Every Journey has a Beginning

‘We need a complete rethink about our dashboards and how we use Frog.’ is how this all began.

As a school we’ve had Frog for two years and in that time we’ve had the high points and the low points of trying to implement a VLE across the school that impacts on all things to all people.

I didn’t start out responsible for Frog, but was one of the people championing it as our chosen VLE.  We had a great demonstration by our regional manager who showed us all the delights Frog could offer but the biggest selling point for me was that it would be ours, built for us from the ground up, how we wanted it and giving us full control over its development.

Once Frog was in place, and due to other factors out of my control, I became responsible for it in school.

‘Great! Fantastic! Can’t wait!’ I thought;

‘Let’s tackle the dashboard and what information is shown to our users.’

That was almost two years ago and I’m still looking at the dashboard puzzling over what information to put on there which is sort of where this (and other) blog post(s) is going.  Frog has become a massive part of the school and is accessed at all times of the day and night; even during holiday periods we still experience a good ratio of traffic.  In our first year we had over 2.5 million webpages viewed on Frog but our dashboard was still bugging me; now we feel it’s time for a change.

Not a minor change such as adding a new widget or changing the title but a full overhaul of the dashboards for staff, pupil, parent and governor.

For this, I think I’m mad; I’m not a programmer, coder or designer I just think I have a good understanding of what looks right.  I like to play around and mess until I’m mildly satisfied with what I’ve accomplished; knowing full well I’ll go back to it later and change it again.

So this is where this blog will start, the highs, lows, expectations, frustrations, elations and (hopefully) success of how we implemented our new dashboards.  We’ve got some great ideas that we have pulled from staff and pupils and hopefully we can create a whole new experience for them when using Frog.

Any feedback will always be appreciated.

Twitter: @richardblaize
Blog: http://pagetict.wordpress.com

Experience the speed and power of paperless voting in your school

This post is being published on behalf of James Shackley, VLE Coordinator at St Albans High School for Girls.

“Paper - people still love it. As a school, like any other, we are swamped by it, but we are making excellent in-roads into reducing our reliance on it – nowhere more than during our Head Girl elections. Before the introduction of Frog, Lent term was the busiest time for the school’s photocopiers, asthmatically wheezing their way through the production of campaign leaflets and manifesto posters to be displayed around the school. Yet, all have fallen silent! This year has been the first year that our Frog learning platform has been used to deliver the entire voting process, not just for Head Girl (after a successful trial last year) but for deputy roles and roles within the student pastoral structure.

Manifestos were created by the students with the sort of enthusiasm and vigour rarely shown in the field of politics and then uploaded for approval by the relevant staff. Once complete, the documents went ‘public’ to the related year groups and the students began to deliberate and agonise over making their choices. On the eve of voting, the candidates were videoed and the footage made available, via the Staff Dashboard in Frog, to those who were unable to make the event.

Fast-forward to voting day. At 08:30, polling stations opened and from a voting populace of approximately 300, 60 votes were cast in the first 10 minutes by students accessing Frog from the ICT labs, libraries and classrooms. At 14.00pm the voting closed and by 14:05pm the relevant staff had been notified of the winner. Ready for the next day, notices were placed on the Student and Staff Dashboard Notices within Frog.

So this concluded our first year of paperless voting – not just the actual votes, but the whole process.  The students benefited from using the platform to upload their manifestos, vote and receive notification of the winner, and all of this helps in achieving the goals set by the eLearning Directors as part of the ongoing implementation of Frog:  It is part of everything we do and an integral part of school life. It is this process of ‘thinking Frog’ which is key to adopting a learning platform – by putting it at the centre of events such as these, that get the school buzzing, it engages and adds value to the school experience for everyone.”

For more fantastic ideas like this why not login to the Frog Community site and check out our Frog Trumps, or  you can visit our website for a few examples.

Tell us what software you use in school and win over £3000 worth of gear!

For many schools, Frog forms the heart and soul of their digital learning strategy and when making use of the coaching services recently introduced, even those that have struggled in the past have found renewed vigour in their platform. Through the widget store, content and integration options, we provide further opportunities to enhance that experience for staff, students and parents by linking together disparate systems and applications both in and out of school. Users benefit from simplified access to a wealth of resources, which typically require more URLs and user login details to access.

At Frog we work with a large number of software providers to help mitigate that frustration for users, who we have either approached directly, sometimes at the specific request of a school, or who have approached us looking to partner up for various reasons.

Whilst we have targeted specific providers in the past it would be really beneficial to get a broader consensus from schools. With this in mind, we’re running a survey to try to find out what is being used out there so we can be better informed when it comes to deciding what to integrate with next. As a thank you, for every response we get, we’ll enter in to a draw to win over £3000 worth of gear in the form of an iPad 2, £50 worth of iTunes vouchers courtesy of Vivo Miles and a year’s access to I am learning. And you don’t have to be a Frog user to enter.

So what are you waiting for?! Put the Kettle on and take 10 minutes to fill out the survey which can be found here: www.frogtrade.com/survey

Remember to share this with colleagues too.

Frog heads into Malaysia

We’re sure you already know how thrilled we are to announce our latest success with the Malaysian Ministry of Education – to install Frog in Malaysia’s 10,000 state schools. The first Frog schools will be live in a couple of weeks.

Frog will make a massive impact on the lives of millions of children in Malaysia. Because of Frog and the joint venture we have with YTL, Malaysian schools will have the tools to allow their teachers and students to realise their full potential in life. We will have the ability to positively influence the future of millions of children – quite a responsibility!

Three Frog staff fly out today to join our Operations Director, Kate Heal to start their new lives in Malaysia and join FrogAsia – our joint venture with YTL.

We are incredibly excited about the news and in this difficult economic climate, it gives us the opportunity to invest back into the UK operations – we have already made significant investment into expanding our support and development teams.

We’ll be keeping you posted on Malaysia’s developments, so keep a look out for all the latest updates.

Click here to view the full press release.

BETT prize winner announced

If you came along to our stand during BETT you may have noticed the competition we were running to win a Sony Cyber-shot digital camera. To be in with a chance of winning, all you had to do was take a picture of one of our partner stands and submit it to us – simples!

We’re pleased to announce that all the entries have been collated and we now have a winner.

Congratulations to Janet Midian from Espresso Education whose photo was picked at random.

Below is the winning photo and a few of the other entries submitted. Thanks to everyone who entered.

You’ll need to Excel to be BETTer than Olympia

After another fantastic BETT show, and as we bid farewell to our old stomping ground, we’ve been considering what makes this show so unique and special, and what Excel has to do to follow in the footsteps of Olympia.

BETT 2012. The last time at The Olympia

Every year everyone puts in so much time and effort, from the stand builders through to the Frog hoodie wearing receptionists. We even traded Froggie bags for plasticine with a fellow exhibitor because they’d run out, that’s what happens at BETT – everybody pulls together. We had record numbers of people swarming the stand this year, and with the 7,000 Frog bags we gave away, a Frog was literally around every corner.

Did the Queen get her bag?

A big part of what makes BETT such a big success has to be the variety of people that descend on London year on year. From Beirut to Washington DC, educators from all over the world flock to this worldwide phenomenon. After all it was from this very show that the first conversations were had around Frog being put into every school in Malaysia, find out more about that here.

The best thing about BETT is its power to amaze from start to finish. Whether it’s the response to Billy Downie’s opening presentation at the Education Leaders Conference, or seeing the teacher on our stand twenty minutes before the show closed, light up with excitement at the thought of controlling simple permissions through Frog – it really makes it all worthwhile.

It takes all this to pull a show together and Emap at Olympia has been doing this year on year. If Excel can repeat this magic in 2013, we can all look forward to a BETT show that’s bigger, better and even more amazing. We’ve already got a few tricks up our sleeve and look forward to seeing you there!

Frog puts school improvement at the heart of what it does at this years #BETT_show

Speaking at the Education Leaders Conference earlier today, Gareth Davies, Managing Director at Frog, shared his vision for the future of technology in schools.

“Academy, school and college finances are constantly in the spotlight – every penny must have an impact. Whilst technology can help, to reap real returns on investment, your learning platform should become the hub of your school. We can show you how you can use Frog as part of your much wider school improvement plan.

But before we get to that, did you know, independent research has found that one in two schools fail to implement expensive technology solutions and on average, in the last 12 months, schools wasted £50k each on failed technology projects!

So what’s the problem then, why does so much go wrong? Well, first of all, learning platforms are no longer mandatory and with BECTA gone, who do schools now turn to for support? And let’s also not forget the market is changing to an academy model with a more commercially focused approach to running the business. Outstanding Academies have to mentor lower performing schools where every penny counts and is scrutinised for its contribution to whole school improvement.

We know from our experience working directly with over 600 schools that things are changing – and as we work with more and more, we are finding that the cultural change required to harness technology is very difficult if the leadership team is weak.

We understand that the first year of change initiatives are always the most difficult and so we now use a coaching model that means the school is mentored through their first year – ensuring that best practise advice from us and other Frog schools is shared with everyone.

We have also developed a unique measurement tool that goes beyond teaching and learning. The tool shows schools how effective schools are in saving time, money and improving behaviour in areas such as marketing, parental engagement and transition. Alongside this our school improvement team works with schools to identify the areas of school life they want to improve upon and show them how Frog can help them do it by aligning their own development plans with Frog. Once schools have this vision, We then provide them with a database of hundreds of real-life examples on how to achieve it – known as Frog Trumps

Technology is not a magic wand (Frog or otherwise) – in the absence of a phenomenal leadership team with a clear vision of where they want to go cultural changes of this nature takes 12-18 months to achieve. If it’s not taken seriously it simply won’t work.”