Jotter Mobile just got even better with the release of v1.8, which will roll out across all apps by May 5th.
After lots of market research our developers have created the features you most requested, and we hope you will benefit from this free update.                     
Here are some of the changes you can expect to see:

Custom apps:

• Custom sections in the navigation structure. Each custom link consists of a name, icon and an URL. You can define up to three custom sections.
• Reordering and disabling of sections in the drawer menu and the dashboard tray. These are edited from the Mobile Centre module.

All apps:

• Notification badges on sections within the app. These show that new content has been added but not read by the user.
• New expanding dashboard tray option. This can be configured at the delivery stage or can be added with PCR.

If you would like more information about v1.8 or Jotter Mobile please call 0800 862 0492 or fill out our short contact form.

One the best features of Much Wenlock Primary School’s website is their Mail on Monday section. The downloadable PDF newsletter has an update of activities that have happened within the school, useful diary dates and after-school club information.
Many schools update their website regularly with news – but with Much Wenlock, parents know the website will get updated the same day every week. Brilliant for parent/school engagement!

The Shropshire school have really put a lot of effort into its clubs – and this is reflected through their website. The Club Sites section includes details of every club that pupils can get involved with (13 – quite a large number for a primary school!) Each one has its own page, with the days and times you can attend, and the kind of activities that take place.
The Kids’ Zone, too, includes plenty of content for children, from links to fun websites to help with spelling (using our Spellanywhere program) and a log-in section for Student Jotter (our pupil e-portfolio platform).
Much Wenlock Primary School’s website also has an attractive, welcoming design – and ticks all the boxes for keeping parents involved with their children, and pupils engaged with learning!
You can view Much Wenlock Primary School’s website here.

Dunsville Primary School near Doncaster chose a bright, colourful theme for their School Jotter website. It means visitors have a fun and engaging introduction to the school. In fact, the School Jotter website is so appealing, other schools often reference it when their own School Jotter websites are being designed!

The colours and the design of the Dunsville website echoes the content of the website: basically, it’s all about the children. From the uploaded photographs of pupils’ efforts in the Children’s Work section, to a downloadable copy of their child protection proceedures, it’s clear that Dunsville has the pupils’ interests and development at heart. The Ofsted report from 2010, that can be found in the About Us section, sums this up perfectly: “The manner in which it cares for its pupils is exemplary.” The Pupil Premium section even goes one step further – and shows how much money per pupil the school receives per year.
Dunsville Primary School’s School Jotter website depicts a completely transparent, learner-focused establishment. Great when attracting new pupils!
You can view their website here.

Redlands Primary & Nursery School love their website. You can tell by the amount of quality content they regularly upload, and from the level of detail they provide for parents in each of the School jotter-based site’s many sections.
Redlands have found School Jotter easy to use and great for keeping their web visitors up-to-date. In their case study (which you can read here), Website Administrator Patricia White talks about how they use the website to communicate with parents. You can see from sections like the General Information page that Redlands really know their target audience and how they need to be interacting with them: it’s packed with everything you’d need to know, from a list of the school’s facilities, to incentives for 100% attendance records.

The Curriculum section, too, includes downloadable PDFs documents detailing the subjects the school covers, why they cover it and the aims of each subject with regards a child’s development – giving parents a great insight into daily lessons.
Redlands have made great use of the virtual tour, one of School Jotter’s features, to show the school off inside and out. There’s dozens of images of the children’s work in the Gallery section, too. And in the Parents section, they even invite visitors to make suggestions for improvements to the site. We think it’s a lovely to touch on a website that’s all about being open and honest with the parent – and shows how keen the school is to have the best School Jotter website possible.
You can view the Redlands Primary & Nursery School website here.

Your school website is the perfect opportunity to create multimedia activities for children – and Hawes Side Academy’s website, www.hawes-side.org.uk, is a great example of this.
The Blackpool academy’s School Jotter website has everything you’d expect – there’s a calendar of term dates and events, uniform details, all the most recent newsletters uploaded – but Hawes Side have taken it one step further. The Uniform page, for example, has a video hosted by pupils, explaining why they should wear uniform and how it should look.

The School Blog page, too – where teachers have uploaded videos of school activities – is a great example of using the School Jotter template to its full potential. And the Parents And Carers’ blog (within the Parents section) is filled with videos, showing how parents can really get involved with the activities at their child’s school.
But our favourite section of the Hawes Side Academy website has to be the virtual tour, where you can not only tour each area of the school with a multi-view camera – but get a full commentary and guide by the children, too!
Take a look at Hawes Side Academy’s School Jotter website here.

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.

Great school websites are the ones that really know what their audience wants. In the case of Burlington Infants School, Bridlington,  there are curriculum details and newsletters for parents, links to fun websites for children, and Burlington Infants’ history for those interested in the school.
What we also like about Burlington Infants School’s website is the thought that’s gone into every section: so you have the ‘Our School’ section, which includes their mission statement, the history and comments from parents – a fantastic way to promote themselves. There’s the gallery, which is broken down into albums, like the Autumn 2012 collection of images with a link to the term’s planning too (what the children were learning during the term and events during the term).

But best of all there’s the archive: you can go back and look what’s happened at Burlington Infants School over the last couple of years. Of course, the longer the school has their School Jotter website, the more extensive this section will become!
What’s most apparent about the website though, is that it looks like it has become such an integral part of school life for them. With the colourful design, it makes for an exciting introduction to a friendly school. No pictures of Bridlington seafront though – which we were very disappointed about!
You can view the Burlington Infants School website 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!

It’s always great to see a school that takes real pride in the work it does, in the activities that take place, and the achievements of the pupils.
By using School Jotter, schools can use this pro-active approach to engage more with children and parents. This is exactly what Castle Bromwich Junior School, Birmingham have done: resulting in a school website that’s interactive and fun to visit. In fact, we were so impressed with how good their website looks, we’ve made it our Website Of The Week.
The best thing about Castle Bromwich Junior School’s site is how regularly it’s updated. Particularly the news section – with stories covering everything from the netball team’s latest game results, to information for parents on the next school disco. There’s even a group news section – where the children can write about the latest happenings within the school.

The school also use their website to interact with children out of class time. They can access information about the school houses and find online resources regarding e-safety. The website also makes great use of Spellanywhere, so that children can practice for spelling tests or learn the days of the week.
With so much content that’s as equally engaging for parents as it is the pupils, the Castle Bromwich Junior School website is a perfect example of a school connecting with its community online.
You can take a look at the Castle Bromwich Junior School yourself, by clicking here.

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!