Doesn’t July seem like just five minutes ago? It won’t be long now before you’ll be welcoming children into your classroom for a brand new term, the sunny, laid-back days of August a distant memory.

If you’re responsible for updating the school website – or even if you’re yet to try using your website as an engagement tool – here are five things you might want to consider to prepare it for September.
Upload Information About Topics To Be Covered In September
This is a great way to get parents and pupils back into the mindset of learning. For those more proactive parents, it provides them with an opportunity to look at those topics at home with their children; for all parents, it will help them feel more engaged with your school.

This works even better if your school website has a smartphone app; uploading information to your news pages will be pulled through to the app on parents’ phones – meaning they’ll get a notification that there’s something for them to look at on your website! For more information about smartphone apps for school websites, just ask Webanywhere here.
Upload pictures Of Your Newly-Decorated Classroom
As the term progresses, you’ll be decorating the classroom with children’s work. For now, get some exciting photographs of what you have prepared in the classroom so far, giving children a taster for the fun they’ll soon be having in lessons! If your classroom is exciting enough, your children will be itching to get back to school!
Begin Tweeting
Social media is a vital tool for communicating with the world, and schools are using it more and more. If your school uses Twitter already, make sure you start ramping up the number of daily tweets as we approach the start of term, hinting at things to come. Make sure you direct to your school website; if your school website has a Twitter feed, even better.
Check Website Stats
Many school website systems will allow you to look at stats; you may also be able to do this through Google Analytics. If you have it, use this facility to look at the most popular areas of your school’s website – this will help you to determine which areas are most popular/useful for your website’s visitors, and it will also help you to prioritise which areas of the website to concentrate on most.
For example, many schools may find that their term dates is the most popular section of their website. Therefore they may decide to have all term dates uploaded before school starts, for those parents who may forget which day their child goes back!
Have A Spring (Well,  Autumn) Clean
There’s nothing worse than visiting a website and seeing the same content that was on there six months ago. You should always ensure your school website is up to date with the latest news, pupil achievements and the like – but now is also a good time to have a scout through it and remove any content that is either no longer relevant, or is just taking up valuable space.
If possible, try to replace old content with new – but always make sure you have no content that’s going to undermine the website. Scrolling banners inviting people to the upcoming Sports Day – which was two months ago – are among the worst examples.

School Jotter 2 is being constantly developed, and the latest update has some interesting new features for users.
Existing users signing in now will see an updated file manager, that looks and feels easier to use. The file upload section now allows you to ‘drag and drop’ files, which makes adding files is simpler than ever before.

Plus, you can add a profile picture when you log in – making your log in to School Jotter 2 a little bit more personal!
If you’re not a School Jotter 2 user, contact us today to find out more about this innovative easy-to-use school website system – and find out the full range of features and benefits that come with it. Just fill in the form here.

Last week, Webanywhere’s Managing Director, Sean Gilligan, shared his story and experiences with Year 9 students at Holy Family Catholic School, Bradford, for their Enterprise Day. Sean inspired the school by explaining how starting up your own business can be an exciting and rewarding career choice for school leavers.

After his presentation Sean set an Apprentice style task, where pupils were split into groups of eight. Each group had to pick a name for themselves and assign a Project Manager, who then led their team in completing the task, which was to identify a problem in the school and solve it.

After a brainstorming session, each team presented to the rest of the Year 9 students and teachers, with innovative and inspired ideas. These included a salad bar for the school and a student support service. The teachers then scored them out of ten in the style of the Strictly Come Dancing judging panel.

The winning idea was thought up by the group ‘8 Minds’. They came up with the idea of having an ‘Electro-card’, a swipe card that could be used to pay for things in school, for example dinners or trips. This card could then be topped up by parents, avoiding the need for cash in school.

The teams who presented the top three ideas were all given Webanywhere goodie bags.

Sean Gilligan said: “Enterprise Day was a great exercise for Year 9 students to generate creative business ideas. Starting your own company can be within anyone’s grasp ­ and I hope some of these young people at Holy Family Catholic School will be business leaders for Bradford and West Yorkshire in years to come.”

For more information about what Webanywhere do for schools, or to learn more about our work with the community, email me at lucy.smith@webanywhere.co.uk.

Here at Webanywhere we’ve had a busy few months, packed full of events. The season kicked off with Getting I.T Right in Hull at the end of April. Since then we’ve attended over 16 others, including COBIS, E2BN, Imoot, as well as hosting our own Nurturing Online Learning series.

Continue reading →

If you want your website to stand out from the crowd, using video could be the way to go. If a picture paints a thousand words, as the saying goes, imagine how much more you can communicate on film!
Web video has never been so popular, with 72 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube alone every minute. We’ve seen our School Jotter community enthusiastically adopting this trend – particularly the use of video tours of their schools. It’s really simple to upload your own videos to Jotter, and nowadays most schools have access to filming and editing equipment.

If you want a little help however, we do offer a video production service to schools, including planning, filming, editing and publishing your video. Here are a couple of examples of recent videos we’ve produced. You can see more on our Vimeo channel: http://vimeo.com/webanywhere
(if you’d like us to make your school video – email Dave at david.smith@webanywhere.co.uk)

 

Webanywhere’s Managing Director Sean Gilligan was a guest on yesterday’s BBC Breakfast News TV show presented by Susanna Reid and Bill Turnbull, discussing the possibility of including gardening as part of the revised National Curriculum.

Sean was interviewed alongside Chris Collins, Blue Peter’s resident gardener, who participated from his own back garden in London promoting the benefits this new subject could bring to the children, such as physical exercise and team work.
Sean expressed his support too, stating that what he would like to see is “gardening combined with entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial education”. “Kids need to get out of the classroom. Their learning environment affects their engagement, and engagement in education is so, so important” he added.

During the interview, he highlighted the importance of having an entrepreneurial mindset even at an early stage. From his point of view, employability is fundamental for the education process, and should start at Primary schools.

You can watch Sean’s appearance on the video below.

The latest update for School Jotter 2 is an exciting one: all School Jotter 2 users now have access to literally hundreds of clipart images!

The massive bank of images, accessible through your School Jotter 2 account, includes everything from images of the Ancient Romans to seasons, arctic animals to superheroes. You can use them either as part of classroom activities – or to enhance your School Jotter 2 school website.

To access the new School Jotter 2 bank of clipart images, just log in to your account, click on My Site from the top tabs, and then choose My Files from the Manage drop-down menu on the right hand side.  Your files should all appear in the window – but you’ll notice at the top of the window the new Clipart button.

Click on Clipart – and then you can choose from the hundreds of images throughout the dozens of categories on the left! You can download any of the images simply by clicking Download underneath your chosen image.
We’ve tried to cover popular topics being covered by classes this term – and also provide you with images that will enhance your school website. Of course – these are all free to the School Jotter user, to use whenever you want!

School Jotter is Webanywhere’s most popular product. However, the schools that benefit most from what we offer are those who use our three main primary products together: School Jotter, Learnanywhere and Learner Journey.
Cawthorne Primary School are one such school – and it has made such a difference to school life. As well as School Jotter, Cawthorne Primary School now have Learnanywhere, Webanywhere’s primary learning platform, and Learner Journey, the pupil e-portfolio system.

School Secretary Gill Buckingham told us:  “Webanywhere were recommended by our technician who had seen lots of other providers in different schools he visited. We eventually chose School Jotter, along with Learnanywhere and Student Jotter because we wanted children to liaise more between work and school.”
Now, children at Cawthorne Primary School use Learnanywhere and Learner Journey on a daily basis: To share their work with peers and parents, and to do their homework, too. School Jotter has brought more visitors to the school’s website, but Learnanywhere has improved the learning experience.  “I like it because it’s safe, and parents can look at the work their kids have done and the points they’ve earned,” Gill told us. “It has really brought the school, the parents and the children together.”
Read the full case study here.

Last night saw Webanywhere launch Learner Journey here in Keighley. Learner Journey is the new pupil e-portfolio system that allows learners to showcase their proudest achievements – and with the option to communicate with peers in a safe, secure environment, it promotes e-safety in schools.
e-Safety is now a big part of Ofsted’s inspections, so we invited along safeguarding expert Jeff Haslam. Jeff sits on the Education Board of CEOP and is a consultant for the UK Safer Internet Centre – making him the perfect choice for guest speaker.
Jeff took us through Ofsted guidelines and the legal responsibilities for safeguarding in schools, discussing how they can protect both staff and children from the risks the internet presents. A walk-through of Learner Journey followed, with its many functions demonstrated: from sending messages and posting on peers’ walls, to uploading work and collaborating on joint projects. Learner Journey works in a similar way to social networking sites like Facebook – but users’ profiles are not visible or accessible to anyone outside of their school.

Guests were then able to try it for themselves – and enjoy some of the delicious buffet provided! Webanywhere looks forward to working with these teachers further – and help promote safe social networking in schools, with Learner Journey.
If you’d like to keep up to date with Webanywhere events like this, follow us on Twitter (@webanywhere_ltd). If you would like to book a free Learner Journey Demonstration, contact us by clicking here.