Webanywhere’s Corporate division has been working with the British Safety Council for some time. We have provided them with their learning platform for delivering health and safety training – and now, we’re working with them to help keep secondary school students safe on work placements.

Off the back of recently published Health and Safety Executive (HSE) statistics – 148 people were killed and 21,000 seriously injured at work in the UK last year; a young worker is 50% more likely to have an accident – we’re helping them to provide safety training courses to schools.

British Safety Council’s Entry Level Qualification in Workplace Hazard Awareness is designed for 14-19 year olds, and is an ideal way of preparing them for work experience, or leaving school and entering employment.

You can purchase qualifications for your students now – and, if you’re a Webanywhere customer, you’ll have received an email this week offering you an exclusive discount on bulk ordering of assessments!

If you want to find out more about the Entry Level in Workplace Hazard Awareness, click here.

Since February, Webanywhere has launched many exciting education apps. Now, for our next development, we need your help.
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Since February, Webanywhere has been releasing new education apps every few weeks. So far, apps we’ve launched have included a blogging tool, a school surveys builder, a learning sites tool and an online rewards and behaviour management system.
Now, we’re looking for the next big idea – and this where we need the help of the people who use our apps day in, day out – teachers and pupils.
The development of all our apps has been based on comments, suggestions and feedback from teachers – so we’re launching a competition, Think Of An app, where we’re asking for you to give us your ideas for new apps we can develop.
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.

You can register your school and get your Think Of An App Competition information pack here. The closing date is Friday, 18th July, 2014.
If you have any questions, just email competitions@webanywhere.co.uk.
Our last major competition, Create Your Character, saw primary schools across the UK designing new avatars for our primary VLE. Winners were awarded with a subscription to Learnanywhere, and many, like pupils at St Thomas Aquinas School, Stoke appeared in local papers.
Good luck!

One of the hardest tasks for some schools is not just engaging pupils in their learning – but engaging parents in the pupil’s learning, too.
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The last thing most teachers will be thinking about right now is September. It’s a an age away – a whole new school year! Before then, there are sports days, end-of-year award ceremonies and gifts from pupils to look forward to!
As an e-learning company dealing with thousands of schools in the UK and worldwide, naturally Webanywhere’s workload ebbs and flows with schools’ needs. We’re therefore usually pretty quiet over July and August – which is why we’re offering schools a limited offer.

Plan to start the next school year in style with a new school website design, introducing new pupils and parents to your school, and we’ll knock off £100 if you’re a Webanywhere customer, and 20% if you’re not yet using our School Jotter website system.
To find out more, just get in touch here, quoting our website redesign offer. Before you do, however, we recommend you take a look at some of our latest website designs below.

In the latest of our regular app blog posts, we take a look at the forthcoming Surveys app.
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The App Store is where you can find out more about the Webanywhere education apps currently available. You can also use the App Store to set up a free trial of any of these apps.
To make using the App Store easier, we’ve created a tutorial video, which you can watch below.
If you don’t have access to the App Store, just take a free trial via any of our product websites, such as School Jotter, Jotter Learn and Surveys. Requesting a free trial for any of these products will mean you’ll get access to the App Store, where you can set up further trials yourself.

If you need further information about any of our education apps, or the App Store, get in touch here.

Webanywhere’s range of education apps is continuing to grow. We’ve now four more apps available to save your time, reduce costs and engage your pupils.
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Since the launch of Webanywhere’s brand new e-learning apps in February, Learn and Merits, we’ve added many more to the list – in fact, we now have 12 apps either about to be launched, or currently available!
So you can get an overview of what these are and how they work, we’ve put together an easy-to-digest guide.
This will help you choose the combination of apps that will most suit your school – i.e those that will save you time, engage your pupils and improve your home/school connections.

You can download the guide, 12 Education Apps That Will Benefit Your School, here.
Once you’ve taken a look, find out more about our brand new range of app packages, or book a demo to see the apps in action, by clicking here.

One of the key starting points to improving attainment in your school is to make sure your pupils are engaged with learning. Hook them in from the start and they will want to participate, work hard and see the results.

So how do you stop a classroom from becoming disengaged with learning? It’s simple – make the way you teach them exciting! Below are five steps to increasing pupil engagement using video.

Make it simple

Video is a very fun and different way to not just teach (it plugs into the flipped classroom model very well) but also accept homework. Make sure however you use video, it’s easy for pupils to create a video and upload it to your VLE (although today’s digital natives may be more technically-astute than many of the teachers within your school!).
Alternatively, you could set up a video camera in the classroom, and pupils could take it in turns to answer a question they have been given. This would then require very little technical ability on their part, and you would just need to a basic knowledge of using a simple video camera.

Give them control

Giving pupils the chance to influence how they learn. Give them the opportunity to either respond to a homework question via a written answer or to via a self-made video – chances are most of them will take the option of creating a video, even if they have to learn how to do it!
A video gives them the opportunity to be more creative in their learning – and can also be an opportunity for them to provide the content for classes. For example, a pupil could research a question or find a video clip that the rest of the class has to answer or comment on.
A useful open source video system that allows pupils to create, edit and upload videos is Kaltura.

Give them training

As we’ve already mentioned, getting children to use video needs to be a simple process, so training is essential to ensuring they understand how to use the technology, and fully embrace it in their learning.
Once you have begun using video, particularly for homework, make sure you are on hand to help and answer their questions. For homework, ensure there is somewhere for them to either access a quick guide, message you with questions, or both.

Analyse

If you’re using a VLE in conjunction with your use of video, monitor usage. Look at how often children are using video, who are using it the most and spending time on it, and train or guide pupils accordingly. For those confident, multiple users of video, turn them into mentors for those who need help.

Integrate your video solution

As we’ve already mentioned, having a VLE within your school to host the videos will make implementation much easier. Make the tools they need and the videos you want them to watch easily accessible. Integrating seamlessly with an existing solution, like a learning platform, will mean video is adopted by pupils (and other teachers in your school) more quickly.
You can then work to making video an everyday part of learning within school, from providing videos on a regular basis for homework tasks, to making classroom time a little more fun. Video could be used for everything from being an alternative to textbooks and writing, to giving pupils a chance to really get creative my making mini films, demonstrating, say, what they’ve learned in class about the Romans, or farm animals.