Many educators argue that homework can have negative effects to students such as causing unnecessary stress, frustration and exhaustion. Especially for primary schools, there is no evidence that homework can help pupils with academic success. Sometimes, it can contribute to loss of interest in learning instead.
From the other side, many think that homework is absolutely necessary for students’ learning as it prepares them for bigger end exams and it lets pupils work closer with their teachers and classmates.
We have created an infographic with some of the pros and cons of homework in primary schools to help teachers decide whether homework is necessary for their pupils.
We hope you enjoy it…

There is no doubt homework in primary school should be as light as possible. Teachers should always try and make it fun by using learning apps like the ones on School Jotter to increase pupils’ engagement in the classroom.

The importance of spelling

Learning how to spell words is one of the most useful lifelong skills and it builds the basic foundation that all children will need throughout their education and life in general. Learning how to spell is very important for other basic skills, including writing and reading. These skills support children in achieving good results and progressing through various grades. What is more, being good at spelling may have an impact on the future careers of students.

One of the hot topics surrounding the education sector also relates to learning spelling in schools. The introduction of compulsory spelling tests for all key stage 2 pupils in England is expected to improve the literacy of students.

The new spelling tests are justified by making sure the students are prepared for the secondary school. This is expected to eventually improve the standards of learning and to raise England’s position in reading and writing. However, it has caused a number of negative responses in terms of being unnecessary and putting too much pressure on pupils, causing stress or even discriminating against students who might have special learning requirements caused my mental health.

Another point that some people make against spelling tests or even against teaching spelling in school is based on the irrelevance of learning how to spell in the age of technologies.

How technologies affect the way students learn to spell?

The rise of different learning technologies causes discussions on how they could be used to support education in schools. Some people see endless opportunities in how modern technologies could benefit education, while others only see the negatives associated with technologies or even believe that technology should be banned in schools. Talking about the relationship between spelling and modern technologies, most of us are familiar with ‘autocorrect’ on our smartphones or other online resources for checking spelling. Does that mean that that it is less important for students to learn spelling at school?

Having good spelling skills is just as important as it was before different technologies were available. Although technologies provide great alternative ways for practicing spelling, it should not be assumed that learning how to spell is less relevant nowadays. Mobile phones correct our spelling and if we are not sure how to spell something, it is easy to check it online. However, different learning technologies should be seen as opportunities for learning and practising spelling and we should not encourage students to view technology as a replacement for their own thinking as there will always be situations where technology might not be available.

It is clear that it is very important to learn how to spell and it should not be considered less important in the age of technology. However, it might be worth focusing more on teaching spelling in many different ways and helping students achieve high standards without causing unnecessary stress by making them take complicated tests for spelling.

We’ve created a handy infographic to help explain some of the more confusing aspects of website creation, click on the image for a higher resolution version!

How do you imagine a modern 21st century classroom? The reality is that the school environment in which most students learn remains old-fashioned in terms of how the classroom is designed and how the students learn. There are many things that could help modernise the classroom as well as to improve teaching and learning. The improvements you can make for your classroom range from simply changing seating arrangements to integrating latest technologies into the classroom. There is no right answer and every school should choose what works for their classrooms. Here are some characteristics of a modern 21st century classroom.

Technology integration

This is probably the most obvious solution for creating a modern classroom. Integrating technology into the classroom can make learning more fun and engaging and it can help to provide students with essential skills that will prepare them for the environment they will enter as modern day workers.

For instance, there is a number of easily accessible online learning resources that could be used for learning languages, practicing spelling or learning maths. You can also experiment with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) where you allow your students to use their own devices for learning. This is a great way to encourage independent learning as well as for creating personalised learning plans. Not to mention the enthusiasm and excitement created by letting students use their own devices! Gamification is another amazing tool for creating a fun atmosphere in the classroom and for encouraging collaborative learning.

Flexible learning environment

Consider experimenting with seating arrangements and see what works best for your students. Think about whether your classroom layout and seating arrangements have a positive impact on learning. For instance, a traditional arrangement of the classroom where teacher is at the front and students are in rows facing the same direction, might not be the best solution for encouraging collaboration.

What is more, learning can take place anywhere and should not be limited to staying in the classroom all the time. Use other school facilities or other locations to make learning more engaging. Remember that a change to physical environment is believed to encourage creativity and collaborative work.

Teacher as facilitator

Most classrooms consist of tables and chairs, usually arranged so that children face a teacher and the teacher is considered as the source of all knowledge. However, the role of educators in the 21st century has evolved. That does not mean that the role of a teacher is less important. What it means is that teachers are expected to become facilitators in terms of inspiring students to take ownership in their own learning by providing them with opportunities to learn key concepts and to discover the tools they need for learning.

Collaborative learning

Learning through collaboration is one of the most effective forms of learning. As mentioned before, there are many ways for encouraging collaboration in the classroom. It can be done by integrating technology and using tools like gamification or engaging in discussions on social media. Other collaborative learning activities include group projects, debates or peer reviews. All these different activities are great for developing collaboration as well as for improving other useful skills like problem solving, creativity and critical thinking.

Characteristics of a 21st century classroom

Although, there are many different ways in which any classroom can be changed to meet the needs of modern learners, technology plays a big role in developing most of these characteristics for modern classrooms. If you are interested in learning about the evolution of technology in schools, check our infographic here.

Before we start, don’t forget to check out our new helpsite and knowledgebase at education.webanywhere.co.uk.
It’s running our custom-built Promatum software for distributed training, meaning it’s easy to use, lean and you can get it on any device you like. Give it a spin and let us know what you think – the same resources are there, they’re just now in a much easier, more accessible format!
Today we’re looking at sitemaps. Before we begin though, a bit of background on what a sitemap is. First of all, it’s a tool for search engines to use, not for end-users! It tells Google and others how your site is laid out so it can assign you the proper relative rankings in its results pages.

Luckily, they’re really easy to make in School Jotter. First of all, we recommend creating a dedicated page for it. Start by creating a new page by clicking Manage then Pages when in the Site. Click Add Page at the top of the box, then set up the page like this:

Make sure “Show in menu” is not checked, then click Add Page. Navigate to your new page (it should be located at yourwebsite.sites.schooljotter2.com/sitemap). Enter Edit mode and remove the “Coming soon…” text from the text box. Now Insert Item > Sitemap.

Put it below the text box, but it doesn’t really matter. This will automatically generate a list of pages on your website in a hierarchical format. It’ll look something like this.

Now just save and publish your page and you’re all done! Note that if you add more pages to your website, you might have to update the sitemap – to do this, click on it in Edit mode then click on the Update button that will appear at the top of the page.

If you logged into School Jotter this morning, you might have noticed a few changes. Or perhaps not, a lot of what we’re doing is behind the scenes and designed to make School Jotter run better than ever.

System Changes

• The way we display graphs has improved in our Surveys, Spellings, MIS Portal, and Merits apps.
• Stability, performance and security changes.

Dashboard

• The School Jotter app store can now be accessed via the blue + at the bottom right of the dashboard.

Why not try a new app to enhance the functionality of School Jotter? Many are available on a 30 day, no-obligation FREE trial!

Office 365 Integration

• Synchronisation has been improved when using multiple Office 365 calendars.
• Word, Excel and Powerpoint shortcut tiles display when that user has logged in with an Office 365 account.

Does your school use Office 365? Ask your account manager about our School Jotter / Office 365 integration.

Site App

• Slideshow captions can contain special characters and there is no limit to their length. (If your school’s website doesn’t support customisable header slideshows then call us to discuss getting a theme redesign. We can refresh, update, and modernise your school’s image at the same time!)
• Improvements to site search security and performance.
• Changes have been made to help improve SEO.
• An issue that prevented some of February’s webstat data from loading has been resolved.
• An issue that affected private page permissions has been resolved.
• An issue where apostrophes were occasionally shown incorrectly in emails that were sent out has been resolved.
• An issue where accordions could have an incorrect layout has been addressed.

Have you tried inserting an accordion to your website? It’s great for FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions.)

Broadcast App

• Reliability of sending SMS text messages has been improved.
• A character count has been added when composing SMS text messages.

Learn App

• Admin users can view and manage all learning sites.
• An issue with the styling of Wiki Resources has been resolved.
• An issue with the display of Animated Sequence Resources has been resolved.
• An issue with saving Link Resources in the resource manager has been resolved.

SIMS Integration

• Users that are disabled in SIMS will now also be disabled in School Jotter upon the next sync.
• Admins can now choose not to sync email addresses from SIMS for certain user roles. This is really useful if you store parent emails against student records in SIMS.

Purple Mash Integration

• Single Sign On (SSO) will now work for users that do not have their firstname and surname saved in their School Jotter profile.

Picture Logins

• An issue where incorrect picture login passwords could be generated has been resolved.

Address Book

• The address book will now show a count of how many contacts have been selected.

Don’t forget to press the ? icon to the right of your username at any time to bring the help sheets and videos up in an adjacent tab, this is especially useful for the All Apps Help section!

Gamification is based on the idea of applying game elements to non game contexts. Kids love playing games, so it creates amazing opportunities to educate them in a gamified way. Integrating elements of gamification into teaching can help to increase engagement and to improve learning outcomes. Here are some ideas for incorporating elements of gamification into the classroom.

Ways to use gamification in the classroom

Use technologies

Although gamification does not require you to use technologies, you can benefit from a number of online resources to gamify your classroom. For example, there are many online resources for learning languages, practising maths or spelling in a gamified way. Technologies not only allow students to learn but they can also help develop other useful skills like critical thinking or problem solving.

Online educational games

One of the easiest ways to gamify your classroom is finding some kid safe sites that can be used to allow students play educational games as part of the lesson or as a reward for doing a good job in something.

Create a class-wide achievements system

Work together with students to develop the short and long-term goals that will be achieved through gamification. Working on this as a team can encourage collaborative work and students will feel more motivated to perform well because they were involved in the decision making.

Provide badges and rewards

Providing badges and rewards can be very effective in celebrating certain student achievements. This is expected to encourage students perform even better next time. What is more, it can be a great tool for raising student confidence.

Share the progress

Encourage students by sharing any achievements of their peers. Students are more likely to try harder and achieve better results when they feel some competition. The best thing is that they are learning while being involved in fun activities.

Overall, incorporating some elements of gamification into the classroom can help make learning more engaging as well as it can teach students practical skills, encourage collaboration and creativity.

Ofsted requires that you include certain documents on your school website, and all this means at its minimum is that they must be provided as downloads. But, for accessibility, wouldn’t it be nicer to have them readable and embedded on your website? You can probably see where this is going – yes, School Jotter lets you do that! First of all, take a look at this page for an example of what I’m talking about.
Setting this up is easy – first of all we’re going to go into Edit mode, click Insert Item, then choose Document.

You’ll be asked where you want to put it, as usual with these things. Then it’ll bring up the File Upload dialog box – we’ve gone over this before, but for everyone’s benefit here’s how that works again. Navigate to the folder you want to put the file in (or create a new folder using the Add Folder button at the top), then click Upload File.

You’ll get the following dialog box and can add your own documents here:

Note that not every filetype is supported (unsupported types will still be downloadable but will only display as a download link) – the full list of supported types is txt, text, rtf, htm, html, xhtml, pdf, doc, docx, xl, xla, xlc, xlm, xls, xlt, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pps, pot, ppsx, odt, ods, odp, odg, wp5, wpd, and pub. Click Add File or drag your file into the box, then click Start Upload, followed by OK. It should work its magic and leave you with this:

You can customise the width and height of the box through the grey bar that appears at the top of the page when clicking on the element. The controls along the top of the document will let you navigate it, and will work across devices (including mobiles).
Now save and publish the page and you’re done!

It’s that time of the year again, when primary teachers comb the web looking for creative ideas for crafts in the classroom. Eating too many Easter eggs can be unhealthy for pupils due to the high amounts of sugar they contain. Therefore, teachers can keep them busy with creative DIY crafts instead of hiding sugary chocolate eggs all over the classroom.

Let your students feel the Easter spirit by being creative, decorating their own Easter eggs. Some of the greatest Easter egg ideas can be found in this infographic:

Boost learning in the classroom with School Jotter’s Resources app! Create and save your own resources or find hundreds of readily-available ones, easily searchable within the app and share them with teachers in your school.

Have you started creating egg-related lesson plans? If not, you still have time for that. Easter is the perfect time for engaging students in some fun classroom activities.
There are many different ways for celebrating Easter in the classroom. Baking Easter biscuits, egg hunt, colouring Easter themed  illustrations, singing Easter songs, or maybe painting and decorating eggs? Check out our latest infographic to get some inspiration for decorating Easter eggs in the classroom.

Don’t forget about our Easter egg decoration competition!
You have a 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.