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.
One of the most common questions our consultants get asked is “what’s your delivery process like and how long is it going to take?” This is something you should be asking all school website providers really, as it’ll inform how they’re going to be delivering your product. We’ve produced an infographic here to help explain some of what you might expect to experience over the School Jotter delivery cycle.
Click here for a free, no-obligation, no-payment-information-needed trial of School Jotter
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:
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!
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.
School Jotter recently became fully integrated with a range of brand new e-learning apps. Since the launch of our Jotter Suite, we’ve been busy adding to it, with more apps due for release during the course of 2014.
This week, we’re starting a monthly blog post – in which we feature one of these apps. To start us off, we’ve taken a look at Bloganywhere, our blogging app that we released last month.
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Websites are fantastic tools to get information out, especially those that are easy to edit and update. This is especially so when Ofsted make updates to their requirements, meaning that you need to add more information to your school site.
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Doesn’t July seem like just five minutes ago? It won’t be long now before you’ll be welcoming children into your classroom for a brand new term, the sunny, laid-back days of August a distant memory.
If you’re responsible for updating the school website – or even if you’re yet to try using your website as an engagement tool – here are five things you might want to consider to prepare it for September.
Upload Information About Topics To Be Covered In September
This is a great way to get parents and pupils back into the mindset of learning. For those more proactive parents, it provides them with an opportunity to look at those topics at home with their children; for all parents, it will help them feel more engaged with your school.
This works even better if your school website has a smartphone app; uploading information to your news pages will be pulled through to the app on parents’ phones – meaning they’ll get a notification that there’s something for them to look at on your website! For more information about smartphone apps for school websites, just ask Webanywhere here.
Upload pictures Of Your Newly-Decorated Classroom
As the term progresses, you’ll be decorating the classroom with children’s work. For now, get some exciting photographs of what you have prepared in the classroom so far, giving children a taster for the fun they’ll soon be having in lessons! If your classroom is exciting enough, your children will be itching to get back to school!
Begin Tweeting
Social media is a vital tool for communicating with the world, and schools are using it more and more. If your school uses Twitter already, make sure you start ramping up the number of daily tweets as we approach the start of term, hinting at things to come. Make sure you direct to your school website; if your school website has a Twitter feed, even better.
Check Website Stats
Many school website systems will allow you to look at stats; you may also be able to do this through Google Analytics. If you have it, use this facility to look at the most popular areas of your school’s website – this will help you to determine which areas are most popular/useful for your website’s visitors, and it will also help you to prioritise which areas of the website to concentrate on most.
For example, many schools may find that their term dates is the most popular section of their website. Therefore they may decide to have all term dates uploaded before school starts, for those parents who may forget which day their child goes back!
Have A Spring (Well, Autumn) Clean
There’s nothing worse than visiting a website and seeing the same content that was on there six months ago. You should always ensure your school website is up to date with the latest news, pupil achievements and the like – but now is also a good time to have a scout through it and remove any content that is either no longer relevant, or is just taking up valuable space.
If possible, try to replace old content with new – but always make sure you have no content that’s going to undermine the website. Scrolling banners inviting people to the upcoming Sports Day – which was two months ago – are among the worst examples.
School Jotter 2 is being constantly developed, and the latest update has some interesting new features for users.
Existing users signing in now will see an updated file manager, that looks and feels easier to use. The file upload section now allows you to ‘drag and drop’ files, which makes adding files is simpler than ever before.
Plus, you can add a profile picture when you log in – making your log in to School Jotter 2 a little bit more personal!
If you’re not a School Jotter 2 user, contact us today to find out more about this innovative easy-to-use school website system – and find out the full range of features and benefits that come with it. Just fill in the form here.
