Feel free to share and use our latest infographic, which shows some of the best School Jotter apps available in the UK and worldwide. We hope you enjoy it!

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Thousands of student apps are being released every month and it’s almost impossible for teachers to test them all in order to find out which ones are best for their students.

To help you with this, we compiled a list of the best School Jotter apps available in the market that really help students with their everyday learning as well as schools to promote themselves to parents.

#1 The Site App

What is it? – An app that allows you to easily build your school website and edit it at anytime from anywhere.

Features: Translates pages to any language
Analyse visitor numbers and page clicks
Display key dates in one place
Bespoke designs to reflect the colours and ethos of your school
Adding content and pages is quick and easy

#2 The School Merits App

What is it? – This is an online rewards system where you can reward pupils
for good work or behaviour.

Features: Avatar that represents each pupil online
Pupil progress reports can be generated and printed out
Avatar accessories. Add your own items for pupils to buy
Merits integrates with other apps from Webanywhere
School Merits is available to all schools, free of charge

#3 The Surveys App

What is it? – An online survey builder where you can create questionnaires for both inside and outside of school.

Features: Share surveys with pupils, parents and the community
Preset surveys
Emb surveys onto your school website
Create reports to see the responses to your surveys
Make your surveys more visual and easier to complete

#4 The Spellings App

What is it? – Create and share online spelling tests with lists for practice and revision.

Features: Create custom lists
Emb them onto your school website or any other website
Pupils can access spelling lists from anywhere

#5 The Portfolio App

What is it? – ePortfolio for pupils that can be used to display classwork online.

Features: An online space for pupils to share their work
Pupils can choose from a range of colourful backgrounds
Teachers can comment in any page, and give pupils feedback

To learn more about these apps and how they can benefit you and your school, get in touch with our experts at Webanywhere.

Here’s our latest infographic on tips for perfect school websites. Follow our advice to achieve a great-looking website that will make teachers, parents and pupils proud of their school’s web presence.

School website Infographic

Check out our infographic on the pros and cons of homework in primary schools. Teachers should take them into consideration when deciding whether homework is beneficial for their students.

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Homework: Beneficial or Harmful for pupils?
No homework policy has been implemented in several countries, however, some experts still argue on its benefits for student learning.
The Pros

• Homework helps students consolidate what was taught during the school day.
• It lets parents learn what their kids are doing at school.
• Development of self-discipline, time management and research skills.
• Homework facilitates rote learning

The Cons

• Homework can be very stressful for students.
• It drains pupils’ free time for playing, sports and hobbies.
• Students feel their family time is reduced.
• Hatred for a subject can be developed due to the workload.

There in no doubt that homework in primary schools should be as light as possible. Teachers should always try and make it fun by using learning apps like the ones on School Jotter to increase pupils engagement.

It’s that time of the year again, when primary teachers comb the web looking for creative ideas for crafts in the classroom. Eating too many Easter eggs can be unhealthy for pupils due to the high amounts of sugar they contain. Therefore, teachers can keep them busy with creative DIY crafts instead of hiding sugary chocolate eggs all over the classroom.

Let your students feel the Easter spirit by being creative, decorating their own Easter eggs. Some of the greatest Easter egg ideas can be found in this infographic:

Boost learning in the classroom with School Jotter’s Resources app! Create and save your own resources or find hundreds of readily-available ones, easily searchable within the app and share them with teachers in your school.

Easter is fast approaching and primary teachers are looking for quick and easy ideas to engage students with DIY crafting. With that in mind, we created the infographic below, where teachers and pupils can find some of the greatest and simplest craft ideas for the classroom.
Many teachers are using our Resources app to store all the great ideas, documents and images they create or find online. This helps them to enhance the learning experience of pupils every Easter.

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.

Many education experts argue on the effectiveness of reward systems in schools. Traditional rewards like stickers and sweets are losing their value, as nowadays students are more interested in virtual goods like avatars and accessories. Our School Merits app (free to Webanywhere customers) motivates students to go the extra mile by providing them with Merit points, which can be used to purchase avatar accessories, donate to charities or even buy other items of their choice.
We’ve created the infographic below to show the main advantages and disadvantages of using reward systems in schools.