Post BETT- We look back at the Highlights!

First of all, we would like to say a big thank you to all the speakers and visitors who joined us at our Fronter BETT Stand and International event last week! We enjoyed meeting you, and hearing what you have to say about the VLE. We also felt your presentations were very inspiring and worthwhile- and from the feedback we received from visitors, we know they agreed.

With so much happening during BETT week, we thought you might like to recap on a few of the highlights. If you’d like to hear interviews from some of our speakers, or recap on some of the presentations, then you can access them all here , or follow one of our links below:

Online Reporting and Encouraging Parental Engagement

Teachers TV looked into the many possibilities parental engagement can have, and one such issue was cyber bullying. In this video clip, Fronter’s Director of Education, Antony Moore, looks at the issue, and the solutions Parental Engagement can provide. Click here to view the video.

Also, if you would like to see the Online Reporting presentation that Antony ran on our BETT stand throughout the week, Click here.

Audio Podcasts from our Speakers

During BETT Week, Simon Pile from Anson Primary School told us how they are using the London MLE to inspire learners to engage parents, Gary Brand from Maadi British International School, Egypt told us how they encourage the use of their VLE at MBIS, and James Blomfield explained how the Dover partnership is working to connect the school community. If you missed these presentations, Click here for more information.

Pearson Resource Gateway – ‘Using Primary Digital Resources within Fronter’

Scott Bell’s was on our stand each day to give a presentation about the different resources that are available with the PRG, to view Scott’s presentation, Click here.

For more highlights, please visit our BETT 2010 Highlights Site

Day 3 at BETT Show – Extending and Connecting

First things first! Thank you to everyone who came through last night to our Top of the Class: International Celebration, and a special thank you to all our presenters who exhibited and gave us a glimpse into their schools.  I think we can safely say that it was an inspiring and worthwhile evening for all involved, and we hope that this was the beginning of many fruitful learning partnerships and projects.

After an exciting evening at the Hilton with over 400 guests, we are back at Olympia today for Day 3 of BETT Show.  Highlights of today:

‘Extending and Connecting’ – James Blomfield from the Dover Partnership is presenting on how they have been using the Fronter platform to link together schools in the Dover cluster.

‘Using Cross-Curricula approaches on the MLE’ – Andrew Gray from Hillyfield Primary is sharing their experiences with using the London MLE to support an Integrated Curriculum.

This is just a taste of what is happening at the stand today – do join us to listen to these presentations as well as find out more about Fronter’s Online Reporting Solution, the Fronter CPD project, as well as the new Pearson Resource Gateway tool. (View full program for today)

Can’t make it? Check out our Live BETT video stream and don’t forget to keep checking the blog for new video and audio podcasts from the past few days.

Fronter at BETT 2010- and we’re looking at Parental Engagement

It’s our first day at BETT 2010! Every day we will be bringing you a new blog update, looking at the big themes of BETT and bringing you live feed from the BETT Stand. It’s the start of an exciting week, and we’re looking forward to meeting representatives from across the school community.

One of the most important aspects of learning we are addressing this week is Parental Engagement and Online Reporting, so we thought it would be appropriate to make this the subject of our first Fronter at BETT blog.

This morning, Simon Pile from Anson Primary School in Brent did a presentation on ‘Inspiring Learners to Engage Parents’ where he spoke about how the pupils from his school are using the London MLE to create pages that they can actually be proud of, and can then show their parents once they get home.  We then interviewed Simon to find out more about the brilliant initiatives that Anson Primary have developed within their MLE, and exactly how they have ‘Inspired learners to Engage parents’. To listen to the interview, click here.

After this, we had our very first presentation about our Online Reporting Solution that is being launched here at BETT, for those unable to make it this year, we thought we’d try sum up a few of the key points.

Online Reporting and 2010 Targets

Fronter has provided communication and collaboration tools for over ten years, enabling the whole school community to share ideas and access information online. Many schools have quickly extended their implementation of Fronter to include parents because they have realised the ease with which this can be done and the power that it creates.

One way they have done this is to create ‘Parent Rooms’. These allow parents access to the school calendar, policies, advice materials etc. They have encouraged parent teacher associations to use the learning platform to collaborate and share their ideas on how they can help around the school.  One school moved their manual processes for signing pupils up for after school clubs into an online process within Fronter. As well as parent rooms, schools are also beginning to explore the power of the survey tool to enable them to seek the views of parents quickly and easily in order to inform their self evaluation processes.

The DCSF targets for Online Reporting are a natural extension of the work that schools have been doing within Fronter with parents for many years. Online Reporting is about empowering parents with information to be better able to support their child(ren) and enable schools and parents to enhance their communication and collaboration.

Extracting data from all the major UK MIS providers the Fronter Parental Portal will provide parents, teachers and pupils access to:

• Attendance data
• Special Educational Needs information
• Behaviour information – both positive and negative
• Summative Attainment information

The Fronter Parental Portal will also draw upon the information that is available from the learning that has been taking place within the learning platform. Where schools are making use of the relevant Fronter tools, the information can be made available to parents. It will provide them with information about homework that has been set; the results from recent course work submitted via the Hand-in tool, and details on their child’s targets and progress from the Goal and ILP tools. All of this provides the parents with a rounded view of their child; and by enabling both teacher and pupil to see the same information, everyone is involved in the learning conversation.

We believe at Fronter that presenting data and meeting DCSF targets is only the beginning of the journey. By making this information available to parents, schools will increase the communication and collaboration that parents want to be involved in. And schools will be able to make even greater use of the Fronter toolset to support this dialogue and collaboration. Following a wide consultation process with RBCs, LAs, Schools, Head teachers and parents, Fronter will provide a solution that not only enables schools to provide data, but enhance the communication and relationship between home and school. The Fronter ‘Parental Portal’ will present data in an easy to understand and accessible format as well as harnessing the functionality of the Fronter platform to encourage and extend the communication and collaboration between parents, teachers and schools.

Come and see us on our stand at J10 to find out how schools have been using Fronter to involve parents and to see the future of the Fronter Parental Portal. The Fronter Parental Portal will be available in the summer term 2010 ready to meet the September 2010 target for secondary schools and well ahead of the 2012 target for Primary schools.

We are very excited about the parental portal developments and look forward to working with LAs and schools during 2010 and into 2011 to widen further the communication and collaboration across the school community using Fronter.

If you’d like to find out more about what we’re doing at BETT 2010, please visit www.fronter.co.uk or take a look at our Stand program