Jotter Tips: Three Different Ways of Adding Documents

Category: Development

Published: May 12, 2017

All of our School Jotter users know that you can add documents to your Jotter site, but not all of them know the three different ways you can display them. It’s important to keep your documents up to date, and it’s also important to add them in the most appropriate format.
Whether you’ve got a long list of files you want users to download, a document you want to display directly on the website or just one you want to add as a link, School Jotter allows you to display your documents in three different ways.
Always save your documents as a PDF if possible, as this is a web safe format that makes sure your document will display exactly as intended without any issues.

1. Adding a document directly onto the page.

When first becoming familiar with School Jotter, this is the way of adding a document that users tend to notice. Simply click Insert Item and Document. You’ll be given black bars on your page with a choice of where to insert it. Click where you want to add the document.

Your file system will then open, and if you’ve already uploaded your file you can simply select ‘choose’ next to it. Otherwise, click ‘Upload File’ at the top of the screen. Click ‘add file’ to select a file from your computer, then start uploading. Wait for the blue bar to finish the upload, then click ‘OK’. Your document will then be displayed on the site as a PDF that users can scroll through and zoom in on.

2. Adding a link to a document

If you want to just link to one or two documents on a page, or you want to accompany documents with a description, adding a link to a document might be your best option. Simply type the title of your document onto the page in any text item. Then highlight this text, and underneath the green bar at the top should be a grey one with a series of options.

At the end of that is a blue chain link you can click on to insert or edit a link. Click on this, then click ‘file’.

Click on the folder with the magnifying glass to enter your file system, and then select or upload a file as normal. If the file you’ve uploaded is a PDF, you can check ‘open file in browser’ to have it open in a new window on click, otherwise, users will have it download to the computer when clicked. Click ‘OK’ and then save and publish and your document will appear as a link on the page. It will look something like this.

3. Add a file list.

File lists are a great way to arrange a group of documents together, and many of our users find them helpful for keeping our policies in. To add a file list, click Insert Item and File List. Click the black bar on the site to choose where to insert it, then navigate to your file system. You can press ‘Select’ next to any file to add it to the file list, and it will appear in ‘selected files’ in the bottom half of the screen.

You can use the arrows at the bottom to re order your files, then press ‘Choose’ at the bottom of the screen to confirm when you’re done selecting them.

They’ll appear on your site as above for users to download, and you can edit them any time by going into edit mode, clicking on to the file list and clicking the three dots at the top to add and remove files.

We hope these three ways of adding documents provide you plenty of flexibility when it comes to keeping your site up to date. If you’ve got any other suggestions for ways we can make this easier, please do get in contact and we will be happy to pass on your suggestion.

Read more about ‘Getting an outstanding school web design‘ from School Jotter team.

Using Private Areas

Published: May 4, 2017

Storing information securely is a key concern for schools. For that reason, we you might find it useful to have a private area on your school website for governors, teachers or OFSTED.
School Jotter makes it easy to add and customise access to your own private area, requiring a login for users to access it.

1 – Firstly, make sure you have a user login set up. You can do this by going to the ‘admin’ section on your jotter site and clicking ‘add user’.
Fill out the details there with whatever you want the user to log in with. Check their application roles have ‘Site’ set to ‘Viewer’ or above.

2 – Then, return to the site. Click ‘Manage’ and ‘Pages’ and then find the page you want to make private in the left hand side. Click ‘access’.

3 – Check ‘private page’ and then enter the name of the user you want to be able to access the page. Set their access to ‘view only’. This will be automatically saved.

Log out of School Jotter and when viewing the page as a non administrator you will be asked for your login credentials.

You can use your new private area to upload confidential documents and share meeting dates, improving communication between staff, governors or your PTA.

Everything you need to know about your Jotter Mobile v1.8 Update

Published: April 28, 2017

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.

How to Design an Awesome School Website

Published: February 29, 2016

Website Design For Schools In The UK

This is a tricky issue for non-experienced website designers. While wanting to save on costs by doing their school web design themselves, schools should make sure they meet the Ofsted requirements when it comes to website content and structure.

One of the problems many school website designers encounter is that they use too many colors making their content very difficult to read. What follows are some tips to help create a beautiful website design for schools in the UK.

Defining Your School’s Brand and Content Strategy

 

Knowing your school’s brand and what you stand for will help you write the content for your school’s website. You need to understand the school’s core values as well as what your school stands for.

 

Then you need to understand what your school does well and what problems it can solve for its students. There are other key questions you can ask yourself before you start creating a content strategy.

 

That strategy will revolve around the answers to all of those key questions. Plus, understanding the purpose of your school will help you create a unique website look that stands out from the crowd.

 

What also is involved in defining your school’s brand will be the following elements:

 

  • Develop your school’s promise to potential parents and students
  • Add a tagline that reflects the purpose of the school
  • Create your school’s identity- this includes creating a logo, finding your voice, the imagery you want to use, and the colours you want to use.

 

Defining your school’s brand is a wide range of elements that help potential and current students know who you are. That makes your website more attractive than using a number of bright or other colours.

 

Building A Solid User-Friendly Experience On The School Website

In the world of web design, there are a lot of options you can use to build complexity to your school’s website design. However, the old sayings ‘keep it simple’ and ‘less is more’ are key guides you should use when creating a primary school website design.

Yes, having fun things like pop-ups, interactive polls, and lots of videos can help but often those elements and other ones turn the user experience into something far more time-consuming than parents want to go through.

The key to building a good user experience on your school’s website is to follow these key tips:

1. Keep The Website Focused On Current School Parents

Make sure the relevant information is easy to access and find. Those important issues of tuition costs, teacher contact opportunities, and school events all should be very easy for the current school parent to find.

2. Focus On Enrollment

Make your enrollment process a priority. Part of the school’s website design is to attract new students to your school. This can partly be achieved through your About Us web page.

3. Help Busy Parents

This is done by having a clear school calendar on your website. Then make it easy to access for those busy parents who do not have the time to waste doing complicated searches or bypassing pop-ups, etc.

4. Miscellaneous Pages

These include contact information, a news and media web page, and more. You want to keep your school web design interesting without making it hard for parents to navigate through all the pages to get the information they want.

Add Interactive Features and Compelling Content for engaging the audience

Once you have understood your school’s identity and purpose, and then fleshed out a content strategy, now is the time to add some more interesting elements to your school website design.

Look for key features that can incorporate interactive activities. These will help engage both parents and students. Then make sure to have someone write excellent content that will be of interest to those school parents.

Content is still king and will help boost your school’s website in the search engine rankings. Bad content is one way to drive prospective students and parents away from your school.

Some Additional Words

Since 2003, School Jotter has been working with thousands of schools across the UK and worldwide to develop the best school website and e-learning software. We always make sure our school web design reflects the ethos of each school.

Contact us today to see how we can help make your school website design more attractive and user-friendly. Our experts will be glad to spend time working with you to enhance your public face.

Feeling Chipper – Why the BBC Micro Bit is going to change the culture of computers for the best

Published: July 9, 2015

The BBC’s unveiling of the latest incarnation of their Micro Bit computer is something of a watershed moment for IT education. Not only does it represent the resurrection of the beloved BBC Micro scheme of the 1980s, but it marks the start of a coding education revolution. For too long kids have only known how to use a computer – now it’s time to learn why it works.
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Making use of the new features for tables in School Jotter 2

Published: May 15, 2015

Making use of new the features for tables in School Jotter 2

Tips from Primary Support Desk Analyst, Matthew Basierak

On the support desk we are often asked how to add and work with tables in School Jotter 2 and we have recently introduced some new features to the system which makes working with tables easier than before.
You can now change the colours of individual cells in a table.  In order to get started you first need to create an empty table by using the table icon in the grey editing toolbar.

Once you have added the table to the page, you need to select and highlight the cells where you wish to change the colour.
See the screenshot on the right.


Once you have highlighted the cells, the next step is to go to the Table menu in the grey toolbar, select the Cell option from the drop down menu then click on Cell Properties.  See the screenshot below which shows exactly where this option is located.

You should now find yourself in the Cell properties dialogue box.  If you then click the advanced Tab in the following window there are options to set the border width, style and colour.
In order to change the colour you can either enter a value into the background field, or alternatively you can click on the small back to the right hand side.  After selecting the colour you will notice that this information is automatically added to the style box.
Please see the screenshot below, which shows the background colour box with a new colour added to it.  You can now click on the OK button to save the changes.

If you need further help on working with tables, please see our help guide using the link below:
http://wa.schooljotter2.com/sites/insert-items/tables

School Jotter – Now with Office 365 integration

Category: Development

Published: January 27, 2015

At Webanywhere we’re very pleased to announce the latest addition to the School Jotter suite of apps – Office 365 integration. Microsoft’s online Office software is popular around the world and will allow you and your students to take learning online into a familiar environment. With select schools being able to take advantage of free Office 365 provision for students, there’s really never been a better time to integrate it with the rest of your online learning platform.
If you’re familiar with the School Jotter interface, getting started with Office 365 will be simple and straightforward.

You can see from the screenshot, the interface is simple and intuitive, and provides a familiar frontend to the Office 365 platform as well as a convenient way to organise files. You can even create Word, Excel and PowerPoint presentations straight from the interface.

Of course, as you can see in both the screenshots above, it’s not just Office files that can be stored – you can put anything, from static images to videos and anything else in OneDrive, all conveniently accessible from inside your or your students’ School Jotter accounts. Clicking through to Office 365 itself, we can see all the same documents:

With organisations increasingly seeking a unified online platform, integrating storage, editing and learning capabilities, we’re proud to offer this service to all Jotter customers. To activate a free trial simply check your Jotter App Store. Alternatively, if you don’t have a School Jotter account and are interested in trying out this and many other of our apps, register a free trial of the entire School Jotter suite.

Think of an App Competition Closing 18th July.

Category: Development

Published: July 7, 2014

Our Think Of An App competition is closing on the 18th of July. We’ve already received many ideas, but there is still time to enter with yours, and you could win £7,000 worth of existing apps like Blogs, Surveys, Learn and Merits for your school. Click here for more blogs on our app suite.

Our recent webinar on engaging parents using apps was a great success. You can watch the recording here for ideas on how to bring interaction for students, parents and teachers using Jotter 2.

The development of all our apps has been based on comments, suggestions and feedback from teachers – and this is your chance to see an app developed and made available to school, based on your own thoughts and ideas. We want you and your pupils to think of app ideas that maybe save you time, make learning more fun, or engage learners more. We’re welcoming ideas from both pupils and teachers.

The best app idea will be rewarded with a full suite of apps, worth £7K. Three runners up will win School Merits and Bloganywhere for their school.

We’ve put together an information pack for the competition (download here), which includes a lesson plan to get pupils involved. The closing date for the competition is Friday, 18th July, 2014.

Sign up for a free fully featured demo of the Jotter system here.

Webanywhere’s Education Apps: Our Downloadable Guide

Category: Development

Published: June 29, 2014

Back in February, when Webanywhere revealed the next generation of e-learning, we had just two apps available to buy: Learn and Merits.
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