Today saw the return of the Webanywhere team to the Olympia in London, promoting our range of online learning solutions at The Academies Show 2012.

We were up bright and early to set up our stand and prepare for the influx of teachers, bursars, governors and educational leaders, all gathered to pick up some invaluable information on the Academies programme.

I’ve spent a busy morning chatting with those at the sharp end, meeting with educators to discuss the issues surrounding Academies, and what Webanywhere can offer.

The show has put on a fantastic programme of lectures and seminars conducted by those implementing the national education agenda and those overseeing the Academies programme, providing some extremely useful guidance.

I haven’t had chance to catch as much of it as I would have liked to so far, as it has been all hands on deck at stand 54, with the Webanywhere team fielding enquiries and providing practical demonstrations of our range of learning software.

Webanywhere have established partnerships with many Academy schools, providing market leading learning platforms, social networking & e-portfolio systems and school websites. We‘ve helped new Academies to hit the ground running and realise the potential of online technology to enhance learning, improve efficiency, and strengthen links with parents. I’m sure today will see the start of several new partnerships.

If you’re coming down this afternoon, please stop by stand 54 and say hello.

Last week I went to St. Mary’s Catholic Primary School in Halifax as part of my “back to school” plans.

Having checked out their School Jotter website I was eager to speak to staff. Their site was looking brilliant, with regularly updated news and a library of children’s work.

It was good to get out the office and I felt very welcome during our visit. One of the first things I noticed as I walked around was how much they used ICT. Pupils and staff alike were using computers day in, day out, and you could see the influence in their work.

From using Spellanywhere for spelling tests, to Mathsanywhere during numeracy hour, St Mary’s seemed to be really making the most of our products. It was nice to hear that our services made a difference and most importantly, that ‘children are loving it’.

I was also excited to find out they’re interested in setting up a collaborative blog. Now I’m back in the office, first stop is putting them in touch with other schools doing the same thing.

Of course, the visit was a chance to get some feedback on how our systems work for teachers too. First I got some great ideas on how to improve the service. Then, I heard some fantastic compliments on the look and feel of School Jotter itself.

With plenty of comments and ideas scribbled down, I’m now looking forward to discussing the school’s requests with the rest of the team.

This morning I paid a visit to Whitehill Academy in Halifax. Whitehill were one of the first schools who signed up with Webanywhere so I thought it would be great to go there and see them making use of our products and other great tools in the classroom. I was blown away by the quality of what I saw at the school. 2 ICT suites were fully kitted out with Apple Macs; iMacs were on view in all of the classrooms and in every classroom there were pupils making use of ICT to support their learning.

The staff at Whitehill Academy are really enthusiastic about their use of ICT and demand a lot of the products they use to enhance their pupils learning experience. Mr Sayles, the Deputy Headteacher, was particularly keen to find out how Webanywhere could support the development of use of ICT at the school. We looked at the way that the pupils are currently using a range of products and quickly identified a few areas where we could help out.

The issues that came up are quite common ones but we think we’ve found some solutions to them:

Parents are unsure how to help pupils doing homework: We’re helping the school create a series of guidance videos which parents can watch to see examples of similar tasks being done in school.

Building courses for Learnanywhere: We want to make sure our VLE for Primary schools is really well used so we’ve agreed to send our Education Advisor in to help them build some really effective courses.

Training and CPD: Whitehill have run some great training events in the past and are planning some more. We’ve promised to help organise and promote these and we’ve started planning a training event based on the creation and use of rapid content creation games to enhance teaching and learning.

One thing that surprised me whilst in the school was that a lot of the pupils are doing the Digital Creator course. I’ve seen this course in a lot of secondary schools before but to see Year 5 and 6 pupils engaging in a course that is normally studied by 14 to 16 year olds was inspiring!