Last month, Webanywhere invited schools and teachers to take part on a e-safety questionnaire (you can see our original blog post here) – and last week, we compiled the results. If you took part- thank you! You’ve helped us build a picture of the state of e-safety in UK primary schools – and here are the results.
The survey revealed that, astonishingly, 63% of teachers don’t feel they have any influence over whether a child uses social networking sites, such as Facebook. Facebook, incidentally, has a minimum user age of 13.
And almost a third – 30% – feel they haven’t had adequate training on how to deal with cyberbullying.

The survey also revealed that 55% were aware that between one and five pupils had been a victim of cyberbullying at their school in the past 12 months.
The purpose of this questionnaire was originally to get a better insight into how schools feel about -and are affected by – e-safety issues. However, since seeing these results we decided to speak one of our customers about the issue – as well as an independent e-safety expert.
Jo Corrigan, Headteacher at Eastlands Primary School in Rugby – who hold an SWGfL 360 safe accreditation and has two members of staff registered as CEOP Ambassadors – took part in the survey and said: “The teaching and learning of internet safety is extremely important from an early age. Key to educating the children is ensuring staff are appropriately trained.
“At Eastlands Primary School we try to develop innovative ways of engaging parents and children with the safe use of the internet – for example, ‘speed-e-learning’ workshops.”
John Carr OBE, Secretary of the UK’s Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety, said: “Teachers can’t teach if they don’t feel confident in relation to the subject they are meant to be teaching about. This survey shows that too many teachers do not feel they have been given proper support to enable them to do their job. That has to be fixed, as a matter of priority.
The full results of the survey, in colourful pier charts, can be seen below. If you’d like to find out more about e-safety, or if you would like to learn more about our free e-safety events, please email info@webanywhere.co.uk.

Blogging is becoming more and more popular in schools. At Webanywhere, we’ve often had teachers asking us if we could help them with creating blogs that their school could use. So, we’ve developed a brand new app, Bloganywhere, which makes creating blogs and writing blog posts easy for both pupils and teachers.
The Bloganywhere app is part of our Jotter Suite – which means pupils’ blogs can be accessed via one log in page within your school. We’re also developing the app so that, in the next month, it will allow you to post your school’s best blog posts direct to your School Jotter website.

Blogging itself ticks many curriculum boxes – from improving literacy and typing skills to encouraging online collaboration and reflection. Find out how your school can benefit from blogging by downloading our free guide, 7 Reasons Why Schools Should Blog here.
You can read about Bloganywhere, our featured app over at schooljotter.com, here.
Or, if you’re ready to get blogging straightaway, book a Bloganywhere demo here.

School Jotter recently became fully integrated with a range of brand new e-learning apps. Since the launch of our Jotter Suite, we’ve been busy adding to it, with more apps due for release during the course of 2014.

This week, we’re starting a monthly blog post – in which we feature one of these apps. To start us off, we’ve taken a look at Bloganywhere, our blogging app that we released last month.
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Over the next three months, as we approach the end of the school year, Webanywhere will be hosting more and more free events for teachers and schools. We’ve recently announced a selection of events around the country – and they can be found on our Events page. We’ve given an overview of each one below.

24th April: Nurturing Online Learning: Liverpool
Our series of free Nurturing Online Learning events reaches Ranworth Square Primary School, Liverpool later this month – where we’ll be covering two key topics: Pupil Premium, and e-safety.
CEOP Ambassador Tracey Gentle will run through the Ofsted guidelines for Pupil Premium – and then explain how our free online rewards system, School Merits, can help you evidence improvements in behaviour, attendance and achievements.
Tracey will then walk teachers through cyberbullying, how to spot it, stop it and prevent it. There will be a Q&A session where delegates can ask anything about e-safety, Pupil Premium or e-learning. Everyone who attends this event will receive School Merits for free.

Find out more about this event here, or sign up by emailing info@webanywhere.co.uk.

29th April: LMS Matters West Yorks

If you’re new to LMS, yet to try it – or need some refresher coaching, our free LMS Matters West Yorks event is for you. Our expert Ben Wagner will explain the benefits of being part of the community, give tips for implementing an LMS, plus give you a ‘quick start’ guide if you’re completely new.

LMS Matters West Yorks, which will be held at Wetherby High School, is Webanywhere’s first event for 2014 – and we expect several more to follow around the country.
Find out more about this event here, or sign up by emailing info@webanywhere.co.uk.

2nd May: Introducing Bloganywhere
Webanywhere launched another new e-learning app this month. Bloganywhere has so far proved to be one of the most anticipated app releases yet – and is an important addition to our Jotter Suite. In this free webinar, you can find out how Bloganywhere can be used to improve literacy skills, encourage collaboration, inspire creativity and engage both pupils and their parents.
Sign up for this free webinar by emailing your name, school name and school postcode to info@webanywhere.co.uk.

How important is e-safety to you?

That’s the question we’re asking primary school teachers this week, in one of the largest surveys we’ve ever done.
As Webanywhere’s e-safety events continue across the country (the next one is in Liverpool – find out more about it here) we want to know more about how this hot topic affects schools. The feedback we get – and any comments received about the subject – will help us to improve our events as well as our products, and cater to teachers’ needs even better.
If you’d like to take part in the survey – it’s just four multiple choice questions, so won’t take long – you can find it here.
Plus, every school that completes the four questions will get our online rewards system, School Merits, for free!

Coxhoe School is a familiar name to primary schools all around the country, thanks mainly to a popular website the school created a few years ago.

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Webanywhere’s latest free guide has been put together to help you create a better website for your school.

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Pupil Premium grants for schools increased at the end of last year – although, as you may have noticed, Ofsted has stepped up its requirements around evidencing the impact of the spending.

It means every school is now accountable for every penny spent – so making sure the money is spent wisely and effectively is of paramount importance.
In November, Professor Steve Higgins from Durham University led a discussion on Pupil Premium with the National College online community (you can see the full transcript on the DfE website (here). He covered purchasing technology to have a positive impact on learning, and provide evidence of improved learning. “Invest in technologies which you see will work well with your children and families, but look carefully at impact,” urged Professor Higgins.

Last month, we launched School Merits, part of our suite of e-learning apps, and it’s a perfect example of how technology can be used to help improve engagement as well as evidence the improvements. School Merits is a reward system that allows learning to be tracked and recognised, as well as flagging bad behaviour. It’s such a perfect tool for helping to engage learners that, this month, we will be running a webinar to show how it can help make a difference.
The webinar will cover behaviour interventions, feedback interventions, mentoring interventions – and then explain how the reporting feature within School Merits will allow you to evidence the subsequent improvements in attainment.
Making A Difference With Pupil Premium will take place on 28th March at 12pm. To sign up for the webinar, simply email your name, school name and school postcode to events@webanywhere.co.uk.

A virtual classroom is one aspect of e-learning. As the name already indicates a virtual classroom essentially is a lesson (classroom) online where attendees from different locations log into a virtual space at the same time. Depending on the platform used, they are then able to listen to the trainer and are also able to interact with the trainer as well as fellow attendees.
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