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 Learning Technologies

IMG_20140129_110006 We are now onto the second day of the Learning Technologies Exhibition in London, and so far the show has been a real success for Webanywhere.

It began yesterday, with a seminar by our very own Kristine Clough. Kristine presented ‘Successful Onboarding With e-Learning’ – a study into how Webanywhere’s Totara solution met the needs of University College London Hospitals (UCLH). The fact that UCLH’s Rob Beer agreed to co-present the seminar with Kristine was a fantastic bonus, and resulted in standing room only at Theatre 6!

If you’re visiting the Learning Technologies Exhibition today, there’s the chance to win an iPad with Webanywhere and another of our prestigious clients, the British Safety Council. All visitors need to do is visit our stand (158), and then visit British Safety Council’s stand (100), and they’ll be entered into the draw!

Our Workplace Learning team have also put together a guide to Learning Tech – it’s called 7 Things To Look Out For At Learning Technologies 2014 and can be downloaded here.

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.

University of Bradford launches Codeanywhere Survey

Bradford University Codeanywhere launch with Webanywhere

The University of Bradford has launched a survey on the Computer Science curriculum for schools, sponsored by the Yorkshire Innovation Fund and the European Regional Development Fund.

Researchers from the Artificial Intelligence Research Group of the
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science School have this week launched a survey as part of the University’s very first Yorkshire Innovation Fund project, in collaboration with Webanywhere. The research team comprises Professor Daniel Neagu, Dr Paul Trundle, and student interns Rafiullah Hamedy MSc, Lisa Eyre BSc.

The project will survey UK teachers, assessing their opinions about impending large-scale changes to the Computing curriculum to find out if they would welcome assistance to make the transition successfully. The survey also asks for preferences on what collaboration to promote Computer Science subjects for GCSE and A-levels should consider, for example training or teaching materials.

During the launch 300 schools in the Yorkshire and Humberside region have been invited to participate in an online survey that has been created specifically for this purpose. In the coming month, the project will analyse the responses and begin to develop the required assistance.

Webanywhere will then look to sponsor future projects to help assist teachers with the new curriculum and the computer science agenda. We will be running a number of workshops at Webanywhere HQ for teachers to learn more about coding.

The Internet Age is The New Industrial Revolution

Facebook Seminar at NOAH

Having attended the NOAH Internet Conference in London and listened to a number of guest speaks it really has dawned on me that we are living in a special time. The Internet Age is the New Industrial Revolution and we need to educate the children of today to embrace this new phenomena. The internet is transforming many industries and it’s the new gold rush.

It is important that children learn to work with computers and not against them as this will determine career success. The reality is a lot of work traditionally done by people is being automated by computers. Mobile technology, social networks and cloud computing are creating new companies and new industries.

Hence, the need for children to learn how to code computers. Our country needs to create things and this was traditionally done by manufacturing but perhaps now it’s about creating world class software and internet companies.

Marks and Spencer is being challenged by ASOS, Blockbuster by Lovefilm and Netflix. The next generation are wanting to work when they want and where they want leading to the popularity of websites such as People per Hour, Elance and oDesk.

We must not see the internet as a threat but as a real opportunity to change the world for the better. We must educate children in the new skills for the digital age and ensure their living standards are maintained. The rise of China and India is making competition for jobs increasingly competitive so we must differentiate ourselves.

Silicon Valley comes to the UK 2013 @SVC2UK

Sherry Coutu Chair of Silicon Valley Comes to the UK

Sherry speaking at the Houses of Parliament

Sherry Coutu has pulled off another excellent year for Silicon Valley Comes to the UK. I was lucky enough to attend the Houses of Parliament and listen to thought leaders from around the globe on what they see as the future of education.

There were some great speakers including Diane Tavenner (Summit Schools), John Katzman (Noodle Education), Mike Keller (Stanford Library), Ben Nelson (Minerva Project), Louise Rogers (Times Educational Supplement), Eben Upton (Raspberry Pi) and Conrad Wolfram (Mathematica).

I found Diane of Summit Schools particularly interesting. Summit Schools in California are re-imagining the classroom.

Here are just a few of the things they are doing:

Classrooms without walls
Whiteboards on the back of chairs
Weekly 1 to 1 student mentoring which are student led
8 weeks of study away from school in the community and in business
Teachers are conducting high value coaching in classrooms and students are watching videos at home (the flipped classroom approach)
Student’s have individualised learning plans

Mathematica explained the importance of teaching Maths through coding. Conrad explained that coding is to Maths what composing is to English.

Webanywhere are running some computer coding workshops for free in collaboration with Bradford University. You can visit our Codeanywhere site to learn more.

In addition, you can learn more about Silicon Valley Comes to the UK at the SVC2UK website.

No pain no gain