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Webanywhere Opens New Leeds Office

Sean Gilligan and Tom Riordan at the New Webanywhere Office opening in Leeds

It was a great pleasure celebrating the opening of our new office at City Exchange in Leeds. Alongside other important guests and dignitaries we had the Lord Mayor of Leeds Councillor David Congreve and the CEO of Leeds City Council Tom Riordan in attendance. However the main star of the show was a student from Wetherby High School who won our National Poet of the Year Competition.

Famous Yorkshire celebrity and Poet Ian McMillan recited the winning poem on “Do Computers Rule the World?“. I hope you enjoy reading Emily Wilson’s poem here:

Do Computers Rule the World? by Emily Wilson

My dog ate my homework
Was the line that used to be,
But now it’s all gigabytes
And my printers ran out of ink

The old park swing
That was full of joy,
Is now empty
Just swinging in the wind

The boy with his head down
Looking at a screen,
Just missed the chance of a lifetime
A friendship that could’ve been

Emily Wilson, Wetherby High School and Ian McMillan Yorkshire Poet – “Why do Computers Rule the World?”

The mother that climbed monkey bars
Can’t get her child to stop watching ‘Cars’
She asks herself why?
Why don’t children want to see the kites fly?

We’re completely addicted,
Addicted to the net.
Those children who want to make computer games
Instead of becoming a vet

It’s got us in its grubby hand
Controlling us through its links,
We’re buried in the sand
Puppets on strings that can’t blink

Children used to cry
From a grazed knee,
Now children cry
From losing to technology

It’s a disease
And it’s spreading fast
There is no cure
No way you’re going to last

The forever chatting world
Is now silent
All the chatting is online
And bullying is no longer violent

It’s all done online
The hate, rumours, the stories
We’re running out of time
To return to our former glory

Lord Mayor of Leeds at Webanywhere Office Opening

Lord Mayor of Leeds Councillor David Congreve at Webanywhere Office Opening

We don’t dare say it to their faces
But we say it in online places
Where we think we’re safe from torment
But we’re not safe from judgement

So look up from your screen
And see the world as it is
We don’t need to be the robot generation
We need to stop at the outside station

So brake out of the chain
Out of your prison cell
To a world without pain
To a world which isn’t technology hell

I think it’s important that people work with computers not for computers after all it was the ingenuity of mankind that created them in the first place. Of course too much of anything is bad and we need to balance family life and a sense of the real world alongside reaping the many benefits of the connected digital age. I must start turning my iPhone off a little! We must not become slaves to technology, life is too short!

Moodle Moot Edinburgh 2014

One of the key reasons educators and corporations choose Moodle is the strength of the Moodle Community. This year’s Moodle Moot was held in Edinburgh’s Corn Exchange again demonstrating the power of the community where 350 people from across the globe descended on to the Scottish capital.

Martin Dougiamas’ key note was slightly different this year. Martin had flown his children over from Australia to join in with the festivities. Each time a version of Moodle is release traditionally his kids have taken a photo symbolising which version number we are on. The next version of Moodle is 2.7 and will be supported for the next 5 years. Moodle users are recommended to upgrade their installs to this latest version which includes amongst other great features security patches. It was nice to see his kids take a photo with the audience in preparation for the new release in the coming months.

Martin in his key note demonstrated some exciting plans around user notifications and how in particular Moodle can talk to Apple and Google to enable SMART phone notifications. Furthermore, a brand new text editor has been coded from scratch to replace TinyMCE and allows Moodle developers to display only the text editing icons they need enhancing the user experience.

On the Moodle Theme agenda boot strap themes are to be used as standard and the ‘More’ theme was demonstrated showing how teachers can customise their own themes quickly on the fly. Other impressive developments I witnesses included a sophisticated social media and notices module developed by Glasgow College which greatly enhances the student experience online. And finally, I was interested to learn more about conditional learning pathways and how depending on the grades of your students various notifications and additional resources can be unlocked. This enables a personalisation of learning whereby students who are struggling are given extra support materials and tutors are notified to intervene. Gifted and talented learners with higher grades can be challenged with more stretching resources individualising the experience.

Of course it’s not all about the technology it’s the people that make Moodle Moots special. Over lunch I spoke to people from the USA, Poland, Lebanon and Australia – well yes that was Martin Dougiamas the Moodle founder from Perth!

Bradford School of Management International Students

Sean at Bradford School of Management

Every year for several years I have worked with Shahid Rasul and Christos Kalantaridis lecturers at Bradford School of Management challenging students to come up with ideas to problems faced by Webanywhere. Not only does this strengthen our ties with Bradford University and help their mission to ‘Make Knowledge Work‘ but there are real business benefits to working with Webanywhere outsiders.

It is true that executives and managers in businesses can suffer from not seeing the wood for the trees and young dynamic students with fresh thinking can challenge some of your original thinking.

Our work with Christos is particularly interesting as we developed an online Ideas Market which now spans six international Universities two of which are in the Ukraine. Clearly, our online learning solution is much needed given the difficulties posed in the Ukraine and the disagreements between Russia and the West. Indeed, Christos is meant to be visiting another University in the Crimea but given the difficult situation this will no doubt have to be cancelled. The online Ideas Market place will continue to allow collaboration between University research groups irrespective of the political unrest and diplomatic strains.

My work with Shahid’s students has been equally enlightening. Two groups of students have been helping us with the challenge of global expansion. One group focused on our go to market strategy in the USA and another group focussed on issues around the business cultures between our three global offices in Poland, the USA and the UK. It was thoroughly enjoyable watching the students present back their findings at the School of Management.

Hopefully in a few years to come we can re-connect with the international students and who knows perhaps they will run Webanywhere in China!

Our New School Jotter with Education Apps is launched

Over the last year we have spent many hours of development and testing creating a new version of our market leading product School Jotter. School Jotter has a significant customer base in the UK used by thousands of schools. Countless schools on a daily basis rely on School Jotter to edit their school website but the latest version of School Jotter takes teaching and learning online to a new level.

New School Jotter with Education Apps

The old version of School Jotter has been successful in schools with bursars and head teachers logging on to update their website with the latest newsletters, holiday dates and more. So what has changed?

In our new version of School Jotter all stakeholders in school and outside of school are given logins to the system. This include parents, teachers, student and governors. Furthermore, School Jotter is turning from being a website content management system into an education app store.

Webanywhere has developed our own education apps and new apps such as School Merits and Jotter Learn can be used to extend teaching online. School Merits is an online reward system whilst Jotter Learn allows teachers to create compelling learning sites for setting homework or to drive classroom activity as part of a blended learning approach. School Jotter is now fully compatible with tablets and mobile devices and supports mobile learning.

We will continue to develop further education apps for School Jotter whilst incorporating third party education apps such as eBooks and other useful resources. We’d appreciate your feedback on our software. We want to co-create our software with you our customers, so please do let us know if you have ideas for other apps you’d like to see.

I remember my old paper based school jotter at school in the 1990s, how times have changed. Our new version of School Jotter takes teaching and learning online and into the 21st century! We hope this will engage students and improve learning outcomes. Out with the old and in with the new.

Webanywhere at BETT 2014

Sean Gilligan at BETT 2014

Michael Gove’s speech started the BETT Show 2014 at Excel in East London. BETT in it’s 30th year was busy not just with UK schools but many international delegations. The Education Minister mentioned three key words in his speech which give resonance to what we do at Webanywhere. Michael Gove in his speech mentioned open source software and flexible technology that stretches learning outcomes.

Our commitment to the world’s number one open source learning platform is most certainly a positive with the Cabinet Office and Francis Maude recognising the need for free open source software to reduce government spending on IT.

Webanywhere’s core business value is to be flexible so again the need for flexible IT is in parallel with many of our software product roadmaps. Our tag line is stretch beyond and stretching learning outcomes is one way in which we judge whether our software deployments are a success.

I was very proud to launch the latest version of our market leading software School Jotter at BETT. Two additional apps have been launched within the platform including School Merits and Jotter Learn. School Merits is an online reward system and is particularly useful in evidencing how schools utilise their pupil premium budgets. The Jotter Learn application allows teachers to create compelling learning sites within School Jotter. Learning sites can be edited and created in a similar way to your school website but with a different set of widgets designed specifically for digital online learning.

In some ways I don’t like the great expense and cost to both schools and business of the BETT Show. On the other hand it’s great for team building and a celebration of UK innovation in education with a worldwide audience. BETT 2014 was an open source, flexible and a stretching experience and long may it continue. See you at BETT next year.

The Academies Show 2012

Today saw the return of the Webanywhere team to the Olympia in London, promoting our range of online learning solutions at The Academies Show 2012.

We were up bright and early to set up our stand and prepare for the influx of teachers, bursars, governors and educational leaders, all gathered to pick up some invaluable information on the Academies programme.

I’ve spent a busy morning chatting with those at the sharp end, meeting with educators to discuss the issues surrounding Academies, and what Webanywhere can offer.

The show has put on a fantastic programme of lectures and seminars conducted by those implementing the national education agenda and those overseeing the Academies programme, providing some extremely useful guidance.

I haven’t had chance to catch as much of it as I would have liked to so far, as it has been all hands on deck at stand 54, with the Webanywhere team fielding enquiries and providing practical demonstrations of our range of learning software.

Webanywhere have established partnerships with many Academy schools, providing market leading learning platforms, social networking & e-portfolio systems and school websites. We‘ve helped new Academies to hit the ground running and realise the potential of online technology to enhance learning, improve efficiency, and strengthen links with parents. I’m sure today will see the start of several new partnerships.

If you’re coming down this afternoon, please stop by stand 54 and say hello.

No pain no gain