Understanding the Impact of New Technology

In only November last year Conservative MP Elizabeth Truss warned parliament that the UK was in danger of ‘producing a satnav generation of students overly reliant on technology.’ It’s an issue that concerns many who believe devices like calculators, smartphones and tablets prevent classroom interaction and slow learners’ progress.

However, used properly, new technology can actually help teachers improve teaching and learning by giving them the opportunity to build strong working relationships with their pupils.

Using a Virtual Learning Environment

A VLE like Moodle or the primary specific Learnanywhere can help you interact with your class.

Using a VLE you can set personalised, independent learning tasks, so students can progress at a speed that suits them. The activities can be completed at home or school, meaning the resulting whole class teaching sessions no longer have to be diluted to meet a range of abilities.

Instead, with the online results of independent work at your fingertips, larger teaching sessions can be tailored to focus on the specific needs of individuals and groups. Identify lower ability students and scaffold their learning, provide more practice materials for those who are consolidating their skills, or work on a new challenge with your confident learners.

With independent assignments and results all easily available in your VLE, class time doesn’t have to be about standardised presentations or activities anymore. Now, it’s about providing students with your time and advice to aid their independent progress.

Personalising your Teaching with an e-Portfolio

Student Jotter, the e-portfolio and secure social network will help you improve teaching and learning relationships with pupils too.

Using the information pupils safely share with you online, you can personalise your lessons and engage student’s in learning. Pupil’s hobbies and interests can be added to teaching materials, favourite websites can be used for homework tasks; the information you and your class share together can be used to give students a sense of ownership in the classroom.

Making the Most of Advances in Technology

While over-reliance on new technology can hinder teaching and learning in the classroom, it’s clear that used properly it can have a positive effect. Rather than using new innovations to replace traditional teaching methods, professionals need to take advantage of new technology to improve communications with their class. New software makes it easier for teachers to provide the personalised, tailored interaction that all pupils need to succeed.

Wednesday was International day at BETT, and we were delighted to welcome visitors from all four corners of the globe. There was a lot of interest in our VLE solutions from countries as diverse as China, Finland, Colombia and Saudi Arabia, to name a few.

Liam Winterbottom, our principle Moodle consultant, was over at the Google stand on Wednesday morning to deliver a presentation on how we’re working with Google to integrate Moodle and Google Apps for Education. The stand was packed, but I managed to grab a space at the back for the speech.

Thurday and Friday were by far the busiest days – we had hundreds of visitors each day and were performing back-to-back product demonstrations. We were pleased to see a lot of interest in our newest products – School Jotter 2 and Moodle 2 / MIS integration.

It was also nice to see a few familiar faces, as several of the schools we work with popped by to say hello and have a cuppa.

The show was quieter on Saturday, which gave us the chance to spend a bit more time with the visitors we did have. I also took the opportunity to have a look around the other exhibits, which were as impressive and inspiring as ever.

Before long, it was time to pack up and head back up the M1 to Yorkshire, with another successful show behind us – and a stand booked for BETT 2013 at the Excel.

The event is taking place over half a day on Thursday 26th January 2012, with sessions starting at either 11.00am or 1.30pm. A buffet lunch will be provided for all delegates between 12.30pm and 1.30pm.

At the event, you’ll receive information on Complete School Support and Techshare. The packages, designed for schools, include Webanywhere’s primary specific Learnanywhere VLE, and safe reliable internet service; School Broadband. There’s also information on Techshare, the package’s admin and curriculum support scheme designed to save time spent on tricky technical tasks.

The event so far

Yesterday, the show got off to a flying start with a Webanywhere presentation at the Google™ stand. The talk, all about Moodle and Google Apps integration, generated a huge amount of interest in the open source VLE throughout the rest of the day. Highlights of the presentation will be available soon.

Still to come

The team still have a busy week ahead of them though. Plans over the next few days include a prize draw for an Amazon Kindle, demos of the primary specific VLE Learnanywhere, and demonstrations of the brand new website builder School Jotter 2.

The easy-to-use system, designed specifically for teachers, is being shown for the first time at the exhibition and the team are expecting a lot of interest.

Come and visit

If your heading down to the BETT show 2012 in the next few days, come to stand K49 to say hello. Staff will be on hand throughout the day, offering advice on e-learning solutions, demos of products and, of course, refreshments.

Make sure to come back to the blog in the next few days for more photos, videos and updates about the exhibition.

• The achievement of pupils
• The quality of teaching
• The quality of leadership and management
• The standards of behaviour and safety

Take a look at our School Jotter video below, to find out more.

Once upon a time getting your school online was a hassle – until now.

Introducing School Jotter, the new version of the popular website and content management system. It’s the simple way to get your school online.

Easy-to-use

With a new streamlined interface you can edit your site directly on the page, all within a few clicks of the mouse.

Pages and content can be updated from anywhere with an Internet connection. It really is that easy!

Captures your brand and ethos

Choose from a wide range of themes, or have a custom theme designed for your school.

Creates the best possible advert for your school

Once you’ve got your college or school website online, it’s easy to get it noticed too. School Jotter websites are search engine friendly, maximising traffic from all the popular search engines.

Once a site is live it can be viewed in all popular browsers and on all platforms, including mobile devices and tablets.

If you’d like to join the thousands of schools already using School Jotter, call us on 0800 862 0131 or visit School Jotter to sign up for a free trial.

Payschool gives your school and parents more choice over how they manage inbound payments. There’s no need to handle cash and cheques in the school office anymore. Instead,  school payments are processed securely via Sage Pay, then electronically confirmed to ensure money is handled safely at all times.

Benefits of Payschool:

• Flexible payments, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• Improved security with no need for pupils to carry money.
• Reduced administration time.

Parent messenger reduces the administrative burden on your staff by taking parent messaging online. Using the web based interface, personalised communication can be sent to any number of users. Now, there’s no need to rely on letters or school noticeboards to get your point across, just send an SMS or email and use the reporting feature to check it’s been read.

Benefits of Parent messenger

• Quick and easy messaging even with large databases of contacts.
• Reduce workload with no need to print and distribute letters
• Parental engagement thanks to updates on anything from school events and closures to student absences or achievements.

Using Learnanywhere and SIMS integration you can:

• Import users including pupils, staff and parents, from SIMS to Learnanywhere.
• Let parents log in and view attendance and behaviour reports.
• Automatically assign a Learnanywhere account to new SIMS users.
• Disable Learnanywhere accounts through SIMS.
• Import groups and classes into Learnanywhere from SIMS.
• Import events from the SIMS calendar into Learnanywhere.

While SIMS integration is a valuable tool for parental reporting, Learnanywhere helps schools engage parents in other ways as well.

Parents can view events online, such as school trips and parent’s evenings. This keeps them up-to-date with what’s going on in school without relying on misplaced letters.

They can see their child’s schedule too, meaning planning homework sessions and finding out about upcoming exams, activities and clubs is made easy.

Using the online grade-book, parents can also access live reports, compare marks and identify positive or negative trends in results. With up to date information always available online,support and encouragement can be provided when a parent judges it to be appropriate.

Visit our Learnanywhere primary school VLE website for more information.

People now use the Internet and e-learning differently, so to cater for the ever-changing demands of its users, Moodle 2.0 includes some new improvements. You can find out all about them in our Moodle 2.0 video.

Reasons to upgrade to Moodle 2.0:

• A completely redesigned system, Moodle 2.0 looks cleaner and faster.
• A new way of managing your content, with a system to import and export Google Docs, Youtube and Flickr.
• The ability to control your students’ progress with new conditional activities.
• A “Shoutbox” comment block that encourages student feedback.
• A tool which lets you move blocks to the centre of the page.
• The new easy-to-use HTML editor TinyMC.
• A New rating system so you can judge Moodle resources and activities.
• RSS feeds for posts and discussions.

To find out more about the using how Moodle could benefit your school, visit our Moodle VLE web page.