A new release to the Kite Learning Platform brings with it two new highly anticipated features – Academic Targets and Group Management.

The Kite Learning Platform is designed to give our users the best experience possible when they are using our VLE. Our ethos has always been to work closely with schools to shape the product around the needs of the teaching community. We’ve been actively listening to what our users want and we are pleased to announce the introduction of Academic Targets and Group Management tools to the latest release of Kite.

Management isn’t just hard work, it’s time consuming too; but it doesn’t have to be. With Kite, we’ve come up with a solution that lets users simply and easily create, edit and delete groups. Our UI experts and developers have created a Group Management System, that lets you organise members into groups (or sub-groups) and find exactly what you need with integrated search tools for members and groups. All of this, along with details about groups and members, is displayed in a beautiful design.

With academic targets being a key part of a students learning process, we were keen to develop a new feature that gives teachers, students and parents the ability to manage academic targets. Setting these targets could help students to close the gap between what they have achieved and what they want to achieve in the future.

Our Academic Targets Tool lets a user change target descriptions, progress, due dates and types. It will let users submit comments and evidence and choose whether to set group wide targets, or ones focused on an individual member. With the ability for staff, students and parents to leave comments on a target, this new feature brings everyone together in the pursuit of achieving academic excellence.

The new release will also see the introduction of the first stage of our notifications system, which will be extended across other areas of Kite in the coming months.

If you would like to learn more about our next-generation Learning Platform and how it can help teaching and learning in your school, please feel free to give our Kite team a call today on 0845 257 0224. You can keep up-to-date on the development of our VLE on our Kite Blog.

We are pleased to announce e4education Quizzes, an all-new product aimed at creating a fun and easy way to create maths and spelling quizzes for pupils.

Launching in the Summer Term, e4education Quizzes will initially come with a set of 10 beautiful themes, to make your quizzes look bright and vibrant.

e4education Quizzes will be integrated into our new Primary VLE and thanks to our intuitive tools, teachers will be able to create and edit quizzes in minutes.

Over the coming months we hope to utilise the Primary VLE to capture quiz results and make them available to teachers, allowing them offer students help and guidance based on the outcome of quizzes.

We’re really excited about this wonderful new feature and we hope you are too. Looking ahead, we think there is plenty of potential to extend the quizzes beyond just spelling and maths. We’d love to hear any ideas you might have as to how we could enhance it.

And what about those Primary Schools who aren’t taking advantage of our fantastic Primary VLE, I hear you cry? Well, there will be the option to purchase the e4education Quizzes add-on for a small fee.

You can sample some of the quizzes below and if you’d like to learn more about our Primary VLE or e4education Quizzes, please feel free to get in touch with our Primary Care team today on 0845 257 0224.

As of 25^th May 2012 the UK will be enforcing an amendment to the “Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations”. The amendment covers the use of cookies and similar technologies for storing and accessing information on a user’s equipment, such as their computer or mobile phone.

To ensure that all of our clients websites comply with the new legislation, we are currently in the process of contacting all of those we believe to be affected and outlining several courses of action that could be taken.

A cookie is a small file saved to a user’s device when they access certain websites. These cookies can then be read when a user navigates around the website and each subsequent time they visit the site, depending on the type of cookie being used. Cookies can be useful as they can allow a website to store information about a user, such as whether they are logged in to a website or to keep track of the number of visitors.

Previously, if a website owner wanted to use cookies, or similar technologies for storing information, you had to tell visitors how you use the cookies and how they could opt-out should they object to their usage. The new legislation however, requires website owners to provide clear and comprehensive information about the purpose of storing and accessing that information and require their explicit permission to do so.

If you have any questions about the changes then please feel free to get in touch, however please note that we are not able to provide legal advice.

All schools are considering what recent changes to the OFSTED inspection framework will mean for them.  A key change is the decision to make the overall inspection judgement dependent on the standard of teaching. Schools will need to show they have a system for managing and supporting performance to improve teaching and to drive up and maintain standards. OFSTED has confirmed that inspectors will be looking for clear evidence of robust processes in this area.

Paper based professional development portfolios and manuals mean expensive printing and photocopying, lost papers and reports and can make it difficult for teachers and line managers to keep up to date. Filio is efficient, easy to use and keeps all the information in one, secure place.

A cloud based system, filio enables teachers to organise and share information; upload examples of activity, including video and pictures and create a personal portfolio of professional development and performance mapping evidence against the new 2012 Teacher Standards. Filio also provides Individual teachers with a personal library facility whilst a central resource bank and calendar can contain all the information they need about professional development provided by the school.

Individual and organisational dashboards show a live overview of activity and progress against objectives and standards. School leaders and Governors can access information quickly and easily increasing responsiveness to staff development needs; pinpointing areas for improvement, highlighting good practice and focussing resources.

We think filio represents a fresh, new approach and can provide your staff with best possible tools to manage their professional development and career progression. With features included to enable collaborative coaching and mentoring the system is supportive of both individual teachers and whole school development. John Baumber, CEO of The Learning Schools Trust, is using filio in three schools – “We are finding filio an invaluable aid in the management of our CPD programmes. Its operability allows us to personalise programmes and provide employees with a structured confidential and paperless way to manage their targets and professional development”

Filio is suitable for both primary and secondary schools and can be particularly useful for schools that play any part in the training of new teachers.

Annual licences priced at £975 for a secondary school and £475 for a primary school represents good value for money. There are pricing options for groups of schools and ITT providers too.

To learn more about Filio visit http://www.filio.co.uk

If you are attending the NCSL Seizing Success 2012 Annual Conference on June 13th-15th then drop by and see filio in action on stand 46.

e4education recently completed an annual ISO9001 quality audit inspection and are pleased to report another positive year.

ISO9001 is the internationally recognised standard for the quality management of businesses.

With the focus over recent months on improved customer satisfaction and a full internal process review, our work to deliver quality products and services continues to strengthen.

At e4education, we are always keen to receive feedback from our clients; if you have any suggestions regarding ways that we may improve our service, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Luton Futures is a consortium of eight city schools that have come together to improve standards of education across Luton. The group, which consists of Ashcroft, Cardinal Newman, Challney Girls, Icknield, Lealands, Lea Manor, Stopsley and Woodlands, envisage a partnership of excellence that will ensure a bright future for children in the area.

The team at e4education were thrilled to welcome Megan to our creative studio in Lynch Wood, Peterborough, where she worked on perfecting her logo and enhancing her design skills.

“My day at Bluestone Creative was great – I learned a lot, and it just goes to show that a logo isn’t a simple piece of drawing,” Megan explained.

The new logo, which will feature prominentely on the school’s websites and marketing materials, represents colloboration, partnership and togetherness.

Speaking about the design, Megan commented, “The idea of eight schools working together is really exciting and interesting. I wanted to try and create something that showed this so the idea of ‘togetherness’ was instantly recognisable.”

Creative Director at e4education, Steven Booth, was impressed with what he saw adding, “Megan was fantastic and certainly has that creative sparkle. In fact, I was getting worried at one stage that I was at risk of losing my job – she knew exactly what she wanted and directed our designers brilliantly.”

Congratulations Megan!

The bespoke branded app, which can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store and Android’s Market Place, is the first of its kind to be adopted by a local authority.

The ICT services at East Dunbartonshire Council worked closely with e4education’s specialist design team to create and implement the ‘EDC Schools’ app, which was recently rolled out to schools in the region.

The app, which has already had close to a 1000 downloads, is linked directly to a school’s website and instantly pulls out any news and events direct to the app as soon as they are added to the website.

Commenting on the project, John Roach, Managing Director here at e4education said, “The app has the potential to revolutionise how schools deliver news and events and will synchronise these directly from a school’s website to any iPhone or smart phone.”

Highlighting the need for schools to be able to update parents during snow-days he added, “As well as being incredibly useful during emergencies and adverse weather, the app has much more potential to be used as effective communication.”

Talking about the EDC School’s app, Convener of Education, Councillor Una Walker said, “Over recent years, we have worked extremely hard to improve our schools’ websites and they are now seen as an invaluable communication channel between schools and parents. We are now taking this a step further and are delighted to be the first Council to launch a branded version of this app, ensuring parents receive news as it’s happening.”

We at e4education are delighted to have worked with the East Dunbartonshire Council on creating the app.

If you would like to know more about how it works, or if you’re interested in developing a custom bespoke app for your school, please feel free to give our team a call today on 0845 257 0224. Alternatively, please click here to learn more about our standard ‘News And Events’ app.

To reward the dedicated students at Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School, comedian John Bishop stopped by during his own gruelling Sport Relief challenge to thank the school for its efforts and to issue them with a challenge of their own – to raise even more than before! You can watch a brief video of John Bishop’s time at the school, below.

Congratulations to Sir Joseph Willamson School for it’s huge fundraising success!

To everybody involved in raising money for Sport Relief – we salute you! Inspired by this incredible act of charity, the team at e4education will be participating in the Sport Relief Mile on March 23rd and we’d love for you to join us! Sign up today on the official Sport Relief website.

With Social Media, schools and educational establishments are able to meet the growing demands to provide parents, staff, students and governors with information quickly and easily. It improves communication with the wider community and can be utilised as a free marketing tool to help promote your school, making information readily accessible and potentially reducing printing costs.

In the classroom, social media can be used for announcements and discussions. Teachers can share resources and learning materials with other professionals and schools can network with other institutions. This provides you with an excellent opportunity to get involved in debates about teaching and learning and get input from people all over the world. This open exchange of good practices and ideas could prove invaluable.

One of the biggest advantages of Social Media over other forms of communication is that it gives you access to, and lets you share information to wide audiences quickly. Since updates are live, you can keep on top of all the news as it happens and publish updates at the click of a button. With the world changing so fast, you can make sure that your school is always ahead of the game.

As somebody who recently went through the education system as a student and then worked at a school for a year shortly after, I found that in this day of age it is vitally important to find new ways to engage with students and keep them interested. With Social Media you can do just that. Utilised in the right way, it can help promote school pride and take school life beyond the classroom.

In a recent study from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, they found that of the colleges and universities they studied, all of them were using some form of Social Media. Amongst those surveyed Twitter usage rose from 0% in 2008 to 89% in 2011 and Facebook rose from 61% to 98% in the same period. It’s clear that educational establishments are starting to see the advantages of Social Media and that is why I’m inviting you to join the online Social Media revolution today. One of the biggest barriers of Social Media is lack of knowledge on how to utilise the tools at hand. This is why e4education have put together a Social Media package to help get your started. Feel free to give me a call and see what e4education could do for you.

The report also suggests that by 2015, global shipments of smartphones will surpass 1 billion units. Such a shift in the behaviour of consumers has big implications for website owners. With more people viewing websites through a mobile device it is vitally important that your site is optimised for mobile browsing. With developments in touch screen technologies, it’s no longer enough to have a mobile friendly stylesheet for your website.

Recognising this, e4education are now offering our clients a custom bespoke mobile version of their website. Optimised for mobile use, it will ensure that your website remains a valuable communication and marketing tool, regardless of the platform it is being viewed on. With parents, staff and students depending on a school website, it’s essential that your school website is easily accessible. Thanks to our ‘Mobile Versions’, you can do just that.

For more information please feel free to give us a call on 0845 257 0224.