Blow up some balloons, bake a cake, pop to Clinton Cards if you need to… Because Webanywhere is 10 years old today!

Way back on 29th August, 2003, Sean Gilligan registered Webanywhere Ltd and, from his bedroom, began creating websites for schools in and around West Yorkshire.

Within two years Webanywhere had moved into its first office, and customer numbers were heading skywards rapidly. The growth has continued ever since, with a move to larger premises a year later as customers, staff numbers and product range steadily increased – and went global.

To mark this milestone event, we have a few special announcements to make over the coming weeks – but for now, Sean, Webanywhere’s owner and founder, had this to say:

“I am proud to be celebrating the fact that Webanywhere is ten years old today. We have thousands of customers around the world to thank – if it wasn’t for them, and our dedicated Webanywhere team, reaching this milestone would have been a much harder feat. Let’s crack open the champagne!”

Here’s what the first ten years of Webanywhere have looked like:

2003: Our MD, Sean, sets up Webanywhere Ltd

2004: We deliver our first website to The Holy Family School, Keighley

2005: We move to our first office space in Keighley, West Yorkshire

2006: We become an open-source LMS partner and expand into a larger office

2007: We launch our first homegrown product, Spellanywhere

2008: We release School Jotter – one of the first school-specific CMSs

2009: Learner Journey is released – the e-portfolio system for schools

2010: As Learnanywhere, our primary school VLE is released, the Webanywhere, Inc. office is opened in Philadelphia, USA

2011: We exhibit at the BETT Show for the first time, as the company is split into Primary, Secondary and Workplace divisions

2012: 100 employees reached, as Webanywhere becomes an approved supplier to the Government Procurement Service in the UK. Webanywhere Sp. z o.o is founded and an office opened in Katowice, Poland. We also launch School Jotter 2

2013: We begin providing tailored broadband services for schools with School Broadband, Sean appears on the BBC – and we celebrate our 10th birthday!

Back in June 2013 Webanywhere launched two competitions: One was to win an e-learning package, including Learnanywhere and Learner Journey, worth over £4000. The other was to win School Jotter 2 upgrade, our school website package, valued at almost £2000.

All schools had to do was fill in a short survey that asked which e-learning products they currently use, if any. A school was then picked at random as a winner for each competition.

The lucky winner of the School Jotter 2 upgrade was St Andrew’s Junior School, Colchester, who will now benefit from a more attractive website design and features like an app for parents – allowing them to access the latest school news via smartphones and tablet computers.

South Elmsall Carlton Junior & Infant School, Wakefield, was the other lucky winner, who won the e-learning package. This will allow teachers to upload work, set self-marking tests and take online registers. In addition it will also provide children with access to their homework, allow them to take tests and also play educational games.

If you want to be our next competition winner, make sure that you keep your eyes peeled when schools return in September!

Now that Learnanywhere is up and running in a lot of Primary Schools we felt that it would be a good time to offer some hands on training for users to show them how to get the most out of the platform. To facilitate this we’ve organised our first Learnanywhere conference which will be at the Mint Hotel, Leeds, on Friday 8th April.

Delegates at this conference will be given some practical guidance on making use of Learnanywhere’s features, get an opportunity to see how content from a range of providers, including Espresso, I am Learning and the Global Grid for Learning can be incorporated into Learnanywhere to produce engaging and varied multimedia driven lessons. The latest features of Learnanywhere will also be demonstrated for the first time, allowing delegates to see how easily SIMS can be integrated into their Learnanywhere website and working through the ways in which this can help to streamline administrative and reporting tasks in school.

The Conference also features the highly acclaimed speaker James Knight of IMA Strategies who will be talking about different communication types and the way they interact online, along with Resource exhibitions, networking opportunities and a chance to share ideas about any aspect of teaching, learning or ICT use in schools.

Click here to read more about the Learnanywhere conference, or e-mail marketing@webanywhere.co.uk to ask any questions you have about the conference.

Another happy Webanywhere customer!

We’re delighted that the South Wales Evening Post has included a good news story from one of our customer schools. The article is reproduced below.

“A LLANELLI primary is on the button when it comes to its website. Dafen school’s website has recently reached a significant landmark, receiving 15,000 hits on its home page — with just over 40,000 pages read. This feat has been achieved since the site went live in March 2009.

School ICT co-ordinator Stuart Jacobs said: “The website has been a great success since it first went live and continues to be a valuable asset to the school.”

The website celebrates the successes of the school, as well as being used as a communication tool for parents and pupils.

The company that supports the website — Webanywhere — recently awarded the site four stars, out of a possible five.”

Visit Dafen Primary School’s website for further details.

As you will have noticed we have now completely redesigned our main Webanywhere.co.uk interface to provide clearer signposting of our main content areas. Over the next few weeks we’ll also be launching new versions of our product-specific microsites for Learnanywhere, Student Jotter, School Jotter, JotterCMS and Payschool.

We’ll be adding blog posts detailing new product functionality as when it’s available so why not bookmark this page.