Category: Blogs,School Jotter,Videos
Published: March 4, 2015
In our “What is…?” series we move onto looking at the apps that are available in School Jotter, Webanywhere’s very own school website creator. As the number 1 platform in the UK for school websites, we wanted to help explain why the suite is so popular, starting by asking the question: “What is… The Blog App?”
If you’d like to know more about The Blog App then why not head on over to the School Jotter page for more information, or even get a free trial today.
Category: Cloud Computing,School Jotter,Videos
Published: February 23, 2015
The power of the cloud is becoming an increasing necessity in everyone’s lives, and few benefit from it more than busy teachers. The ability to finish work at home and have peace of mind it’ll be on your school PC the next day allows teachers a more flexible workload. So we thought we’d make the cloud that little bit more accessible by creating the OneDrive app. But how does it work? We asked our CEO Sean Gilligan: What is… The OneDrive App?
For more information on the cloud send us an email at infor@webanywhere.co.uk or give us a call on 0113 3200 750
Category: Company News,Products,School Jotter
Published: February 17, 2015
Webanywhere are proud to announce a partnership with CustomTech for distributing our School Jotter e-Learning platform in Australia.
CustomTech have a wealth of experience in deploying and supporting software in the Australian market, and we look forward to a fruitful and productive relationship with them. They specialise in public and private cloud solutions, so are a natural fit for our blended-learning approaches..
With over 25 years of experience, we feel confident that customers in Australia will be very happy with the service and support CustomTech can provide.
Find out more at their website, www.customtech.com.au
Category: Bespoke School Websites,School Jotter,Videos
Published: February 16, 2015
Earlier this month we talked what responsive and adaptive websites are and how they differ from one another. If you like, you can still find our post here, but if you’d rather have our e-learning consultant Chris Forrest explain to you the advantages of responsive design, why not watch our interview with him where we ask: What Is… Responsive Design?
If you’d like to see how our responsive websites work simply go to webanywhere.co.uk on your mobile phone, or even use your computer’s browser and resize the window. The site will adapt on the fly to whatever size it’s put into. It’s little features like this that make Web anywhere’s websites stretch beyond.
Published: February 12, 2015
The government recently released the results of the Workload Challenge Survey, a questionnaire sent out to over 44,000 teachers on their workload and job satisfaction. Predictably, the key pressures listed were those of extensive marking, planning, and most importantly Ofsted inspections.
As a result of this, the government has boiled their response down to five key areas:
We at Webanywhere feel that the future of learning is a blended one, with more and more content going online, and we believe that a VLE can offer a solution to unnecessary workloads, preventing duplication and streamlining the assessment process.
With a VLE you can take your tuition and learning online. Rather than spending sleepless nights marking stacks of exercise books you can instead give feedback via your computer, tablet or mobile device. As everything is digital, there’s no need to worry about the endless organisational headache that is paperwork.
Lesson planning becomes substantially easier when a VLE is factored in as well – rather than writing out your plan manually then trying to stick to it in class, you can create it as a course which can be deployed again and again – you can even include content from elsewhere through formats such as SCORM and Tin Can.
Of course, schools like to see what works before they try something for themselves, and this was a key recommendation of the governmental report. With online learning, it’s much easier both to demonstrate, whether that be to other schools, parents, or even Ofsted.
With teaching quality at the forefront of governmental reforms, the ability to track and show this is absolutely crucial for a school; in this sense, a VLE is useful not just for students but teachers. The enterprise-focussed, Totara LMS is the perfect solution for all your CPD needs.
With its advanced tracking features, Totara is designed for the staff and enterprise markets. If you’re familiar with an open-source LMS you can easily pick up Totara, and managers will find its permissions-based learning and tracking features to be extremely useful, especially when it comes to providing reports to Ofsted. With new standards for headteachers being a big focus of government action, being able to show effective leadership is essential. Let Webanywhere help provide the evidence of your successful management.
We’re a Totara partner and have over ten years’ experience working with schools. We’re happy to discuss your needs and requirements and will work with you through deployment to ensure a smooth transition. Additionally, we’re a Platinum Totara partner, so we can guarantee you’re in safe hands when it comes to VLE management. Contact one of our experts today for a free demo or to discuss your needs.
Recently the Education in Technology Action Group (ETAG) released a report on what they believe the future of technology in education should be. As a follow up to the FELTAG (Further Education Learning Technology Action Group) the ETAG report has plenty to say about how education will change, but what exactly does it suggest for the future? We caught up with our education consultant Callum Craig to ask him: What is ETAG?
If you’re interested in ETAG we’ll be hosting an event on the 25th of February at our head office in Leeds. If you’re interested in attending register for a space now.
Category: School Websites,Technologies
Published: February 4, 2015
With the rise of tablets and smartphones there’s also been the rise of buggy mobile websites, unresponsive buttons and pages that just won’t load on tablets. With such a variety of browsers and products comes concerned website owners, who just don’t know the best solution for an easy-to-use interface.
Responsive Website Design, (RWD) and Adaptive Website Design, (AWD) share the goal of solving these problems, but they use very different approaches.
Responsive websites use CSS3 to create a website that responds to the device it’s on. This gives the site the ability to adapt, with text and images resizing to fit the screen. These websites are great examples of responsive design:
Adaptive websites feature a series of static layouts, which are based on breakpoints for different screens. Adaptive websites do not respond fluidly, like responsive websites, but detects the device prior to loading and calls up the correct resolution. The following links are examples of adaptive websites:
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| Adaptive Website Design |
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So what should we take away from this? Well, responsive website design may lend itself to a less formal and minimalistic format, perhaps with a focus on arts or retail, whereas adaptive design may be more applicable to a more formal site, where a customer’s interests may lie in text-dense or informative articles.
Using these methods will ensure that you can rely on your site being visited and used effectively across devices and screen resolutions, whilst retaining customer satisfaction with a positive experience for user.
We’ve reached the time of year again where snow is in the headlines. Upland areas are inaccessible, cars can’t use the roads and the power’s in danger of going out – all of these having a massive knock-on effect for schools.
As a headteacher, you have the difficult task of considering whether or not to open your school, or perhaps you’re a parent worrying about sending your children out into the cold. At Webanywhere we believe technology can help with the problems weather brings.
Whether your school is a small village primary or a huge comprehensive secondary, getting out the message of closure is often a hassle. If you do have to close you rely on parents checking your website, reading the newsletters you sent out or hoping they’ve listened to broadcasts on the radio or local TV.
The Broadcast app in the School Jotter suite can help with this. With its easy-to-use interface, you can instantly get the message out to thousands of people. Of course, this doesn’t just have to be used for snow – you might want to use it to promote a charity drive or a new promotion at the school – and with detailed segmentation you can target specific parts of the school as you wish, and it has some of the best value tarrifs on the market. For a free trial of the Broadcast app (and the School Jotter suite), visit schooljotter.com.
Establishing good e-learning foundations is not just good for your pupils’ digital literacy – if the school has to close it’s a good way to make sure they can continue learning at home. Webanywhere have several options for VLE provision, and these come with full SCORM-compliance, so you can buy-in new content or port existing courses. Our Learn App for Jotter provides a simple interface to create learning “sites”, which can be accessed from any device, while our more robust provisions are ideal for larger rollout, and as a certified provider you know you’re in safe hands. As above, you can get a free trial of Learn from schooljotter.com, or contact us to find out more about it.
If your content is all online, you know you don’t need to worry about where your students are when they learn. Combine the flexibility of a VLE with the power of the Broadcast app and you can quickly plan for any eventuality
So my first time at BETT as an Exhibitor. Spent many a year trawling around the stands trying to fine that elusive ‘thing’ that would make Teaching/Learning better! So to be on the ‘other side’, enthusing and glad-handing complete strangers, was a little alien at first. However it didn’t take long to share that enthusiasm with our visitors and share all our great products and new features with them.
Friday had a different feel to it compared to the first two days and there were many more visitors at our stand wanting to know about School Jotter and what it and we could do for them.
We got a lot of interest from schools too – organisations using an open-source LMS who had hit a ‘wall’ in terms of its functionality, new features and ability to be used by colleagues in a meaningful and relevant way. In other words they needed some consultancy. They knew how to use it, but wanted to use it better, and they wanted to encourage fellow educators to use it too – a great opportunity here to extend our offering to customers and offer them ongoing consultancy after the initial training.
I remember finding at my previous employer, as well as at many schools, that after the initial flurry of activity of getting an open-source LMS installed and training the staff, there comes a point when you want to start progressing and using in a meaningful way. You’re just not sure how to move it forwards and start engaging students and staff!
Our other customers on the day were keen to see all the features of School Jotter, and to be honest I also took that opportunity to observe the presentations by a group of well-informed and professional staff who were able to read a customers request and tailor the presentation accordingly. I certainly learnt a lot and will be signing up for more training on School Jotter in the coming weeks – as a new starter I’m still very much finding my feet!
I had many former colleagues visit me on the Friday to see how I’d made the transition from the education side over to the corporate world! I think they were impressed with what I’m doing with Webanywhere. There were many positive remarks about the stand, the presenters, the knowledge about e-learning and the passion that was very evident from a group of very engaging colleagues.
Thank you all for a great BETT. I’ve learnt a lot and it’s helped me get a very good understanding of what we do as a company and how there is the potential for new business through clever use of training and consultancy.
Helen Bound
At Webanywhere we’re very pleased to announce the latest addition to the School Jotter suite of apps – Office 365 integration. Microsoft’s online Office software is popular around the world and will allow you and your students to take learning online into a familiar environment. With select schools being able to take advantage of free Office 365 provision for students, there’s really never been a better time to integrate it with the rest of your online learning platform.
If you’re familiar with the School Jotter interface, getting started with Office 365 will be simple and straightforward.
You can see from the screenshot, the interface is simple and intuitive, and provides a familiar frontend to the Office 365 platform as well as a convenient way to organise files. You can even create Word, Excel and PowerPoint presentations straight from the interface.
Of course, as you can see in both the screenshots above, it’s not just Office files that can be stored – you can put anything, from static images to videos and anything else in OneDrive, all conveniently accessible from inside your or your students’ School Jotter accounts. Clicking through to Office 365 itself, we can see all the same documents:
With organisations increasingly seeking a unified online platform, integrating storage, editing and learning capabilities, we’re proud to offer this service to all Jotter customers. To activate a free trial simply check your Jotter App Store. Alternatively, if you don’t have a School Jotter account and are interested in trying out this and many other of our apps, register a free trial of the entire School Jotter suite.
