Five years ago I took the plunge into the wonderful world of the smartphone. I’d been using the mobile web on-and-off for a couple of years on my low-powered old Samsung phone, but it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, rife with poorly-designed mobile websites hiding information behind labyrinthine menu structures. With my new HTC Desire though I’d be able to experience the web as its designers meant me to.
I was rather surprised, therefore, to find that I was getting roughly the same mobile experience on my high-end smartphone as I was on my low-tech feature phone. None of the websites I’d visit in the phone’s browser seemed optimised for mobile browsing, it was an overall unpleasant experience. I ended up having to use a browser (Dolphin) which let me spoof a desktop user-agent so I could actually see the content I requested.
Three years ago, the Desire having outlived its usefulness, I upgraded to the phone-du-jour, a Galaxy S3. I hoped that, in the intervening two years, with smartphones getting huge, I’d be able to dispense with my habits of browsing desktop-optimised websites on a (relatively) small screen, but this was not to be. Despite the upgraded power of the Galaxy, websites were just as sluggish and unresponsive as when I was browsing with the Desire.
I’m a bit of a tech geek, so I tend to upgrade my phones relatively often, so 2014 saw the purchase of a shiny new LG G3, with a bigger screen and a frankly silly screen resolution. Due to inertia and habit, I continued to browse using Dolphin, as I did five years ago, requesting desktop versions of mobile sites, unaware of the shifts going on behind the scenes. With Google’s algorithm changes in April 2015, responsive web design had suddenly become not only useful but entirely necessary. Despite carrying a mobile supercomputer in my pocket, the mobile web still looked pretty rubbish to me.
And so recently, on a whim, I switched browsers to something a bit more modern. While it might have won awards back in 2011 and 2012, Dolphin’s showing its age a bit, so I decided to try out Mozilla’s mobile offering and started using Firefox. It seems that, while I’ve been ignoring it, the mobile web actually became usable, and it’s all thanks to responsive web design. No longer do I have to go through the cumbersome process of requesting desktop sites then trying to navigate the tiny menus to get to the page I want. Everything from my news sources to my social media is presented in a mobile-optimised format, the information isn’t hidden behind awful mobile websites or splash screens asking I download an app.
What does this mean for schools? It means that if your website isn’t responsive, you’re missing out on engaging parents. People getting their first smartphone now won’t be using Dolphin, they’ll be using Chrome or something similar – they won’t be requesting desktop views, they’ll be wanting the information right underneath their thumbs, and you need to provide it to them. 60% of web browsing is now done on the phone, can you afford to cut them out or give them a substandard experience?
Is your site responsive? You can check it using Google’s own mobile-friendly test tool. Come up negative? Give School Jotter a try. All new Jotter school websites are fully responsive and mobile optimised.
On May 21st Webanywhere awarded Bush Hill Park primary school with our first ever Flagship School status as a reflection of their superb website and embracement of e-learning and technology within the classroom.
The standard of e-learning at Bush Hill Park has been marked as a huge success in the UK, with their site embracing modern, responsive design that works just as well on mobile, tablets and laptops as on any standard PC. Their use of the Blog, Learn and Messages app within School Jotter also reflects a school that truly believes in an e-learning future, and with a large stock of shock proof iPads they have the hardware to back up the rhetoric.
Bush Hill Park’s Computing Teacher & Subject Leader Mr Fateh Singh accepted the award in a ceremony hosted by the school. When asked about how he felt about receiving the honour he told Webanywhere “It’s been a great success to get to where we wanted to be. We love the website, we love the design, we love working with Webanywhere.”
The award is the first of its kind to be handed out, with Bush Hill Park being the first to achieve the standard of excellence Webanywhere is hoping to bring to schools across the country. With more nominees in the pipeline however, it won’t be long before another one of the Flagship School plaques finds it’s way at another one of these exceptional schools – it might even be your school next!
To see how the event went, check out our mini-documentary on Bush Hill Park and the future of e-learning:
If you’re a Webanywhere customer and you think you’ve fully embraced e-learning and are utlising technology within your school, feel free to contact us at events@webanywhere.co.uk and apply to be a flagship school.
Related Webpages
School Jotter – Find out about the online platform that Bush Hill Park Primary School use to create and manage their website and e-learning facilities
This week it is Staff Blog week here at Webanywhere, so each day we will be sharing with you a new blog post from one of our employees. Today it’s Keith Taynton talking about when he taught English as a Foreign Language teacher in Japan and Sweden and witnessed the impact that technology can have on student engagement.
I taught English for several years in Japan where, despite its status as a highly developed technological society, technology use in schools is surprisingly low. Most schools only use computers to teach a computing curriculum. I never saw a school using a virtual learning environment like School Jotter, and in this respect, the UK is much more advanced.
This post is about how I introduced a learning platform into my English class as a Foreign Language teacher in Japan and observed student engagement and learning outcomes skyrocket.
I had a contact in a school in Sweden and we decided to use the learning platform website to connect our junior high school students (aged 12-13) together for them to practice English, a second language for everyone, in a practical, real world way. The platform was styled as a poster upon which multimedia elements could be pasted. For example, students could record a short video introducing themselves, add pictures and text boxes and decorate it with clipart and so forth.
Being able to practice the four skills of language (reading, writing, speaking and listening) in one environment for a real purpose thoroughly engaged all of my students, even the ones who perceived themselves as weak at English. The motivation and novelty of the project helped them to focus on applying their learning and the reward was more than just a score – it showed them that they were not alone in their struggles to learn English and that it was a very useful thing to learn because it opened doors to the outside world that monolinguals do not have.
In short, the website gave both sets of students exciting opportunities to reach out and apply their academic studies in a useful way. Foreign languages are a fairly obvious candidate for technology enhanced learning, but with a little imagination this could be applied to many other disciplines. Imagine studying music and being able to connect with schools in other countries to hear what their music sounds like, the instruments they use and even co-composing music. Geography and history could be brought to life by sharing stories with peers who live in foreign countries, enriching both sides by breaking down stereotypes and boundaries.
All these are possible with the technology available today. You’re limited only by your imagination.
Keith Taynton
Related Webanywhere pages
Read some of our case studies to see how we’ve engaged other teachers, students and parents using technology in the classroom.
EdTech15 is an upcoming education technology conference based in Leeds, featuring talks from influential leaders in the education technology field, visit the website to find out more.
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:
We launched our Homework Block just a couple of weeks ago, and now we’re very proud to reveal our newest website at www.homeworkanywhere.com.
The new site has everything you need to know about our homework plugin, and you can contact us from within it for a free demo of how its functionality can save teachers time, make submitting homework easier and allow parents to track their child’s progress.
Furthermore, the site is built entirely within Webanywhere’s own School Jotter Site platform, demonstrating again the flexibility and versatility of our platform. The site is fully responsive and we feel it really demonstrates how School Jotter Site can improve your school website.
One of the biggest topics in e-learning at the moment is “gamification”, but there are a few misconceptions about what exactly this is, how you can implement it and how it can help students to learn. We’ll be covering these below, but in its essence, it’s taking concepts from video games and applying them to learning.
What gamification isn’t
Some educators see the word “game” in the title and baulk, having memories of substandard and outdated education software with more focus on entertainment than teaching. Likewise pupils might be sceptical of approaches to insert educational concepts into what’s traditionally seen as a “hometime” activity. This isn’t gamification though. While there’s certainly merit to a synergy of education and entertainment, gamification instead refers to methods of incentivising more traditional approaches, turning tasks into “games”.
What gamification is
Video games generally work on ideas of work/reward relationships – by putting in the work, you get a reward, for example defeating an opponent leads to the player gaining a piece of treasure, or completing a level and receiving an achievement. These can then be compared with others’ results, adding in elements of competition. This contrasts with learning environments, where aside from the long-term educational benefits, students generally have relatively little to gain in the short-term. By introducing achievement points & light-hearted competition, you let students track their own progress.
How you can implement it
The easiest and most efficient way to apply game-based principles to your teaching is through use of a VLE or other online environment. An open-source VLE has the ability to award badges which can display achievements and track progress. These can then be shared and compared with others, with rewards (both digital and physical) given to high achievers.
By a similar token, our own Merits system (free to School Jotter users) uses the concept of Merits as a currency for students, which can be spent either on customising their avatar or purchasing physical goods. This applies the rewards concept to learning and behaviour.
What this means for you
Gamification means more engaged students, who spend less time passively learning and more time actively discovering new information, for a proper flipped classroom experience. By incentivising hard work we appeal not just to students’ desires to better themselves but to show that they’ve bettered themselves. Engage your students, reward hard work and improve your results – gamified learning is a fantastic way to teach.
UPDATE 14/04/2015: Check out our dedicated Homework Block Site!
ORIGINAL STORY: We’re now offering the Homework Block as a part of all of our solutions!
This newly-developed module will simplify any teacher’s life when it comes to managing, setting, tracking and marking students’ homework. Use the Homework Block to:
Track students’ homework
Access to the Homework Block is granted to the teacher, parents and student, meaning all are able to keep track of progress. Parents can log in from home and see what their child has been assigned and a general overview of the students’ work.
Submit homework online
Students can instantly submit their homework from anywhere with an Internet connection, meaning no more forgotten work, and not having to wait for the next day to hand work in!
A useful homework-planning tool
Homework plans for the entire term or curriculum can be entered into the block ahead of time, so you can have it automatically roll out when necessary. Assignments can be set for entire classes, and streaming is even possible for different-levelled classrooms.
We’re confident that the new Homework Block will prove to be an effective way to save you time and effort, reducing one of the most common complaints about teachers’ workloads. For more information, contact a member of our salesteam to discuss your needs and requirements.
After many weeks of work, we’re really proud to announce the launch of our new-look website dedicated to School Jotter at www.schoolanywhere.co.uk. It’s a central resource for all your School Jotter questions and information, and you can custom-build a School Jotter distribution for us to implement for you.
The new site is fully responsive and is designed to look great at any resolution – whether you’re browsing on a 27″ monitor or a 4″ phone, the site should be fluid and responsive.
What’s especially unique about the site and its versatility is that it was built entirely within School Jotter Site – Webanywhere’s own, custom-built school website system. This meant the site was easy to build, with drag-and-drop construction and WYSIWIG editing. We really think that this is an example for us to show the power of Jotter to the world – we’re so confident in its abilities for schools that we’re building our own websites in it!
We’re really pleased with our new website, and we hope you will be too. Check it out at www.schoolanywhere.co.uk.
Continuing our look at School Jotter’s app suite we take a look at the Portfolio app. Using a simple interface, Portfolio allows students to show off their best work in a secure, closed environment. The ability to create a private website means students can learn valuable skills about design and e-safety. Check out the video for more information:
For more information head on over to www.schooljotter.com
Webanywhere are proud to announce a partnership with CustomTech for distributing our School Jotter e-Learning platform in Australia.
CustomTech have a wealth of experience in deploying and supporting software in the Australian market, and we look forward to a fruitful and productive relationship with them. They specialise in public and private cloud solutions, so are a natural fit for our blended-learning approaches..
With over 25 years of experience, we feel confident that customers in Australia will be very happy with the service and support CustomTech can provide.
Find out more at their website, www.customtech.com.au
