Webanywhere provide school web design in London, throughout the UK and beyond. In a series of blog posts we’ll be looking at some great examples of websites from most regions nationwide, all made with School Jotter – the site builder and suite of apps for education providers.
Below are just a few of the best school websites in London, created for our clients using Jotter. Gordon Primary School in Eltham, London
This design uses a fun, cartoon-style illustration of their school, incorporating a mini slideshow of pupil photos. The ticker tape banner on the homepage draws attention to the latest news and announcements.
The sites blends fun with usefulness, signposting visitors quickly to important information, such as opening times, policies and a private staff area that requires logging in.
Browse the site at: https://www.gordonprimary.co.uk/
Adamsrill Primary School South East London
Adamsrill use their website well to promote their school motto:
“Learning and Working Together as a Community for a Brighter Future”
Using School Jotter, they integrate Google Maps, have a slideshow of pupil photos, include a school calendar, and make newsletters readily available from the homepage.
Their website reflects the existing school branding, with a blue and yellow colour scheme.
View their site at: https://www.adamsrill.lewisham.sch.uk/
Harlesdon Primary School, North West London
This primary school in Brent also chose to work with us to create a fun, cartoon design that represents their local surroundings. Each year group has its own web page linked from one of the buses on the homepage, and there are dedicated sections for parents and staff.
There’s multimedia integration, including a welcome video made with the help of the pupils.
Explore the site at: https://www.harlesdenschool.com/
Can We Help You?
Are you looking for school web design in London, elsewhere in the UK, or even further afield? Since 2003, we’ve helped thousands of clients worldwide to create fantastic looking school websites, packed with useful apps and features, and which are easy for their teachers and support staff to maintain. We provide full training in using School Jotter and of course we’re always here if you need support.
Browse the site for more on school websites and our range of education products and services. You can learn more about our school website builder at www.schooljotter.com or why not contact us for a no-obligations discussion of your needs?
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.
Five years ago I took the plunge into the wonderful world of the smartphone. I’d been using the mobile web on-and-off for a couple of years on my low-powered old Samsung phone, but it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, rife with poorly-designed mobile websites hiding information behind labyrinthine menu structures. With my new HTC Desire though I’d be able to experience the web as its designers meant me to.
I was rather surprised, therefore, to find that I was getting roughly the same mobile experience on my high-end smartphone as I was on my low-tech feature phone. None of the websites I’d visit in the phone’s browser seemed optimised for mobile browsing, it was an overall unpleasant experience. I ended up having to use a browser (Dolphin) which let me spoof a desktop user-agent so I could actually see the content I requested.
Three years ago, the Desire having outlived its usefulness, I upgraded to the phone-du-jour, a Galaxy S3. I hoped that, in the intervening two years, with smartphones getting huge, I’d be able to dispense with my habits of browsing desktop-optimised websites on a (relatively) small screen, but this was not to be. Despite the upgraded power of the Galaxy, websites were just as sluggish and unresponsive as when I was browsing with the Desire.
I’m a bit of a tech geek, so I tend to upgrade my phones relatively often, so 2014 saw the purchase of a shiny new LG G3, with a bigger screen and a frankly silly screen resolution. Due to inertia and habit, I continued to browse using Dolphin, as I did five years ago, requesting desktop versions of mobile sites, unaware of the shifts going on behind the scenes. With Google’s algorithm changes in April 2015, responsive web design had suddenly become not only useful but entirely necessary. Despite carrying a mobile supercomputer in my pocket, the mobile web still looked pretty rubbish to me.
And so recently, on a whim, I switched browsers to something a bit more modern. While it might have won awards back in 2011 and 2012, Dolphin’s showing its age a bit, so I decided to try out Mozilla’s mobile offering and started using Firefox. It seems that, while I’ve been ignoring it, the mobile web actually became usable, and it’s all thanks to responsive web design. No longer do I have to go through the cumbersome process of requesting desktop sites then trying to navigate the tiny menus to get to the page I want. Everything from my news sources to my social media is presented in a mobile-optimised format, the information isn’t hidden behind awful mobile websites or splash screens asking I download an app.
What does this mean for schools? It means that if your website isn’t responsive, you’re missing out on engaging parents. People getting their first smartphone now won’t be using Dolphin, they’ll be using Chrome or something similar – they won’t be requesting desktop views, they’ll be wanting the information right underneath their thumbs, and you need to provide it to them. 60% of web browsing is now done on the phone, can you afford to cut them out or give them a substandard experience? Is your site responsive? You can check it using Google’s own mobile-friendly test tool. Come up negative? Give School Jotter a try. All new Jotter school websites are fully responsive and mobile optimised.
On May 21st Webanywhere awarded Bush Hill Park primary school with our first ever Flagship School status as a reflection of their superb website and embracement of e-learning and technology within the classroom.
The standard of e-learning at Bush Hill Park has been marked as a huge success in the UK, with their site embracing modern, responsive design that works just as well on mobile, tablets and laptops as on any standard PC. Their use of the Blog, Learn and Messages app within School Jotter also reflects a school that truly believes in an e-learning future, and with a large stock of shock proof iPads they have the hardware to back up the rhetoric.
Bush Hill Park’s Computing Teacher & Subject Leader Mr Fateh Singh accepted the award in a ceremony hosted by the school. When asked about how he felt about receiving the honour he told Webanywhere “It’s been a great success to get to where we wanted to be. We love the website, we love the design, we love working with Webanywhere.”
The award is the first of its kind to be handed out, with Bush Hill Park being the first to achieve the standard of excellence Webanywhere is hoping to bring to schools across the country. With more nominees in the pipeline however, it won’t be long before another one of the Flagship School plaques finds it’s way at another one of these exceptional schools – it might even be your school next!
To see how the event went, check out our mini-documentary on Bush Hill Park and the future of e-learning:
If you’re a Webanywhere customer and you think you’ve fully embraced e-learning and are utlising technology within your school, feel free to contact us at events@webanywhere.co.uk and apply to be a flagship school. Related Webpages School Jotter – Find out about the online platform that Bush Hill Park Primary School use to create and manage their website and e-learning facilities
Mobilegeddon is here. In February earlier this year, Google announced that any sites that aren’t mobile-friendly will find their search rank plummet from April 21st, making it extremely difficult to find your site if it isn’t readable on mobile. It comes as very little surprise to anyone keeping an eye on website traffic over the past few years, nearly 60% of all internet browsing is now done from a mobile or tablet, which is why Google is now making it a top priority. This is something that schools need to fix if they want their site to remain in the top hits in Google.
With the rise of tablets and smartphones there’s also been the rise of buggy mobile websites, unresponsive buttons and pages that just won’t load on tablets. With such a variety of browsers and products comes concerned website owners, who just don’t know the best solution for an easy-to-use interface.
Responsive Website Design, (RWD) and Adaptive Website Design, (AWD) share the goal of solving these problems, but they use very different approaches.
Responsive website design
Responsive websites use CSS3 to create a website that responds to the device it’s on. This gives the site the ability to adapt, with text and images resizing to fit the screen. These websites are great examples of responsive design:
This one! Try resizing the window and see hot the site shifts and moves to respond.
Adaptive website design
Adaptive websites feature a series of static layouts, which are based on breakpoints for different screens. Adaptive websites do not respond fluidly, like responsive websites, but detects the device prior to loading and calls up the correct resolution. The following links are examples of adaptive websites:
Responds to all screen resolutions, whilst holding consistency.
Can be efficiently managed, with a single set of hyperlinks.
Increased visibility in search engines.
Resolutions may lead to site distortion.
Takes longer to create.
May not be as cost effective in certain circumstances.
Adaptive
Website
Design
Pixel perfect control
Every relevant resolution designed for.
Directed towards desktop computers, tablets and smart phones
May lack consistency and flexibility across platforms.
May suffer with layout from design choices and browsers
May not be extensive testing across obscure platforms
So what should we take away from this? Well, responsive website design may lend itself to a less formal and minimalistic format, perhaps with a focus on arts or retail, whereas adaptive design may be more applicable to a more formal site, where a customer’s interests may lie in text-dense or informative articles.
Using these methods will ensure that you can rely on your site being visited and used effectively across devices and screen resolutions, whilst retaining customer satisfaction with a positive experience for user.
If you’d like to learn more, check out these sites:
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.
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.
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!
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.
Now that we have worked out the different guises of the tech savvy teacher we are asking ourselves what does Webanywhere do to support that teacher? So the same headings will appear, just as they did in the last blog post, with how we support you. Your students read your blog
We lead by example here, we have several blogs attracting very different types of audience. We work with different sectors in and outside of education and recognise that their needs are different. So giving you all the same advice is not an option. Blogging is a great way to communicate in a non-invasive way for us and you respond very well to that.
In School Jotter we have created a blog app that allows everyone to write and have their work published on the internet. The blog app is easy to use and what’s more, schools enjoy writing their blogs and receiving comments.
The blogging facility within an open-source LMS is a popular part of many schools VLE. Whether it is a teacher’s blog or a student’s blog it is a great way to keep in touch with students in between tutor group times or lessons. You instigate your own CPD online
At Webanywhere we enjoy being proactive and it is very much encouraged by the senior management. So we are starting to offer free webinars offering support on using various parts of your school’s VLE or apps in the School Jotter suite. All webinars are recorded and posted online for those who cannot make the webinar live or would like to go over the information again at a later date.
We also hold regular events around the country for e-safety, OFSTED website requirements and how to meet them. We know these are not online but it is another way we can support you with your CPD. You have made an online PLN
We hope you consider yourselves part of our learning network. You are brilliant at telling us what you think of our products and how we can develop them. We take note of this and we feel this is one reason that our products go from strength to strength.
It was great to see so many customers at BETT this year and get an update of what you are doing and your future plans. Webanywhere has a strong social networking presence and we offer help and advice to all rather than just informing you of our offers and service available. You share your life with virtual colleagues you have never met
We are lucky and have some very strong relationships with schools and businesses around the country. We definitely share our working lives with you and include all of our customers when breaking good news about the company. Your weekly schedule involves Twitter chats
Webanywhere does tweet and we do follow and chat with our customers and other interesting organisations using Twitter. But we do prefer a more personal touch, that is why we enjoy talking to our customers directly whether that is a telephone call or an email. Summer break means ISTE and other conferences
Webanywhere works through the summer, you will be surprised how many teachers take training sessions during the summer break, we are not though as we know how driven you are. We also do large installs and implementations during this quieter period. We are also planning for the new school year just like you. Planning events and offers that will help you to make the most of the technology you are using. You know the vocabulary
This should possibly read know our products and services, the vocabulary will then follow automatically. Every educational establishment and business is different, they have different requirements and need varying levels of support. Understanding that we know that what we did for one organisation will not necessarily work in another. You turn to colleagues in other countries in times of need
We do have colleagues and people in our PLN that are in other countries and they are an invaluable source of information. But we also turn to our customers and ask for their help. In March we took some new School Jotter apps to a local event and invited schools to attend. We had headteachers, teachers, teaching assistants and administration staff. We showed them our new apps and listened to them as they fed back. This was an amazing session and the developer we took with us had a good list of quality suggestions to take back to the development team to work on. An update at the end of June included many of those ideas. You are a digital citizen
Gosh, we hope so. We strive to be role model digital citizens and if ever we let you down please tell us. As we have always done, we stretch beyond with our enthusiasm and willingness to go further. We are still in front of market needs and we go beyond what’s expected to deliver a truly positive experience for our customers. You are always hungry to learn, try and tinker with new tech
This goes without saying, it is part of who we are.
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. Winning entry to Think of an App competition. Save a Life App
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!
Sharing your school news with the world means nothing more than customising a web page template with your text and pictures and adding your logo, right? Well, yes – but to create a truly polished site there’s more to think about! Here’s a few tips to help get you creating.
Try and limit the number of colours – you really don’t want pages that include all the colours of a rainbow! Carefully considered colour schemes create harmony between the various pages of your website.
Make sure your site pages are quick to load by resizing your picture sizes before you upload them. This is especially relevant for users with slower connections. Also, think about creating a simple navigation system. Draw a content map out before you start creating your pages. Web users will return if the site saves them time by being easy to navigate.
Don’t place random hyperlinks throughout your page text and make sure all hyperlinks are created from existing body text, rather than entering the full URL of the destination page.
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