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.

This week’s website of the week comes to us from the North Featherstone Junior and Infant School based in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. This school believes in “excellence through enjoyment” and it seems to be really focused on making sure that all children feel safe, valued and included in the school life.

I really like the slideshow with some nice pictures of students on the homepage. These pictures go very well with the overall style and the colours of the website. I wish the school added more pictures as it is a great way to learn more about school life without having to search for image gallery. What is more, having images of students on the homepage can help to create the feeling that the website is personalised for children which is a great way of encouraging them to use the website more.

The website layout makes finding everything you need very easy. The main contact details can be found at the top right corner. One of the things that the school did really well was highlighting some of the main pages and putting them in the middle of the homepage with some nice icons. ‘Calendar’ page is very useful in terms of helping students, parents and teachers to stay up to date with school events and other important dates. What is more, the ‘Classes’ page is useful for finding all information relevant for each class.

I think this school website is an example of keeping a website very simple but still making it look good. Well done to North Featherstone Junior and Infant School!

We have another website of the week! This week we’ve chosen a website created by St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in Keighley, West Yorkshire.
What makes a website stand out, is that images of students dominate on the homepage and there is almost no additional written information regarding school on the homepage. Alongside the school name and a welcoming message on the homepage, you can find the latest school tweets at the bottom of the page and the link to follow the school on Twitter. I believe it’s a great way to engage with students and parents on social media.
Although there are no obvious links for more information about the school on the homepage, everything that parents, students and community need can be found at the top right corner of the website. This makes a homepage look very simple and professional.

Another great feature, that the school offers on the website, is a blog for students. This is a great way to get students involved in the creative writing and to share any topics of interest with their peers, teachers and parents. Moreover, the school website includes information about e-safety and some links for more information on how to stay safe online. Very thoughtful!
Overall, a great looking and informative website created by St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School. Well done!

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.

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.

When School Jotter 2 was launched a few months ago, it brought with it a host of new features. For the school website visitor, it also brought with it improved designs – as you can see on this week’s Website Of The Week, Silver Springs Primary Academy, Cheshire.
Silver Springs’ website is a great example of why so many schools are upgrading to School Jotter 2. A bold colour theme brings the school to life the instant you access their website – and School Jotter 2 means it’s optimised for tablet and mobile phone viewing, so people can enjoy Silver Springs on the move, too!

This is possibly one of the easiest school websites we’ve seen to navigate around. Simple menus mean you can find what you need quickly and easily. There’s plenty of content that has been pulled through from the school’s old website too, so you can look back through the archive at photographs and school performance data.
There’s a huge amount of information for parents: including accounts of what the children have been up to by each of the teachers, staff information and advice on healthy eating. And if anyone needs to find Silver Springs, the Contact page includes location information pulled through from Google Maps. Handy!
There are so many other benefits to moving to School Jotter 2, including app bolt-ons and ‘live’ page editing; Silver Springs Primary Academy’s’ website is, to the casual viewer, just the tip of the Jotter 2 iceberg. Take a look at it yourself by clicking 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.