In our “What is…?” series we move onto looking at the apps that are available in School Jotter, Webanywhere’s very own school website creator. As the number 1 platform in the UK for school websites, we wanted to help explain why the suite is so popular, starting by asking the question: “What is… The Blog App?”

If you’d like to know more about The Blog App then why not head on over to the School Jotter page for more information, or even get a free trial today.

Free 30 day trial School Jotter Mobile App

The power of the cloud is becoming an increasing necessity in everyone’s lives, and few benefit from it more than busy teachers. The ability to finish work at home and have peace of mind it’ll be on your school PC the next day allows teachers a more flexible workload. So we thought we’d make the cloud that little bit more accessible by creating the OneDrive app. But how does it work? We asked our CEO Sean Gilligan: What is… The OneDrive App?

For more information on the cloud send us an email at infor@webanywhere.co.uk or give us a call on 0113 3200 750

Free 30 day trial School Jotter Mobile App

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

Earlier this month we talked what responsive and adaptive websites are and how they differ from one another. If you like, you can still find our post here, but if you’d rather have our e-learning consultant Chris Forrest explain to you the advantages of responsive design, why not watch our interview with him where we ask: What Is… Responsive Design?

Get an Outstanding School Web Design

If you’d like to see how our responsive websites work simply go to webanywhere.co.uk on your mobile phone, or even use your computer’s browser and resize the window. The site will adapt on the fly to whatever size it’s put into. It’s little features like this that make Web anywhere’s websites stretch beyond.

It’s in the news at the moment that British children spend more time on homework than most other European nations, and while we, at Webanywhere, are all for the high educational standards this produces, we have to ask the question of whether or not this time is being used effectively. With our suite of apps on the School Jotter platform, we can make the task of homework more efficient, productive and even fun! We’ve included the ways our apps can help out below, and all these apps are available for trial in the School Jotter app store, or you can request a demo here.

Portfolio

With our Portfolio app, it’s simple for students to create their own online learning journeys, in order to create a digital roadmap of their work. The simple, easy-to-use interface (which will be familiar to anyone who has used our Site platform to build their website) lets students and teachers add text, images and other media to create an attractive, interactive display. Teachers can set work to be completed online, then leave comments on pieces, giving quick feedback. As well as this, parents are able to log in and see what their children have been doing, giving a bit or parental oversight to the whole process.

Find out more about our Portfolio app or request a free demo here

Learn

Consider this the staff-side version of the Portfolio app. As a teacher you can create Learning Sites within the school website. These act like real websites but are accessible only by pupils and teachers, and content such as lesson plans and homework can be uploaded and displayed. Combining this with our other apps will really help to streamline your homework process.

Find out more about our Learn app or request a free demo here

Blog

Promote social collaboration with your students through our Blog app. Anyone who’s used a blog before will be instantly familiar with how this works – both students and teachers can create blogs and posts, as well as comment on them. Let your students take their group work online and collaboratively produce great content. Particularly good blogs can be shared or posted elsewhere – an added incentive to perform well!

Find out more about our Blog app or request a free demo here

Spellings

Coming soon from Webanywhere is our Spellings app! One of the most universally set pieces of homework in Primary Schools is the spelling test revision. As with any list memorisation there are various ways that each child might go about committing the information to memory, but we think our spelling app will help to make this both simple and fun. Easily create spelling lists for your pupils and embed the app into your school website for access at home. Users are shown a word briefly then asked to spell it out again – the gamification of revision in this way can really take the strain out of homework.

Find out more about our Spellings App here

Broadcast allows you to communicate with parents by email or SMS through an easy-to-use web-based interface. One great feature is that you can send and receive SMS messages within the Broadcast app. Watch the short video below to see more.

Broadcast simplifies notifying parents. You can select classes of children to send a message to, and that message will automatically go to their parents. Creating customised groups is easy and enables you to target parents of children in clubs or other extracurricular activities. You can even personalise SMS messages by automatically inserting parents’ first or last names into the message.

Broadcast communicates in two ways, SMS and email. If parent doesn’t have a mobile phone, or an SMS is sent but there is a problem with the delivery, Broadcast then automatically sends an email. There are detailed message delivery reports so you can ensure your message is getting out to parents, and contact them by other means if they have not received it.

While sending email is free, topping up SMS credits can be done in two clicks, and you choose the number of SMS credits that suits your situation.
School Jotter now has SIMS integration which means that creating and updating parent and child accounts is automatic meaning no administration time for your staff, and accurate information about your parents and students in Jotter.

Broadcast app simplifies your communications and make for more effective relationships between staff and parents. Try it out now in the School Jotter app store, or request a free demo!

Back in June we launched a new and exciting competition asking teachers and pupils to design a new app for our best selling School Jotter suite.  After all these are the people that use School Jotter and are possibly best placed to guide us on future apps.
The entries were varied and showed a great deal of creativity, we were very pleased with the response. It was a tough job but the decision was unanimous!
We are very pleased to announce that the winner was a pupil from Scargill Junior School in Rainham, Essex. The school will receive the full suite of School Jotter apps, worth £7,000. These include Jotter Learn, Resources, School Merits, Blog, Survey, Forum, Portfolio  and Messages. We hope that the pupils and staff enjoy their prize.
Here is the winning idea and we are sure you will agree that the app icon is eye catching and the description is thoughtfully written.

More information can be found about the School Jotter suite of apps here. Please remember we are always open to suggestions and ideas from schools, so please let us know, prize not included!

We had a fabulous response to this competition, seeing the Tour de Yorkshire really captured your imaginations! A very big thank you to all of the fabulous pupils and schools that sent entries to us. You made the judges job very difficult!
Our winning entry is from a year 3 pupil who attends Skipton Parish Church Of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School. The team is called Speeding Sharks!
I think you will all agree this is a perfect representation of the Tour de Yorkshire which gave Yorkshire an exciting and colourful weekend.

We would like to showcase some other fabulous entries that we believe deserve a well done! 

If you would like to know more about our Bloganywhere app you will find more information here.

Blogging is now regarded by teachers all over the UK as a must-have way to improve literacy skills. It is in the new curriculum and is a great way to motivate your pupils to write for a real audience and get feedback from their teachers, peers and parents if the blog appears on your school website.
With our new blogging app, Bloganywhere, you can improve written English in your class, as well as encourage collaborative working and promote reflection.
On Wednesday, 16th July at 12pm, we are running a free webinar that will explain the benefits of blogging, and then demonstrate how you can harness these benefits with our blogging app, Bloganywhere.

If you would like to join us for this webinar, please email with your name, school name and school postcode to info@webanywhere.co.uk or complete the Get in touch box and we will send you an invitation.
You can find out more about Bloganywhere at www.bloganywhere.co.uk.

Blogging is becoming more and more popular in schools. At Webanywhere, we’ve often had teachers asking us if we could help them with creating blogs that their school could use. So, we’ve developed a brand new app, Bloganywhere, which makes creating blogs and writing blog posts easy for both pupils and teachers.
The Bloganywhere app is part of our Jotter Suite – which means pupils’ blogs can be accessed via one log in page within your school. We’re also developing the app so that, in the next month, it will allow you to post your school’s best blog posts direct to your School Jotter website.

Blogging itself ticks many curriculum boxes – from improving literacy and typing skills to encouraging online collaboration and reflection. Find out how your school can benefit from blogging by downloading our free guide, 7 Reasons Why Schools Should Blog here.
You can read about Bloganywhere, our featured app over at schooljotter.com, here.
Or, if you’re ready to get blogging straightaway, book a Bloganywhere demo here.