Gearing up to BETT 2013 – One week to go!

With just a week to go until BETT 2013 we’re putting the finishing touches to things and the BETT buzz in the Pearson Fronter office is well and truly here! To go with the new later date, BETT also has a new home! This is the first year it will be held at ExCel London, in London’s Docklands. The venue is huge, with each event hall having enough room to fit 742 double-decker buses! And is the only building in the UK that spans two railway stations!

Drop by our stands C190/200, catch one of our many presentations and learn how you can use Fronter to help improve your maths results by 20%, see how pupils use Fronter to create online school newspapers, check out a couple of our Champion Schools sharing their best practice stories and much, much more! Also on our stands there are information trees for you to explore, complete with videos, demos and product information and our Learning Post where our advisors will be on hand to answer any queries you may have. Or you can pre-book a meeting to discuss your needs with one of our subject specialists.

We’ve got specialised zones for Primary, Secondary and Further Education to make it easier for you to find exactly who you want to talk to.

Can’t make it to the show?

Don’t worry – there’s loads of things you can find out about us and our solutions on our website. Have a read and get in touch, we’re here to help. We’ll be adding new content throughout the week of BETT and after the show including videos of our presentations, downloadable copies of presentations and much more.

We hope to see you there!

Fronter wins the Oslo Innovation Award 2012!

Fronter has been awarded the Oslo Innovation Award 2012! The award is presented each year during Oslo Innovation Week and goes to a company that succeeds in creating new technologies and more jobs in Oslo. This annual event, which is in its seventh year, is a platform for Global and Norwegian investors, entrepreneurs, scientists and business leaders to gather in Oslo. The week consists of a series of events organised by a number of prominent players.

The topics of innovation and industrial policy, capital and funding of growth projects, innovation created from research and youth entrepreneurship were up for discussion. The aim of this week’s discussions was to bridge the gap between entrepreneurs, investors and experts in order to promote innovation and growth. Value was also high on this year’s agenda.

This is what the event organisers had to say about Fronter and why we were crowned as winners of this great award;

“Fronter gets the award for having highlighted the international competitiveness of the innovation community in Oslo and for creating a leading knowledge-based company through its digital learning platform,” said jury chairman Per Saxegaard.

Fronter has been a pioneer in the development of digital support for education. The platform is well known worldwide and has undergone continuous development. Fronter is used in countries such as England, Northern Ireland, Malta and the Scandinavian countries and are about to make a breakthrough in Latin America. We’re also currently in an exciting initial stage in China!

The company is continually growing. The number of logins reached over 150 million last year! Since the acquisition by Pearson, the world’s leading education company, Fronter has continued to play a central role in the development of digital learning globally.

“Behind the leading learning platform Fronter is a world class technology environment. We have had the opportunity to grow locally and invest in product development. Many of our 30,000 colleagues around the world look to Oslo now that our own company Pearson is shifting its focus from print to digital. We are extremely proud of this recognition from Oslo Innovation Week”, says CEO Nils Olav Sund Teigen in Fronter AS.

CEO Nils Olav Sund Teigen receiving the Award

Summer Room

Did you know there is a free Ready-to-Go Summer Room on the fronter website?

Aimed at KS2 / KS3 pupils, the Fronter Summertime room encourages pupils to explore some of the different cultural and religious festivals that occur during June, July and August. This editable room gives you an interesting range of important summer dates which will serve as a focus for a range of different learning activities.

http://uk.fronter.info/teachers/ready-to-go-fronter-rooms/summer-room/

Follow us on Twitter @FronterUK for news of other Fronter free online rooms for your school

Congratulations to the Summer Games Competition Winners!

…..and the Winner is!

Pearson Fronter hosted a WOW (wonderful online winners’) event this morning, Friday 22nd June,  when around 500 youngsters and their teachers learned if they had won prizes in the Summer Games Creative Design Competition.

Teachers from all over the UK  put in some excellent competition entries:
Prizes went to members of staff from Rushey Mead School, Leicester City; Tuke School, Southwark;  and St Edmund’s School, Enfield.

Pupil prizes were awarded to youngsters from:

Park Road Primary, Sale
Charville Primary, Hillingdon
Heavers Farm Primary, Croydon
Southend High School for Girls, Southend
Oak Parks High School, Redbridge
Canons High School, Harrow

Special mentions were given to pupils from the top 20 school entries. Well done all of you! 

Charville Primary School	Hillingdon
Merton Park Primary School	Merton
Parklands Junior School	Havering
Cannon Lane Junior School	Harrow
Heaversfarm Primary School	Croydon
Southend high school for girls	Southend
St Edmund’s Catholic Primary School	Enfield
Charville Primary School	Hillingdon
Canons High School	Harrow
Lowe’s Wong Junior School	Nottinghamshire
Oaks Park High School	Redbridge
Park Road Primary School, Sale	Trafford LEA
Merton Park Primary School	Merton
Moriah Jewish Day School	Harrow
Walthamstow School for Girls	Waltham Forest
Central Foundation Girls’ School	Tower Hamlets
Horniman Primary School (3 special mentions)	Lewisham
Newnham Junior School	Hillingdon

Congratulations to you all!  

Our thanks go to everyone who entered – we received well over 600 entries. We enjoyed looking at each and every one of them and we’ll let you all know very soon about our next Pearson Fronter schools’ competition!

School Information Room released

The new School Information free download room is available from today on both http://www.frontersupport.com and http://www.fronter.co.uk

School Information Room free download for Fronter users

This is a really practical room template for busy teachers and Fronter administrators to use when creating a new central information space in their Fronter building.

The School Information room could be a very useful asset when preparing for a visit from Ofsted for example.

Winners of the Fronter Creative Design Competition to be Announced!

The waiting will soon be over for some talented young designers and their teachers.

On Friday June 22nd at 11.30am the winners of  the Fronter Creative Design Competition will be announced during a live Elluminate session.

Results will be posted here and on Twitter soon afterwards.

Good luck everyone!  :)

Follow us on Twitter: @FronterUK ,  @Fronterjane, @FronterRosemary, @FronterDeb and @FronterSteve.

Pearson Fronter trainers achieve top rating!

Pearson Fronter trainers collected a resounding 100% customer satisfaction rating from their trainees during the month of May. 

Here are a few of the things teachers said about their Pearson Fronter  VLE trainers:

‘Excellent knowledgeable trainer.  Superb pace.  Nothing was too much effort.  Fantastic!’  (Advanced Admin course)

‘I am really pleased with what I have learnt today, I feel more confident when using Fronter. I cannot wait to start to make changes to my rooms, creating homepages, adding flash, videos, forums and tests in lesson. Fronter will be implemented in most of my lessons from now on, whether it be a quick starter, main or plenary. There are so many things you can do with it.’ (LGfL training day)

‘The course was hugely useful and helpful and very brilliantly explained…’ ( e1 training)

‘It was a  very enjoyable computer course, it was great working in pairs and M was a great teacher.  I have learned not to fear VLE now.  Thank you.  I look forward to using Fronter in the future.’  (Belfast Fronter demo workshop)

‘I thoroughly enjoyed the day.  An excellent introduction to Fronter for a complete novice.  Pace was fast but perfectly pitched for the group.  J was very approachable and clear.’ (NI Fronter workshop)

For more info about Pearson Fronter training, follow this link.

Using Fronter to Promote the Online Staffroom

Have you ever wondered how you can make better use of the facilities in your online staff room?  If you have, then today’s Wednesday Webinar might have just the answers you’re looking for.

Starting at 4.30pm (Wed 9 May) one of our friendly trainers will be exploring ways to make your virtual staffroom more effective and a more useful resource. 

For more info, follow this link Promoting your Staff Room webinar

Wednesday Webinars are free of charge to all teachers who have Fronter in their school and are a great way to meet and network with other Fronter users.

Don’t forget, you can follow me and the Fronter team on Twitter @Fronterjane and @FronterUK

Fronter Roadshow Belfast and Northern Ireland

Team Fronter (Gary and Jane) have been made extremely welcome this week on the C2K/Northgate Roadshow.

We’ve met plenty of enthusiastic teachers from all over Northern Ireland who have  really impressed with their positive commitment to online learning. The Ready-to-Go rooms seem to have become a favourite item.

Watch this space for photos soon.

How to Increase the Logins to your Virtual School

This week’s Fronter Wednesday Webinar is all about helping you to increase traffic to your learning platform.

The session will be led by one of our friendly trainers and will be held online at 4.30pm on Wednesday 2nd May. It will last for about 30 minutes and is open to all teachers who have the Fronter learning platform in their school.

Take a look at this Wednesday Webinar link if you would like more info.

If you’ve not checked out the webinars before, then why not take a look! You’ll be made very welcome

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For more snippets of Fronter news, follow the Fronter team on Twitter @FronterUK, and follow individual trainers  @Fronterjane, @FronterRosemary and @FronterSteve