Interesting article debates whether childrens’ behaviour is being influenced as the line between fact and gossip becomes increasingly blurred thanks to unmoderated social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo.
Link to Telegraph article

The NASUWT Teachers Union has said that trying to understand the full impact of the Education funding cuts at this time is ‘like knitting fog’.
Certainly, after the backlash over the scrapping of 700 school building projects, the chancellor announcement that there will be £15.8bn to “rebuild and refurbish” 600 schools should mean that schools won’t need to find this funding from other budgets – what’s your take?

The headline messages we picked out are:

• The schools budget will see a real reduction in Department of Education resource spending of 3% by 2014-15.
• 60% reduction in real terms in capital spending over the Spending Review period. However over the Spending Review period there will be a total of £15.8 billion of capital spending. The average annual capital budget will be higher than the average annual capital budget in the 1997-98 to 2004-05 period.
• Funding grants streamlined i.e. Education Maintenance Allowances ended; procurement and back office savings; 33% admin reduction in real terms by closing NDPBs, reducing headcount, reducing the costs of the DfE estate and cutting nonessential expenditure.

Next steps will include further details contained in a Schools’ White Paper, a Special Educational Needs and Disability Green paper, and confirmation of local authority allocations for schools and early years provision.  We’ll keep an eye in developments and keep you updated on further announcements that are expected throughout the next three months.

As school managers will be aware, the Department of Education has been asked to prepare plans for cuts of between 10% and 20%. This would come to between £5.71bn and £11.42bn.
While it is now widely expected that front-line schools budgets (those received from local authorities via the Dedicated Schools grant,or DSG) will be protected from the worst of the cuts, the full impact on school spending will require very careful reading of the detail.

Of particular interest is the impact on ICT investments within schools. The cuts inevitably carry some threats to the modernisation of the teaching and learning profession – some projects have already been scrapped, including education facilitator BECTA.
On the other hand, there may be opportunities for schools to save costs and increase efficiencies – particularly in areas such as cloud computing, open source and even the prospect of local authority collaboration to achieve savings through sharing resources and/or technology expertise.
Whatever the outcome of Wednesday’s announcement, many schools will be looking very hard at the small print before making planning decisions for their next budget year.

The press is increasingly featuring stories that warn of the negative impacts of social media on school age children. Popular public social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook are regularly blamed for sinister activities including cyber bullying, stalking and even gang violence.
Many believe, however, that the long-term educational benefits of social media far outweigh the risks. Most schools already use the Internet for teaching, and social media concepts are already essential elements in the lives of most students of Key Stage 2 and above.

Schools are already beginning to incorporate ways of using Facebook-like tools such as discussion forums, photo albums, blogs and secure messaging to develop subject learning through closer collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Safe Social Networking Tools are Available!
What’s required by schools is a means of controlling the perceived risks associated with social media. Banning is one solution. The other – dare we say more productive! – option is for schools to incorporate purpose-built internal social networking software as part of their ICT portfolio.
Webanywhere has developed Student Jotter as a way for students to share their work with peers within their social network, turning academic work into fun. Student Jotter avoids the dangers associated with social media use at school. Teachers can monitor and moderate everything that students post online, and third party influences by advertisers or other sources of inappropriate content are completely eliminated.
Social media used for teaching enables students to comment and critique each other’s work, collaborate in teams, and to securely send messages to each other and their teacher with queries or to start a discussion.
There are undoubted dangers in children using public social networks and schools cannot afford to take these risks lightly. However safe internal solutions are now available that schools can entrust to their students, providing them with familiar cutting edge technology and creating controlled social learning networks within the classroom and at home.
Visit the website of Student Jotter, our innovative system
for e-Portfolios and Secure Social Networking to see how it can benefit schools.

To celebrate the launch of our Learnanywhere Primary Learning Platform we’re giving away a FREE Apple iPad to one lucky school.

Primary Schools now have another exciting reason to buy Learnanywhere, the innovative easiest-to-use learning platform designed specifically for primary school communities of teachers, students and parents.
As proof that Webanywhere customers benefit from educational learning platforms that are built on more cutting-edge technology, every school that orders a new Learnanywhere Primary Learning Platform before the end of October can enter into a competition to win an Apple iPad 16GB, worth more than £400.

Just think about the potential uses that your school could have for an Apple iPad. Your ICT team could use it as your school’s remote content management device, ensuring that courses, events and digital assets are uploaded to your learning platform wirelessly in near real time. It could even be used as an incentive to teachers to reward individual teaching staff.
To be entered into the prize draw for the Apple iPad, Primary Schools need to complete the simple sentence below and make sure that they sign up for Learnanywhere by October 31.
HOW TO ENTER
To enter the prize draw, simply sign up for Learnanywhere by midnight on 31^st October 2010 and complete the following statement in no more than 15 words:-
“Learnanywhere is the best choice for primary schools because…
To submit your entry please visit the link below and paste your answer into the ‘message’ box.
Competition to win a £400 ipod
The winning entry will be drawn on November 5^th.

Webanywhere MD creates a place where people and their business ideas come together
Our MD, Sean Gilligan, has started an initiative called Co-Working Keighley. Local people who want to start their own business can develop their ideas in collaboration with like-minded others, speeding up the time taken to develop and launch their business projects.
Sean’s goal for Co-Working Keighley is to provide free support and mentoring from a circle of subject experts that will help other people to become successful in business and create jobs for the local community.
Part of Webanywhere’s company office has already been partitioned off to create desk space for the first batch of co-workers, who are free to use the office area for full time or occasional use.

All new members of Co-Working Keighley will be given their own free website to get their business underway. At the office site, free parking is available plus gym facilities. In addition members can expect free mentoring in a wide range of subject areas, free WiFi, hot desking, tea and coffee. Now add a games room with Playstation, Wii, Pool and Table Football, and other like-minded creative people keen to meet, support and encourage. That’s Co-Working Keighley.
Full details, including how to apply to join Co-Working Keighley, are available from the Co-Working Keighley website.

We are pleased to announce that Learnanywhere, our easier to use yet powerful learning platform,  is now available to Primary Schools.
Learnanywhere was developed in response to Primary Schools’ need for an easier-to-use VLE that promotes learning both within and outside the classroom without the technical complexity or higher cost of alternative systems.
With the ability to combine original and third party content, personal management tools and ‘always on’ accessibility, the new Learnanywhere Primary School platform is a unique teaching and learning tool that
• Rewards personal effort and attainment by primary age children;
• Supports time-pressured teachers (lesson content can be created, and work assessed online in minutes);
• Enables more engaging school-home links.

As well as reinforcing key curriculum learning outcomes, Learnanywhere provides students with rewarding fun, inspiring them to make regular use of their personalised learning platform. In the form of an on-screen avatar ‘buddy’, children can collect rewards for effort and attainment, contribute within their community, engage in a variety of lessons, quizzes and other activities, and chat and play games online with their friends.
Visit the website for more on our learning platform for primary schools (learnanywhere.co.uk) or call us free on 0800 862 0131.

Lent Rise Secondary School in Buckinghamshire has been a Webanywhere customer for the last 3 years. The school is at the cutting edge of ICT, with pupils using their ICT skills in all areas of their work. ICT has even been used to establish links with schools across Europe, Africa and Asia, contributing to the pupils’ cultural awareness.
WebAnywhere products used:
• Language Resources – Frenchanywhere
• School Surveys – Feedbackanywhere
• Online Maths Tests – Mathsanywhere
• Podcasting for Schools – RadioAnywhere
• Video Broadcasting for Schools – VideoAnywhere

Lent Rise (Lent Rise Learning World) is widely used by pupils, teachers, parents and governors.

Parents can raise concerns via the VLE and support their child’s learning through regularly checking their child’s targets.
Community cohesion is an integral and fundamental part of the school’s vision. When Lent Rise came to choose the school’s VLE, it was imperative it provided the necessary tools to enable parental engagement. Lent Rise is now determined to ensure these tools are used.
Parents are shown how the school uses ICT and how it can be used within the home or after school to support pupil and family learning. When the school first started to use School Jotter only 20% of parents
had broadband access to the internet at home. Now, only 6% do not.
Recently Lent Rise School has decided to opt for School Jotter and SIMS integration to enhance their VLE. Integrating the two systems will enable Lent Rise to present parents with
up-to date attendance data on their children and will significantly reduce the administrative duties of the staff.
“WebAnywhere’s School Jotter platform is a versatile and flexible way of providing home access to pupil, parents and the school community. WebAnywhere staff are approachable and take into consideration the needs of the individual school when planning and setting up systems. Pupils, parents and governors all find Lent Rise Learning World a valuable online resource.”
Mrs J Watson
Assistant Headteacher, Lent Rise School