At Webanywhere, one of the most common stories we hear is schools struggling to get to grips with complicated, difficult-to-update websites. By the time they’ve spoken to us the ICT Coordinator has resorted to pulling their hair out; the rest of the school having lost interest months previously.
Redlands Primary and Nursery School were one such school. None of the school website solutions they’d looked at were right for them – they wanted something easy for the school to use on a daily basis. School Jotter, however, was just what they needed.
The school’s Website Administrator, Patricia White, loved the features of School Jotter: from the virtual tour option to its multiple contributors capability, it soon became an everyday part of Redlands School life. Now, everyone from the teachers to parents use it. “115 of our parents have signed up to the electronic newsletter and enjoy regular updates,” says Patricia, who found having the website as a communication tool particularly useful during last year’s heavy snowfall.
In fact, Patricia has been so happy with School Jotter, she’s recommended it to others, which is just about the best kind of endorsement we can hope for.
Redlands’ School Jotter experience is now a case study on our parent website, webanywhere.co.uk – you can read it here.
At Webanywhere we love School Jotter. So it’s nice to hear feedback from School Jotter users who also love it – and, in fact, have used it to change the way they interact with parents and the outside world.
One such school is Otley Street Nursery School, in Skipton, North Yorkshire. A School Jotter user of four years, they recently told us how happy they’ve been using the product – and how it’s meant they have a website that’s not only easy for the staff to upload to and update, but convenient for parents to stay engaged with school life and what their child’s up to.
Mrs Margaret Sharples, of Otley Street Nursery School, recently spoke to us about their School Jotter experience – and you can read the results here.
Of the comments Mrs Sharples made, the one that really put a smile on our faces was this one:
“I’ve recommended it to other people. Websites are a minefield but with School Jotter everything is done for you.”
Which just about sums up everything we wanted to achieve with School Jotter. If you’re a School Jotter user and want to tell us about how much you love it and what it’s done to improve your interaction with parents – please get in touch. We’ll publish the best stories!
When your pupils’ parents visit your school website this month, it won’t just be to see their children in the Nativity play. It won’t just be to find out when the last day of term is.
There’s a whole host of ways your school website can attract more visitors, and stay engaged with parents this winter. It’ll make using your website a more enjoyable experience.
Snow Days
There was a time when parents and children alike would have an ear glued to the radio whenever it snowed, just in case their school announced it’d be closed for the day. Still, you’d always find there were the odd few parents who didn’t get the message – making a wasted journey through the snow and ice to drop off their children.
These days, parents can stay informed of snow days by merely visiting your website, when you can keep them updated not just on whether you’re closing or not, but whether you think you may be closed for longer. School Jotter 2 allows you to update your school website wherever you are, even if you only have a tablet to hand – with easy editing capabilities. School Jotter 2 also offers an update app option, which allows parents to stay informed via a free app they can download. It’ll update them instantly as soon as you add news content to your website.
Non-Uniform Days
Christmas time could be a perfect excuse for a non-uniform day. Charging pupils, say, 50p to come to school in non-uniform is an opportunity to raise money for the school, and it helps them relax a little in the run-up to Christmas. You can inform parents of the special day via the website – and keep them up to date with how much you’ve raised. Building excitement around the day and your aim to collect enough money to, say, buy a tablet for the school may even inspire some parents to give more than just 50p!
End Of Term Awards
It’s the end of the year and the end of term – a great opportunity to award pupils for the hard work they’ve put in since September. Announce the awards via the website and every parent will be proud of their child – meaning greater engagement between parent, pupil and school, and a greater incentive to hit the ground running in 2013.
Pictures of the awards being handed out, with smiling pupils and the work they’ve been awarded for, would make great website content and plenty of festive ‘feelgood factor.’
Christmas Messages
Your website is the perfect tool for sending out a Christmas message to parents – both from the school and from the children. If your pupils are making and sending Christmas cards to each other this month, the school website is where you can showcase them. If you have a learning platform and a student e-portfolio system, encouraging children to send each other e-cards via the messaging system will improve student interaction and build relationships between them.
International Christmas Celebrations
Your website is great for showing the work done within school. So a task for pupils like demonstrating how different countries around the world celebrate Christmas – and pictures of their work posted on your website – shows the world how forward-thinking and all-encompassing your school is. It makes great content away from the typical Christmas activities – and may introduce your school to a much wider audience!
And Not Forgetting…
Decorations! Your school website is your shop window to the world – to parents and potential new pupils alike. So decorate especially for the season – with fun, colourful images, some season’s greetings – maybe even a colour scheme change for the month!
Your school website is the perfect tool for communicating with parents – and a great opportunity for them to engage with your school. It means that, instead of having to pop into the school, or find the phone number, they can discover what their child has been up to, read about forthcoming events and even meet the staff, from the comfort of their armchair.
But what exactly do parents want from a school website? A recent discussion on Mumsnet threw up some interesting comments and suggestions for what would make a good school website for parents – and it also highlighted that, in some cases, parents maybe aren’t getting the information they need from their child’s school website.
The most popular requirements for a good school website were probably the most obvious: many mums expressed a need for a list of upcoming events, online versions of school newsletters and a term diary to all be included.
But other popular suggestions were for content that would help parents engage with the school more – things that don’t always seem a priority when a school website is put together. School club details, school uniform list and that week’s homework were all mentioned, with Mumsnet user meredeux suggesting a “List of holiday activities to replace all those leaflets that keep coming home in the bookbags.”
User piprabbit added: “It needs to build its links to social media especially as there are very active FB groups relating to the school.”
Ofsted reports, school rules and copies of letters home were also listed, so that parents could more actively help their children in the evenings, as was a contacts page – maybe even a teacher ‘about’ section. Which suggests that parents are much more keen to be engaged with their child’s school, on all levels, than you might expect.
Some of the users on Mumsnet even provided details of their favourite sites – with user veritythebrave saying they liked the curriculum and classes part on Shipley C of E Primary School’s School Jotter site. Their website is a content-full, extensive one, and they’ve included most of the popular features mumsnet users mentioned.
The comments in the Mumsnet discussion could provide a useful basis from which to plan your school’s website. Obviously, the more appropriate the content and the easier your website is to navigate around, the more useful it’ll be for the parents to use, and the more they’ll use it. But remember that, as well as being a news portal to get messages to parents, and a great advertising tool for attracting new pupils, your school website is also the perfect opportunity to allow parents to get more involved with the school and its activities, and provide more input into what you do.
Your school website is a vital tool for communication in today’s digital world: make sure you make the most of it!
Our School Jotter customers can call on expert support and advice anytime they need it, by phone, email or live online chat.
We also run free training webinars, open to customers and non-customers alike. We invite you to join our upcoming School Jotter training webinar on Wednesday 21st November from 3.30pm.
The session is to be hosted by Jo Walsh, one of our Support Technicians, who will provide a simple overview of using the School Jotter system to create an engaging school website, and show you some of the more advanced features used to create a website that really stands out.
This session is suitable for existing School Jotter customers looking for a refresher session, or the chance to ask Jo some questions, and also non customers interested in seeing School Jotter in action.
Click here to register for the webinar Once registered, you will receive a confirmation email, and then a reminder one hour before the webinar begins on Wednesday 21st.
The webinar runs from 3.30-4.15pm, with a 30 minute School Jotter tutorial and 15 minutes for questions and discussion. We look forward to you joining us – if you have any questions about how a webinar works please contact us
This webinar is part of a series of upcoming online training sessions being organised by Webanywhere. Over the coming months we will be running further sessions on School Jotter, as well as webinars on:
- Learnanywhere, our primary specific VLE
- the Learner Journey e-portfolio
- Moodle, the worlds most popular learning platform for secondary schools.
Click here to see the schedule of upcoming events
Why not make your School Jotter site stand out with one of our engaging video tours?
Show prospective parents around your school, have children present their latest projects or even interview teachers, or produce a video for twinning projects.
Video can show your school’s individuality and add that special touch to your site. Here is a selection of different styled videos for you to take a look at.
St Francis Catholic Primary School in Bradford used our professional video production service to show off the school’s location to their partner school in America. Pupils helped with the video by writing and presenting their own descriptions of different parts of Bradford, St Francis School and their local church.
Overthorpe C of E Primary School in Dewsbury weaved their school song into the video by having children singing the lyrics at different parts around their school. The lyrics to the song were added as text to create a sing-a-long video.
Sandal Primary School in Baildon wanted to show the different activities going on at their school. A small group of pupils guide the viewer through a day in the life of their school, including a rugby match, a music lesson and a bakery class.
Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Primary School in Leeds wanted a video which would help capture children in their learning environment. The video showed all areas of the school including the tennis and ICT club.
To get a video tour for your school, please contact us, or click here to find out more about our professional video production services.
As you may know, the Department for Education introduced new requirements for school websites in September. We have produced a free guide to the changes, which can be downloaded here.
Changes include:
- Schools are no longer obliged to publish a physical prospectus
- There is a list of specific information which schools are required to make available on their website
- If a school has no website, this information must be published elsewhere on the web, and parents must be made aware of its location
Ofsted are also placing more emphasis on the quality of school websites. The Ofsted School inspection handbook from September 2012 states that planning for the inspection should be informed by analysis of: “information available on the school’s website, which may include a prospectus and other information for parents”. The handbook also states “Schools should encourage parents to complete Parent View by placing a link on their website to the Parent View website” (Parent View being the principal source of information that inspectors will use to judge parental opinions).
As you can see, a fully populated, regularly updated website is now essential to a school. With a School Jotter website, you can be sure this is taken care of. Our expertise in creating outstanding school websites is proven, with thousands of customers in the UK alone.
We create websites tailored to meet DfE and Ofsted standards, as well as to reflect the ethos of a school. The intuitive School Jotter website management system means that any member of staff with minimal technical knowledge can easily keep the website updated with all the latest information, with the Webanywhere support team always there to provide a helping hand if necessary.
Take the stress out of managing your school website: speak to the experts.
The release of School Jotter 2 saw the UK’s most popular school website management system get even better – find out what’s new.
But we haven’t stopped there; School Jotter is under continual development, as we use customer feedback to develop new features and functionality, and strive to improve the speed and performance of School Jotter websites.
Recent new additions include an HTML editor, for the more technically minded member of staff looking to change website code themselves (the Webanywhere support team are always on hand to make the changes if you prefer), and wide ranging enhancements of features such as slideshows, forms and calendars.
We have also added more application servers to improve load balancing and also improved server specifications – put simply we have invested in improving the performance and speed of School Jotter websites!
Continual product innovation and investment ensures that when you become a School Jotter customer, you will have all the latest tools at your disposal, and your school website will be outstanding.
School Jotter 2 allows you to add forms to your school website. This is the perfect way to get feedback from parents, or to make things like absence forms easily available.
The submissions made via the website can be easily managed, as the School Jotter 2 software stores the results, and gives the option to export results to a spreadsheet for analysis / sharing.
Here is a step-by-step guide to adding a form to your site.
- Navigate to Manage> Forms
- Click Add Forms
- Give it a name, and click Fields to add, change or delete fields
- Select field type from the dropdown box – choose from Text field, Text area (to allow longer comments), Dropdown (to add a list of options) Date (to create a Date field) and Captcha (adding a security option, ensuring forms are only submitted by real users!)
A list of questions / options can be added, and easily moved up and down. You can set it so that when a form is completed by a visitor to your website an alert can be sent to an email address of your choosing.
To upload your form to a web page, click Edit Page>Insert Items>Forms. Choose your form, save the page and then test your form. Your test entry should now be recorded in the submissions section of the content management system. To view submissions, navigate to Manage> Forms, and click Submissions.
For more School Jotter guides, visit the FAQs section of our Support page. We also run a Customer Training Centre that offers a host of resources on both School Jotter and School Jotter 2
