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.

Not everyone is proficient when it comes to using the keyboard, and this is especially true when talking about students – certainly in the early years, even spelling their own names and passwords can be tricky for some.
That’s why, in the latest version of School Jotter, we’ve added Picture Logins as a feature. Rather than entering names and passwords using a keyboard, pupils (or teachers – we’re not here to judge) can log into their Jotter account by entering the correct series of icons from a grid. Setting it up is easy too!

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It is important to acknowledge that students are already interested and engaged in using technology, this creates many amazing opportunities for schools and teachers to benefit from integrating some forms of technology in the classroom and to make teaching and learning more effective. Here are some of the main benefits of using technology in the classroom.

Improves engagement

When technology is integrated into lessons, students are expected to be more interested in the subjects they are studying. Technology provides different opportunities to make learning more fun and enjoyable in terms of teaching same things in new ways. For instance, delivering teaching through gamification, taking students on virtual field trips and using other online learning resources. What is more, technology can encourage a more active participation in the learning process which can be hard to achieve through a traditional lecture environment.

Improves knowledge retention

Students who are engaged and interested in things they are studying, are expected to have a better knowledge retention. As mentioned before, technology can help to encourage active participation in the classroom which also is a very important factor for increased knowledge retention. Different forms of technology can be used to experiment with and decide what works best for students in terms of retaining their knowledge.

Encourages individual learning

No one learns in the same way because of different learning styles and different abilities. Technology provides great opportunities for making learning more effective for everyone with different needs. For example, students can learn at their own speed, review difficult concepts or skip ahead if they need to. What is more, technology can provide more opportunities for struggling or disabled students. Access to the Internet gives students access to a broad range of resources to conduct research in different ways, which in turn can increase the engagement.

Encourages collaboration

Students can practice collaboration skills by getting involved in different online activities. For instance, working on different projects by collaborating with others on forums or by sharing documents on their virtual learning environments. Technology can encourage collaboration with students in the same classroom, same school and even with other classrooms around the world.

Students can learn useful life skills through technology

By using technology in the classroom, both teachers and students can develop skills essential for the 21st century. Students can gain the skills they will need to be successful in the future. Modern learning is about collaborating with others, solving complex problems, critical thinking, developing different forms of communication and leadership skills, and improving motivation and productivity. What is more, technology can help develop many practical skills, including creating presentations, learning to differentiate reliable from unreliable sources on the Internet, maintaining proper online etiquette, and writing emails. These are very important skills that can be developed in the classroom.

Benefits for teachers

With countless online resources, technology can help improve teaching. Teachers can use different apps or trusted online resources to enhance the traditional ways of teaching and to keep students more engaged. Virtual lesson plans, grading software and online assessments can help teachers save a lot time. This valuable time can be used for working with students who are struggling. What is more, having virtual learning environments in schools enhances collaboration and knowledge sharing between teachers.

6 Benefits of Using Technology in The Classroom

Using technology in the classroom offers many benefits for both students and teachers. Today’s students are already interested in technology; blending it into lessons can make learning more fun and engaging. It helps students improve knowledge retention and allows for individual learning, catering to different learning styles and abilities. Technology also encourages collaboration, meaning students can work together more easily.

Technology provides teachers with valuable resources and tools to enhance traditional teaching methods. Virtual lesson plans, grading software, and online assessments can save time, allowing teachers to focus more on students who need extra help. Technology also helps develop essential life skills in students, preparing them for future success.

To learn more about different ways of incorporating technology in the classroom, visit the Webanywhere website.

We’re pleased to announce that Office 365 integration is now fully up and running for anyone using our School Jotter platform. You can now take advantage of the full range of Office 365 features within the School Jotter ecosystem, complete with single-sign-on and file sharing.
Here’s the best new features of integration:

Single sign-on

And it really is single sign-on – with the Office 365 login method, if you’re logged into Office 365 you won’t need to enter anything to get into School Jotter, your computer will handle it all.

Easily add files to your website

Access your OneDrive files from within Jotter, and insert them as items on your School Jotter website. This means you don’t have to worry about taking an image from OneDrive, downloading it then reuploading it to Jotter – it’s right there already!

Outlook Calendar Synchronisation

It’s likely that your school has everything organised in an Outlook calendar already – wouldn’t it be great if this could automatically pull through to your website? The Calendar app can now read from and update from your Office 365 calendars, saving you one more update task.

All your OneDrive files in School Jotter

With the Office 365 desktop app, you and your students can even have access to your desktop files in School Jotter.

Share and collaborate

As well as accessing your own files, you can even share them with others, making it a great way to enable collaboration amongst students.
Interested in the benefits of integration? Contact us for a free demo.

We released an update to School Jotter last week, and it’s added a few new things which I’ll be covering in the coming weeks.
The first new object we’ll be looking at is the (rather strangely-named) Accordion. It’s a great way to create an information-packed page that also embraces minimalism and interactivity. As with all School Jotter objects, you can find it from the Insert menu in Edit mode.

Choose where you want to put it. The accordion will look like a series of headings that stretch across the space allocated to them. They look, once populated with content, something like this:

Clicking a title expands it, as I’ve done with the third and fifth options here. Let’s go back to the Insert page.

Once you’ve inserted your accordion into the page you’ll see this screen. By default there are three sections in the left-most column, but you can add more with the green plus button below. Otherwise, there are three areas to consider:

• Accordion title: The title of the section people can click to expand
• Accordion text: The text revealed when clicking on a section
• Select image: If you’d like to put an image in, you can

Press OK and your accordion will go live. And that’s all there is to it! If you’d like to see the accordions in action, you can visit my School Jotter page at cierandouglass.schooljotter2.com. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
You might want to use them for class information; we find they work particularly well as templates for FAQs. They’re a really useful tool and we’re pleased they’re now available in School Jotter.
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As people start getting older, learning becomes more difficult. Some people argue this is because we already know too much, while others believe that the brain is like a muscle and if we don’t work it out it gets weaker. Whatever the reason is, there are some learning strategies that can help you learn faster, no matter what age you are.
Make your learning much easier by following these tips:

Learning platforms (or virtual learning environments) help learners improve the speed of their learning too by providing immediate feedback after each training session. Check out Totara LMS to learn more.

School Jotter will be updated to version 4.3 this evening. This is a minor release bringing a few patches and bugfixes. For more information on any of these changes, please contact support@webanywhere.co.uk.
System

• Purple Mash Single Sign-On has been added, this can be configured in Admin app > Purple Mash. Note this requires the school has their own Purple Mash account details.
• Picture Logins have been added as an option for student accounts, this can be added in Admin app > Login Settings.
• Stability, performance and security changes.

Sites

• A new accordion element has been added, this allows rows of collapsible information to be added (such as Terms and Conditions, FAQs, etc.)
• Changes have been made to the footer copyright details, on some tenants, to help improve SEO.

Spellings

• Leading and trailing whitespace will now be ignored when evaluating whether a spelling is correct or not.

Admin

• Safety Shield messages can be marked as read/unread, previously it was only possible to delete these messages.

Broadcast

• It is now possible to view more information when SMS text messages have failed to send.

I have a bit of a mea culpa this week – turns out that when I told you how to embed a Twitter feed a couple of weeks ago I was giving you a way which, while acceptable and functional, was both harder to use and gave less customisation options. With that in mind, here’s how to create much more attractive, functional Twitter feeds anywhere on the School Jotter platform.
First of all, you’re going to want to go to your twitter page and click your profile icon in the top right, then click Settings. Alternatively, visit twitter.com/settings/account.

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