As discussed previously, integrating technology in the classroom helps to improve engagement, it encourages individual and collaborative learning, provides students with useful life skills as well as it benefits teachers in many ways.

Social media

Most students are already using social media outside the classroom. Embracing social media in the classroom can instantly engage with students and to make learning more fun. For instance, Twitter or Facebook can be used to start a discussion on a particular topic. You can also use social media for making school related announcements, posting reminders about deadlines, uploading pictures or videos.

Blogging

Blogging is a great way to  promote collaborative learning and to encourage open reflection by letting students share their work with others. What is more, blogging helps to develop reading and writing skills. Blog can be used for homework, assignments or for discussing topics of interest.

Podcasts

Podcasts can be very useful for recording lessons or for providing students with additional learning materials. There are many ways that podcasts could be used in the classroom. For example, recording a class discussion, reviewing a book, conducting interviews or broadcasting classroom news.

Video conferencing

Using video conferencing in the classroom creates exciting opportunities. Students can make friends by interacting with other students in different countries or they can learn by participating in virtual seminars with guest lecturers.

Online resources for learning and assignments

Teachers can test students by using online resources or they can make studying more fun by letting students undertake online quizzes to practice different subjects online.

Use videos

Videos can be used for demonstrating practical examples related to subjects taught in the classroom as well as for providing different approaches to subjects. Videos are useful for making learning more fun and engaging and these are the factors that lead to increased knowledge retention.

Games

Consider elements of gamification to improve the way you deliver the teaching content. The main idea behind gamification in the classroom is to increase motivation through engagement by using elements of video games. Some of the ways to gamify your classroom include: gamification of grading, awarding students with badges, using educational games, implementing a rewards system or gamifying homework.

If you want to learn more about different ways of incorporating technology in the classroom, contact the Webanywhere team.

Given the current focus in schools, colleges and other educational institutions on shifting resources online and the growing emphasis on sharing information digitally to streamline processes (perhaps freeing up some of that precious, precious time for teachers to actually go and and do some of that weird ‘teaching’ malarky they’re always on about), it never ceases to amaze me that, when I talk to fellow educators about their in-house VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments), the chatter is often about clunky, difficult to navigate, user-unfriendly (sometimes downright hostile) systems that seemingly do the opposite of what they were designed for.

Now, if I’m teaching, the very last thing I want to be doing is spending any extra time fiddling with a VLE to get it to behave. I don’t want to waste hours on end uploading and re-uploading and re-re-uploading resources because (for some reason only known to the system itself and Dave from IT who’s on long-term sick leave) it just didn’t take the first time. I don’t want my index finger to go numb as I click 48 different links to get to where I know that document is, only for it to be locked because a lesson pro forma is far, far too sensitive to be sharing with the people who actually use it. What I want is to spend my free periods drinking really bad coffee and planning really good lessons, not sat in front of a screen wondering if they would fire me if I just chucked the whole damn thing out of the staffroom window.

Because, as a teacher, time is just about the most precious commodity there is. We’re already well short of it, so if more is taken away by an unwieldy system, it’s taken away from somewhere else. That “somewhere else” might actually be important.

And that’s just us; if you want student buy-in, you best be sure that the product is damn-near flawless, otherwise you’re basically handing them an excuse to do absolutely nothing:

“Did you do your homework?”
“Sir, I couldn’t even find it on the system.”
“Likely story. Let’s just bring up the…oh. Oh OK. I’ll write it on a post-it not for you next time.”

Students won’t use something that doesn’t work. Heck, they won’t even use something that is vaguely difficult to work. And to be honest, I’m right there with them on this. Why should they? VLEs are supposed to augment the learning process, not act as yet another barrier to it. If a school wants to share information in this way than they need to get it right; not only for the sake of teachers’ sanity but also to increase the educational chances of those who are most important in the process.

At its best, a VLE system should be intuitive and reliable for both teachers and students. It should be specifically designed as bespoke to a particular educational organisation because (as is often so easily forgotten) no two places are the same. It will enable learning but be so efficient, that it’s almost invisible as it does so. And what they should never, never do is make a teacher or a student’s life any more difficult than it is already. They should work for us, not the other way around.

But enough with this negativity – in my next blog I’ll be harping on about the joys of using an EFFECTIVE Virtual Learning Environment and how it can benefit teachers (and not just in the ways you might expect). Thanks for reading.

Tom Starkey is an educator and consultant based in Leeds. He’s written for the Times Educational Supplement and Teach Secondary magazine. He tweets at @tstarkey1212 and writes at stackofmarking.wordpress.com.

It is important to acknowledge that students are already interested and engaged in using technology, this creates many amazing opportunities for schools and teachers to benefit from integrating some forms of technology in the classroom and to make teaching and learning more effective. Here are some of the main benefits of using technology in the classroom.

Improves engagement

When technology is integrated into lessons, students are expected to be more interested in the subjects they are studying. Technology provides different opportunities to make learning more fun and enjoyable in terms of teaching same things in new ways. For instance, delivering teaching through gamification, taking students on virtual field trips and using other online learning resources. What is more, technology can encourage a more active participation in the learning process which can be hard to achieve through a traditional lecture environment.

Improves knowledge retention

Students who are engaged and interested in things they are studying, are expected to have a better knowledge retention. As mentioned before, technology can help to encourage active participation in the classroom which also is a very important factor for increased knowledge retention. Different forms of technology can be used to experiment with and decide what works best for students in terms of retaining their knowledge.

Encourages individual learning

No one learns in the same way because of different learning styles and different abilities. Technology provides great opportunities for making learning more effective for everyone with different needs. For example, students can learn at their own speed, review difficult concepts or skip ahead if they need to. What is more, technology can provide more opportunities for struggling or disabled students. Access to the Internet gives students access to a broad range of resources to conduct research in different ways, which in turn can increase the engagement.

Encourages collaboration

Students can practice collaboration skills by getting involved in different online activities. For instance, working on different projects by collaborating with others on forums or by sharing documents on their virtual learning environments. Technology can encourage collaboration with students in the same classroom, same school and even with other classrooms around the world.

Students can learn useful life skills through technology

By using technology in the classroom, both teachers and students can develop skills essential for the 21st century. Students can gain the skills they will need to be successful in the future. Modern learning is about collaborating with others, solving complex problems, critical thinking, developing different forms of communication and leadership skills, and improving motivation and productivity. What is more, technology can help develop many practical skills, including creating presentations, learning to differentiate reliable from unreliable sources on the Internet, maintaining proper online etiquette, and writing emails. These are very important skills that can be developed in the classroom.

Benefits for teachers

With countless online resources, technology can help improve teaching. Teachers can use different apps or trusted online resources to enhance the traditional ways of teaching and to keep students more engaged. Virtual lesson plans, grading software and online assessments can help teachers save a lot time. This valuable time can be used for working with students who are struggling. What is more, having virtual learning environments in schools enhances collaboration and knowledge sharing between teachers.

To learn more about different ways of incorporating technology in the classroom, visit the Webanywhere website.

We’re pleased to announce that Office 365 integration is now fully up and running for anyone using our School Jotter platform. You can now take advantage of the full range of Office 365 features within the School Jotter ecosystem, complete with single-sign-on and file sharing.
Here’s the best new features of integration:

Single sign-on

And it really is single sign-on – with the Office 365 login method, if you’re logged into Office 365 you won’t need to enter anything to get into School Jotter, your computer will handle it all.

Easily add files to your website

Access your OneDrive files from within Jotter, and insert them as items on your School Jotter website. This means you don’t have to worry about taking an image from OneDrive, downloading it then reuploading it to Jotter – it’s right there already!

Outlook Calendar Synchronisation

It’s likely that your school has everything organised in an Outlook calendar already – wouldn’t it be great if this could automatically pull through to your website? The Calendar app can now read from and update from your Office 365 calendars, saving you one more update task.

All your OneDrive files in School Jotter

With the Office 365 desktop app, you and your students can even have access to your desktop files in School Jotter.

Share and collaborate

As well as accessing your own files, you can even share them with others, making it a great way to enable collaboration amongst students.
Interested in the benefits of integration? Contact us for a free demo.

As people start getting older, learning becomes more difficult. Some people argue this is because we already know too much, while others believe that the brain is like a muscle and if we don’t work it out it gets weaker. Whatever the reason is, there are some learning strategies that can help you learn faster, no matter what age you are.
Make your learning much easier by following these tips:
 

 
Learning platforms (or virtual learning environments) help learners improve the speed of their learning too by providing immediate feedback after each training session. Check out Totara LMS to learn more.

“Teaching in the Internet age means we must teach tomorrow’s skills today.” – Jennifer Fleming.

Do you agree with this quote? I believe it is one of the most accurate quotes related to learning in the Internet age. It acknowledges the importance of providing our students with opportunities to gain and to develop skills that will be most useful for them in the future. As discussed previously, technology is just a tool that cannot replace teachers. However, I am sure that every teacher should have some knowledge about how to integrate technology into the teaching in order to help students develop a variety of skills. For instance, using different technology resources (e.g., quizzes, writing tools, drawing tools, forums, blogs) can be very useful for improving communication, problem solving, critical thinking and team working skills. What is more, appropriate use of technology can help to improve literacy and to improve more technical IT related skills.

The best solution for schools is to find a tool that could make learning more engaging for students and  that would be easy to use at the same time because we cannot expect all teachers or even all students to be very confident with their IT skills. If you are looking for a tool that could improve elearning within your school I would suggest trying an open-source LMS.

A virtual learning environment / VLE (also known as a learning management system or LMS), is developed by educators, for educators. It provides a private and secure learning space for designing online courses with flexible content and collaborative activities for students. What makes open source LMS unique is the fact that it is a free software based on its community, not on investors seeking returns or by selling customer data.

Why choose Webanywhere? We are here to support your LMS in order to implement a truly successful learning environment in your school. Webanywhere are focused on improving e-learning within education. Using open-source LMS we are able to provide engaging e-learning platforms which improve the productivity of both teachers and students. We offer a wide variety of services ranging from theme design to implementation, training and support for schools. We can help you integrate your VLE with SIMS for automated user management, for real-time reporting on attendance and behaviour and for an off-site access to SIMS data. What is more, we can help make homework management easier for teachers, students and parents with our homework-management plugin. Read more about Homeworkanywhere here.

Main benefits of LMS for education.

Easy access. It is available anywhere with the Internet connection, meaning students, staff and parents have 24 hour access to a huge variety of resources, activities and school information. This is great for students who cannot attend school for whatever reasons because the platform allows them to access all the information taught in the lessons they have missed. It can assist in accessing homework materials, assignments or additional learning resources that teachers upload.

Encourages collaboration. Opportunity to collaborate with other students and to work in teams makes learning more effective. An open source LMS allows Students to ask questions and to help each other regarding any topic on discussion forums or via instant messages. What is more, students who are hesitant to put forward their views or opinions in the classroom, can use LMS to express themselves and to get involved in different activities or projects.

Helps to make learning more fun and engaging. LMS can be used to upload assignment related quizzes or games that can help students prepare for their assignments while being fun and helping to reduce stress related to assignments. Engaging and fun activities can be used to support teaching in the classroom and to support students at home.

Enables students to learn more independently. While an LMS encourages collaboration between students, it also enables them to have more control over their learning. For instance, teachers can upload supplementary activities, documents, links to websites or other relevant materials that are relevant to the lesson being taught. This helps students enhance their learning at their own time without having to do a research for quality materials themselves.

Flexible. An LMS is highly configurable and it can be customised with different features to meet individual needs of your school.

Access to quality resources. It can help students to access only quality resources that are uploaded by teachers without having to search for information themselves. This helps them stay focused on things that are relevant and useful for their learning. “Learners in the internet age don’t need more information. They need to know how to efficiently use the massive amount of information available at their fingertips – to determine what’s credible, what’s relevant, and when its useful to reference.” – Anna Sabramowicz

Most recent features:

-Drag-and-drop quiz question types.

-Streamlined course section editing.

-Better management of plugins.

-Display the date a file was uploaded.
-Do more on your mobile. 

Finally, I would like to encourage teachers to embrace technology to make learning more engaging for students because engaged students are more likely to be interested and to stay motivated to learn and perform well!

Teaching requires a great amount of patience, mindfulness, compassion and commitment. It is not an easy job as many would assume. Teachers usually have to play many roles and show many faces to enhance the student learning experience.
With that in mind, we have done some research on the top do’s and don’ts of teaching in the classroom, which we hope new teachers will find helpful.

 
 
Make your life easier with School Jotter, a great content management system and hosting solution that provides you with the necessary tools and apps to make your teaching outstanding.
 

There’ve been several significant advancements in educational technology over the past few years. From filmstrips to tablets and learning management systems, technology keeps changing in an extremely fast pace and reshaping the way everyone views education.
We have put together some of the greatest innovations for the classroom as it’s important to remember where it all started. Enjoy!

Welcome to our last post in the four-part series where education experts give their opinion on learning management systems. In this piece, David Palank, Principal at San Miguel School in Washington DC and Jeannette Geib, the Educational Director at the world’s first online high school CompuHigh, share their experience of using  virtual learning environments.
Also read:
– Learning Management Systems: Your Opinion – Part 1
– Learning Management Systems: Your Opinion – Part 2
– Learning Management Systems: Your Opinion – Part 3
 

San Miguel School uniquely serves low-income youth in the DC area with a preference for those living in poverty and who would not otherwise have access to a high quality private education. San Miguel uses multiple Learning Management Systems at our school. They are an excellent tool for teachers and schools to monitor progress, give feedback, and gather data on student performance throughout the school year.
They benefit students in multiple ways. One of the ways they benefit students is that they give unbiased and immediate feedback. If a teacher gives you feedback, there is a chance that the student may feel that they are under ego threat and not accept the feedback. However, if a computer gives you feedback and tells what has been achieved or not, it is not a person telling you and therefore the student’s ego is not threatened.
Video games operate under similar principles. Many students enjoy video games because they are challenging, give immediate feedback, and operate on a progression through levels. They engage students because of these elements. Learning Management Systems operate the same way.
However, these systems are a tool, not a crutch. If teachers rely on them as their sole means of instruction, they are not using them properly.
 
 

I am the Educational Director at CompuHigh, an online high school that has been around since 1994. When this school was founded, there really wasn’t anything else like it out there; there wasn’t even a ‘World Wide Web’ to speak of, so doing high school online was a unique proposition.
Our founder, Stan Kanner, simply taught himself programming and created the software he needed to run a school on the internet. Today, our ‘homegrown’ Learning Management System works beautifully because the programming has always sprung organically from the needs of the students, teachers, and administration. We just say, “Hey can we have a button here that does this? Can we have a system that tracks this?” and Stan could make it happen, usually the same day.
I realise that most school systems are too large to be that nimble, but I would always recommend hiring a smart programmer and growing your system ‘in house’ rather than trying to buy an ‘out of the box’ LMS.

 Bett Show always attracts a number of inspiring people from the education sector. Bett 2016 wasn’t an exception and today we are sharing one of our favourite speeches.
“How teachers can do what technology can’t”- one of the most interesting discussions at Bett 2016. It was presented by Tom Starkey who is a teacher and a columnist. He made some good points about the things that good teachers can do that any education technology can’t.

This is a topic that can definitely start a very controversial discussion, especially at the education technology exhibition. With all the latest technologies in the education sector, it can be easy to forget what the true role of a teacher is. Discussing topics like this can encourage people to remember that there will always be things that could not be replaced by any kind of technology.

 “It is a battle to be better than a computer because we are not given time enough to reflect on our own practice, to reflect on people in front of us. If a computer could do that, that would be great…”

It is important to look at both positive and negative things when talking about technology in education. There are some amazing things that technology can do to improve learning. For instance, different learning platforms can be used to make lessons more engaging, they can also be used for homework and assignments. Making lesson plans or even marking assignments can be done with the help of technology. However, as acknowledged by Tom Starkey, although technologies create some amazing learning opportunities for students, there will always be things that could not be performed by any kind of technology. Technologies provide information, but a teacher is someone who can motivate, encourage, give feedback, listen and help with building creative and curious personalities of children.
It can be said that technologies are there to provide information whereas teachers are important for guiding students on how to use that information and to provide any other support that could not be done by any kind of technology.
Check the video below for some more inspirational thoughts by Tom Starkey.

Miles Berry and Tom Starkey at Bett 2016 from Webanywhere on Vimeo.