I might have been guilty lately of an oversaturation of our new uber themes – they aren’t the only thing we offer! That said, they do look absolutely lovely, and I get to pick the Website of the Week, so we’re doing another one – welcome to Alfreton Nursery School’s stunning new website.
Alfreton have been a Jotter user for a long time, and their old Jotter site was often held up as an example of how School Jotter sites can be used and designed effectively. I was certainly planning on featuring it at some time in the coming few months, so imagine my surprise when I got the notification that they’d had a redesign!

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Bright Futures Day Nursery’s website is still under construction. However, there is still plenty of content on the site for visitors.
It’s the design of this website, however, that really makes it stand out. Created to show the nursery itself and the countryside around it (Bright Futures it set within rural Cheshire), it’s one of the best School Jotter designs yet.

In terms of the website’s layout, there’s enough for parents without the content being over-facing: with information about the nursery’s awards, the curriculum and the play areas available to the children. All content can be found in neat, drop-down boxes from the menu across the top.
For parents with children at the nursery, as well as the nursery’s staff, there are user-only areas where they can find extra content – which is great for creating interaction between nursery and parent. It adds another dimension to what is a well-thought-out, attractive and engaging website.
We look forward to seeing the website when it’s fully-populated with content – for now, take a look at the Bright Futures Day Nursery website for yourself 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.

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!