When Webanywhere looks at learning trends – which will often inform the direction our products take – we look to what’s happening in America.

Often, whatever happens in the USA feeds through to the UK, and then the rest of the world, afterwards. One of the latest trends is mobile learning, something we’ve blogged about in the past here and here.

Many schools are still hesitant about adopting mobile learning, and even more so about introducing a Bring Your Own Device policy (BYOD). But a recent blog post we read on www.eschoolnews.com highlighted why the trend is actually booming – despite those reservations.

In fact, there are six main reasons why mobile learning, and BYOD is booming – and here they are, based on a recent annual survey completed by parents and educators in the US, called Speak Up, by Project Tomorrow.

1. School and district administrators said in the survey that tablets (41%), mobile apps (22%) and BYOD (22%) have had “a significant impact on transforming teaching and learning.”

2. Of those who completed the survey, 86% said mobile learning increases student engagement.

3. 67% said mobile learning helps each student to personalise learning.

4. Mobile learning helps students develop skills they will need when going to college and starting their career, such as problem solving (51%), teamwork and collaboration skills (47%) and strong communication skills (37%).

5. 32% of the technology administrators who completed the survey said that BYOD “helps schools address budget challenges while still giving students access to technology.”

6. In 2010, the same survey had revealed that only 22% of schools would allow learners to use their own mobile devices in school. THe latest survey, however, showed that this number had rocketed to 41% – with an additional 10% having implemented a BYOD policy. A sign of the times indeed!

If you’re thinking of trying mobile learning, or you would like help with setting up in mobile learning in your school, get in touch with us here.

This weekend, the Tour De France comes to Yorkshire – visiting places like York, Leeds and Harrogate – plus Webanywhere’s hometown, Keighley!
Le Tour Yorkshire is a significant date in the calendar for both sport and for Yorkshire – and we’d like to help schools celebrate. If you are planning classroom activities to mark this weekend’s event, you can download our free Le Tour Yorkshire worksheet below.
The free worksheet can be coloured in by pupils, who can give their rider and bike a striking design – and then name their cycling team!
To download the free Le Tour Yorkshire worksheet, simply click on the link below, then right-click your mouse to save to your computer. You can then print out the free worksheet and hand out to pupils in your classroom.
When your children have completed their classroom worksheets, send them back to us – we’ll pick the best one and award their school our blogging app!

Completed worksheets should be sent to Le Tour Yorkshire Competition, Webanywhere Ltd, Aire Valley Business Centre, Lawkholme Lane, Keighley, BD21 3BB. You can also attach your completed worksheets to an email and send them to info@webanywhere.co.uk. Please include your school name when you send your worksheets through.
The competition winner will be announced on Friday 11th July.
If you’d like to know more about classroom blogging, and using it to improve literacy skills, sign up for our blog – Improving Literacy Skills With Blogging, which takes place on 16th July. Find out more here.
Le Tour Yorkshire Worksheet

The last thing most teachers will be thinking about right now is September. It’s a an age away – a whole new school year! Before then, there are sports days, end-of-year award ceremonies and gifts from pupils to look forward to!
As an e-learning company dealing with thousands of schools in the UK and worldwide, naturally Webanywhere’s workload ebbs and flows with schools’ needs. We’re therefore usually pretty quiet over July and August – which is why we’re offering schools a limited offer.

Plan to start the next school year in style with a new school website design, introducing new pupils and parents to your school, and we’ll knock off £100 if you’re a Webanywhere customer, and 20% if you’re not yet using our School Jotter website system.
To find out more, just get in touch here, quoting our website redesign offer. Before you do, however, we recommend you take a look at some of our latest website designs below.

Create Your Own Character, our latest competition, has now come to a close. After a mammoth effort from pupils, we received almost a thousand entries and spent the best part of a week judging them and now the wait is finally over. We can reveal the winners!

Continue reading →

Last week, Webanywhere’s Managing Director, Sean Gilligan, shared his story and experiences with Year 9 students at Holy Family Catholic School, Bradford, for their Enterprise Day. Sean inspired the school by explaining how starting up your own business can be an exciting and rewarding career choice for school leavers.

After his presentation Sean set an Apprentice style task, where pupils were split into groups of eight. Each group had to pick a name for themselves and assign a Project Manager, who then led their team in completing the task, which was to identify a problem in the school and solve it.

After a brainstorming session, each team presented to the rest of the Year 9 students and teachers, with innovative and inspired ideas. These included a salad bar for the school and a student support service. The teachers then scored them out of ten in the style of the Strictly Come Dancing judging panel.

The winning idea was thought up by the group ‘8 Minds’. They came up with the idea of having an ‘Electro-card’, a swipe card that could be used to pay for things in school, for example dinners or trips. This card could then be topped up by parents, avoiding the need for cash in school.

The teams who presented the top three ideas were all given Webanywhere goodie bags.

Sean Gilligan said: “Enterprise Day was a great exercise for Year 9 students to generate creative business ideas. Starting your own company can be within anyone’s grasp ­ and I hope some of these young people at Holy Family Catholic School will be business leaders for Bradford and West Yorkshire in years to come.”

For more information about what Webanywhere do for schools, or to learn more about our work with the community, email me at lucy.smith@webanywhere.co.uk.

 

Webanywhere’s Managing Director Sean Gilligan was a guest on yesterday’s BBC Breakfast News TV show presented by Susanna Reid and Bill Turnbull, discussing the possibility of including gardening as part of the revised National Curriculum.

Sean was interviewed alongside Chris Collins, Blue Peter’s resident gardener, who participated from his own back garden in London promoting the benefits this new subject could bring to the children, such as physical exercise and team work.
Sean expressed his support too, stating that what he would like to see is “gardening combined with entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial education”. “Kids need to get out of the classroom. Their learning environment affects their engagement, and engagement in education is so, so important” he added.

During the interview, he highlighted the importance of having an entrepreneurial mindset even at an early stage. From his point of view, employability is fundamental for the education process, and should start at Primary schools.

You can watch Sean’s appearance on the video below.