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We want to and will make it easy for schools to keep their staff, pupils, parents, partners, other stake-holders and wider community informed, updated and engaged.
Now, by merely typing in the text you can do it too!
It's so easy even 7 year old children can do it. If you are able to move a mouse, click a few buttons and string a few sentences together you can maintain a cutting edge site.
We'll give you all the training you'll need, support you on the phone or with email, all to make sure you get the best out of your investment.
Our killer features are:
Superb content management and blog software. Excellent Google optimisation.
An email to weblog interface, making updating your school blog a doddle.
Top draw support and feedback.
Try a demo or build your
Now, by merely typing in the text you can do it too!
It's so easy even 7 year old children can do it. If you are able to move a mouse, click a few buttons and string a few sentences together you can maintain a cutting edge site.
We'll give you all the training you'll need, support you on the phone or with email, all to make sure you get the best out of your investment.
Our killer features are:
Superb content management and blog software. Excellent Google optimisation.
An email to weblog interface, making updating your school blog a doddle.
Top draw support and feedback.
Try a demo or build your
30 day free trial
school website yourself. What will you write today's school news to be?Archive page for Friday, 08 June 2007
Fr, Jun 8, 2007Where all the people go
VLEs, are mostly dull, mostly there's no uptake from pupils. Why? They'd rather go to Facebook, Bebo or MySpace. Why?
Because there's people there. It's all about people.
VLEs are unappealing, unsexy and unused and thusly, pretty useless, they're ridiculed and ignored. Such a huge investment in time and hopes down the drain. They look so plain, like a cardboard box. But, worse, much, much worse, there are no people there.
Think of your school, a concrete lump with corridors alive with posters, children's work, bright paint, giggling children. This is how a VLE should be.
Certainly, it should be bright, it should look fun, it should even be easy to customise, for the colours to change, for there be somewhere the pupil can scrawl their name, and their favourite band, football team or TV programme.
But mostly, there should be people!
We're not a VLE. Not in the proscriptive BECTA way. But our sites are alive with people: children and staff. There's links to other schools which are alive with people too. Photographs of children in face paint, children's own writing, children sucking ice lollies, bought by the Head. And this is just today.
And we're doing customisation (it's still in beta, but here's a sneak peak)... For the school and for the pupil. Take a look at this theme, it's a multi Christmas theme. I'm still working on the Winter one... The school would decide to switch their theme, and we'll have many different ones for different times of the year: Summer, Autumn, Eid, Easter, St. David's day... And the viewer, the child, picks and switches the background, in a CSS Zen Garden kind of way.
Fun :-)
Because there's people there. It's all about people.
VLEs are unappealing, unsexy and unused and thusly, pretty useless, they're ridiculed and ignored. Such a huge investment in time and hopes down the drain. They look so plain, like a cardboard box. But, worse, much, much worse, there are no people there.
Think of your school, a concrete lump with corridors alive with posters, children's work, bright paint, giggling children. This is how a VLE should be.
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Certainly, it should be bright, it should look fun, it should even be easy to customise, for the colours to change, for there be somewhere the pupil can scrawl their name, and their favourite band, football team or TV programme.But mostly, there should be people!
We're not a VLE. Not in the proscriptive BECTA way. But our sites are alive with people: children and staff. There's links to other schools which are alive with people too. Photographs of children in face paint, children's own writing, children sucking ice lollies, bought by the Head. And this is just today.
And we're doing customisation (it's still in beta, but here's a sneak peak)... For the school and for the pupil. Take a look at this theme, it's a multi Christmas theme. I'm still working on the Winter one... The school would decide to switch their theme, and we'll have many different ones for different times of the year: Summer, Autumn, Eid, Easter, St. David's day... And the viewer, the child, picks and switches the background, in a CSS Zen Garden kind of way.
Fun :-)
Clarity of school ads
I've just had an enquiry regarding school website advertising. "Do I find and place ads for other school sites?" No.
I'm offering, as part of our school websites, a plug-in for the management of ads on our school sites. We supply the documentation needed to find and win ads; methods and lesson plans for the children to create the ads within the school and the plug-in, which is an easy for teachers to manage, monitor and report on the campaigns. Easy to manage being the key—for teachers and local plumbers, or shop owners, or mortgage advisers, or...
As we're including the tool as part of our package we won't be charging for it, nor taking any cut from your income. Of course we'd help, advise, support as we do with our blogs, this being a part of our blogs. But, again, as with our blogs, it's up to the school to fill the blog with good, current news, and it will be up to the school to fill the ad inventory with good, local ads.
Were we to find, sell, and create the ads, then we'd have to take quite a slice of the revenue. National ads aren't so locally targeted and won't pay top dollar. Each ad should be approved by the Head or governors, too. The impact wouldn't be cool. We'd be pimping off the school, it would be easily seen as such. Thus, the moral dilemma of placing ads on a school site would shift against the idea.
Further, it would be be highly beneficial for a school to find ads via the parents, governors and friends of the school—a huge well connected network. If they thought one penny was going to a man in Telford to spend on beer and disco dancing, they'd be highly disinclined to help. Think of the school fayre, would those volunteers be so numerous if half the money was going to the geezer who thought of the idea?
Further still, were a plumber, shop owner or mortgage adviser to advertise; for them to know that every single penny goes directly to the school, they'd be much, much more likely to be sold. Were I to call, from afar, doing the advertising sales pitch, would he listen? Would he be immediately suspicious? "Oh, yeah? And how much of a cut are you taking?" Where as, if he was approached by a member of staff, some children, a parent, better a customer...
I know this is extra work, schools would like to have less work, but we're talking large money here... It will be easy work, it will fit in with the curriculum.
Instead of raising money for a school mini bus you'd be raising it for a school Lear jet.
;newWindow.focus())
I'm offering, as part of our school websites, a plug-in for the management of ads on our school sites. We supply the documentation needed to find and win ads; methods and lesson plans for the children to create the ads within the school and the plug-in, which is an easy for teachers to manage, monitor and report on the campaigns. Easy to manage being the key—for teachers and local plumbers, or shop owners, or mortgage advisers, or...
As we're including the tool as part of our package we won't be charging for it, nor taking any cut from your income. Of course we'd help, advise, support as we do with our blogs, this being a part of our blogs. But, again, as with our blogs, it's up to the school to fill the blog with good, current news, and it will be up to the school to fill the ad inventory with good, local ads.
;newWindow.focus())
Were we to find, sell, and create the ads, then we'd have to take quite a slice of the revenue. National ads aren't so locally targeted and won't pay top dollar. Each ad should be approved by the Head or governors, too. The impact wouldn't be cool. We'd be pimping off the school, it would be easily seen as such. Thus, the moral dilemma of placing ads on a school site would shift against the idea.
Further, it would be be highly beneficial for a school to find ads via the parents, governors and friends of the school—a huge well connected network. If they thought one penny was going to a man in Telford to spend on beer and disco dancing, they'd be highly disinclined to help. Think of the school fayre, would those volunteers be so numerous if half the money was going to the geezer who thought of the idea?
Further still, were a plumber, shop owner or mortgage adviser to advertise; for them to know that every single penny goes directly to the school, they'd be much, much more likely to be sold. Were I to call, from afar, doing the advertising sales pitch, would he listen? Would he be immediately suspicious? "Oh, yeah? And how much of a cut are you taking?" Where as, if he was approached by a member of staff, some children, a parent, better a customer...
;newWindow.focus())
I know this is extra work, schools would like to have less work, but we're talking large money here... It will be easy work, it will fit in with the curriculum.
Instead of raising money for a school mini bus you'd be raising it for a school Lear jet.
