first time. I don’t want my index finger to go numb as I click 48 different links to get to where I know that document is, only for it to be locked because a lesson pro forma is far, far too sensitive to be sharing with the people who actually use it. What I want is to spend my free periods drinking really bad coffee and planning really good lessons, not sat in front of a screen wondering if they would fire me if I just chucked the whole damn thing out of the staffroom window.
Because, as a teacher, time is just about the most precious commodity there is. We’re already well short of it, so if more is taken away by an unwieldy system, it’s taken away from somewhere else. That “somewhere else” might actually be important.
And that’s just us; if you want student buy-in, you best be sure that the product is damn-near flawless, otherwise you’re basically handing them an excuse to do absolutely nothing:
“Did you do your homework?”
“Sir, I couldn’t even find it on the system.”
“Likely story. Let’s just bring up the…oh. Oh OK. I’ll write it on a post-it not for you next time.”
Students won’t use something that doesn’t work. Heck, they won’t even use something that is vaguely difficult to work. And to be honest, I’m right there with them on this. Why should they? VLEs are supposed to augment the learning process, not act as yet another barrier to it. If a school wants to share information in this way than they need to get it right; not only for the sake of teachers’ sanity but also to increase the educational chances of those who are most important in the process.
At its best, a VLE system should be intuitive and reliable for both teachers and students. It should be specifically designed as bespoke to a particular educational organisation because (as is often so easily forgotten) no two places are the same. It will enable learning but be so efficient, that it’s almost invisible as it does so. And what they should never, never do is make a teacher or a student’s life any more difficult than it is already. They should work for us, not the other way around.
But enough with this negativity – in my next blog I’ll be harping on about the joys of using an EFFECTIVE Virtual Learning Environment and how it can benefit teachers (and not just in the ways you might expect). Thanks for reading.
Tom Starkey is an educator and consultant based in Leeds. He’s written for the Times Educational Supplement and Teach Secondary magazine. He tweets at @tstarkey1212 and writes at stackofmarking.wordpress.com.
Avenue HQ, 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, UK
