The summer holidays are nearly here and we’re celebrating with a prize give away. Webanywhere’s search for School Poet of the Year 2014 begins now!
We are looking for UK based children aged 5-16 to impress us with their literacy skills by submitting a poem or short story based on the title, ‘Do computers rule the world?’.
Ian McMillan, one of the UK’s best known contemporary poets will be helping us in our quest and he will be judging a short list of 25 entries.
The lucky winners will receive one of the following prizes;

• 1st Prize – 1 iPad mini
• 2nd Prize – £50 worth of iTunes vouchers
• 3rd Prize – £25 worth of iTunes vouchers

All three winners will also receive a framed copy of their poem, signed by Ian McMillan himself!

The closing date of the competition will be 10am on 3rd September 2014 and the first prize winner will be invited to our brand new office in Leeds on the 5th September 2014 to receive their prize from Ian in person.
To give one of your students a chance to win, they simply need to send their submission to poems@webanywhere.co.uk before the closing date to stand a chance of winning.
Good luck to everybody!

Blogging is now regarded by teachers all over the UK as a must-have way to improve literacy skills. It is in the new curriculum and is a great way to motivate your pupils to write for a real audience and get feedback from their teachers, peers and parents if the blog appears on your school website.
With our new blogging app, Bloganywhere, you can improve written English in your class, as well as encourage collaborative working and promote reflection.
On Wednesday, 16th July at 12pm, we are running a free webinar that will explain the benefits of blogging, and then demonstrate how you can harness these benefits with our blogging app, Bloganywhere.

If you would like to join us for this webinar, please email with your name, school name and school postcode to info@webanywhere.co.uk or complete the Get in touch box and we will send you an invitation.
You can find out more about Bloganywhere at www.bloganywhere.co.uk.

Our Think Of An App competition is closing on the 18th of July. We’ve already received many ideas, but there is still time to enter with yours, and you could win £7,000 worth of existing apps like Blogs, Surveys, Learn and Merits for your school. Click here for more blogs on our app suite.

Our recent webinar on engaging parents using apps was a great success. You can watch the recording here for ideas on how to bring interaction for students, parents and teachers using Jotter 2.

The development of all our apps has been based on comments, suggestions and feedback from teachers – and this is your chance to see an app developed and made available to school, based on your own thoughts and ideas. We want you and your pupils to think of app ideas that maybe save you time, make learning more fun, or engage learners more. We’re welcoming ideas from both pupils and teachers.

The best app idea will be rewarded with a full suite of apps, worth £7K. Three runners up will win School Merits and Bloganywhere for their school.

We’ve put together an information pack for the competition (download here), which includes a lesson plan to get pupils involved. The closing date for the competition is Friday, 18th July, 2014.

Sign up for a free fully featured demo of the Jotter system here.

When Webanywhere looks at learning trends – which will often inform the direction our products take – we look to what’s happening in America.

Often, whatever happens in the USA feeds through to the UK, and then the rest of the world, afterwards. One of the latest trends is mobile learning, something we’ve blogged about in the past here and here.

Many schools are still hesitant about adopting mobile learning, and even more so about introducing a Bring Your Own Device policy (BYOD). But a recent blog post we read on www.eschoolnews.com highlighted why the trend is actually booming – despite those reservations.

In fact, there are six main reasons why mobile learning, and BYOD is booming – and here they are, based on a recent annual survey completed by parents and educators in the US, called Speak Up, by Project Tomorrow.

1. School and district administrators said in the survey that tablets (41%), mobile apps (22%) and BYOD (22%) have had “a significant impact on transforming teaching and learning.”

2. Of those who completed the survey, 86% said mobile learning increases student engagement.

3. 67% said mobile learning helps each student to personalise learning.

4. Mobile learning helps students develop skills they will need when going to college and starting their career, such as problem solving (51%), teamwork and collaboration skills (47%) and strong communication skills (37%).

5. 32% of the technology administrators who completed the survey said that BYOD “helps schools address budget challenges while still giving students access to technology.”

6. In 2010, the same survey had revealed that only 22% of schools would allow learners to use their own mobile devices in school. THe latest survey, however, showed that this number had rocketed to 41% – with an additional 10% having implemented a BYOD policy. A sign of the times indeed!

If you’re thinking of trying mobile learning, or you would like help with setting up in mobile learning in your school, get in touch with us here.

School Jotter is the UK’s most popular school website system. Over the years, we’ve watched as more and more schools adopt our system and use it to improve parental engagement, bring a school closer to its community and create a focus point for pupils and teachers.
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This weekend, the Tour De France comes to Yorkshire – visiting places like York, Leeds and Harrogate – plus Webanywhere’s hometown, Keighley!
Le Tour Yorkshire is a significant date in the calendar for both sport and for Yorkshire – and we’d like to help schools celebrate. If you are planning classroom activities to mark this weekend’s event, you can download our free Le Tour Yorkshire worksheet below.
The free worksheet can be coloured in by pupils, who can give their rider and bike a striking design – and then name their cycling team!
To download the free Le Tour Yorkshire worksheet, simply click on the link below, then right-click your mouse to save to your computer. You can then print out the free worksheet and hand out to pupils in your classroom.
When your children have completed their classroom worksheets, send them back to us – we’ll pick the best one and award their school our blogging app!

Completed worksheets should be sent to Le Tour Yorkshire Competition, Webanywhere Ltd, Aire Valley Business Centre, Lawkholme Lane, Keighley, BD21 3BB. You can also attach your completed worksheets to an email and send them to info@webanywhere.co.uk. Please include your school name when you send your worksheets through.
The competition winner will be announced on Friday 11th July.
If you’d like to know more about classroom blogging, and using it to improve literacy skills, sign up for our blog – Improving Literacy Skills With Blogging, which takes place on 16th July. Find out more here.
Le Tour Yorkshire Worksheet

For those of you who follow us on Twitter (@webanywhere_ltd) you’ll know that we held a webinar today, Engaging Parents Using The Jotter Apps.
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Back in February, when Webanywhere revealed the next generation of e-learning, we had just two apps available to buy: Learn and Merits.
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