Building a shared future with Frog

We’ve just had our latest annual conference, and it went really well. We were delighted to host even more people than last year, and with much broader representation from senior leaders.

We announced a major change in Frog at the event and I’m delighted that everyone there was extremely enthusiastic about the idea; which is fantastic, because I need your to help deliver it…

Most people know Frog as a Learning Platform, which is only half accurate. Frog is and always has been, in effect, an Education Technology Lego kit. We put the bricks of this Lego kit together as a Learning Platform back in 2004 and it kind of stuck. The fact that many schools rejigged these Lego bricks to create their own personal YouTube systems, or any number of other things, or that organisations like National Theatre and KEW Gardens use it to develop their own tailored learning portals doesn’t seem to have shaken the perception that Frog is just a Learning Platform, although we still do that really well!

As a quick aside, over the last few years we’ve also added deep educational knowledge to what we do; we have two complementary assessment products, and we’ve been a founder partner – along with the NAHT – of the Life After Levels initiative. Our product has also become an extremely powerful development platform, so powerful that it’s currently being used as a base to develop an education social network for an entire country in Europe!

So, what’s next for the UK?

Our next step is a big one.

Teachers are struggling with workload, schools are struggling with money, and MATs are trying to find their feet.

When schools have lots of human resources available to them, a Lego kit that you can do pretty much whatever you want with is a very exciting prospect to some, but what happens when those resources aren’t as readily available as they used to be? The truth is that most schools and MATs frankly don’t have the time, or the resources to put these bricks together any more. Frog’s technology is being massively underutilised and as a result, lots of opportunities missed. As recently as last week one of our team was in a school and saved them over £4,000 a year – in less than 15 minutes! I mentioned this in the office this morning and was delighted to hear that it happened again yesterday, a completely different thing, but we’d saved someone £2,500 a year during a customer ‘phone call.

In short, there are lots of schools using Frog in outstanding ways, saving money, saving literally thousands of hours of teacher marking time, improving outcomes; but these schools have had to put an investment of time in to achieve this – time most don’t have.

So, we’re going to change how the Frog organisation works, and if you’re a customer we’re making you an offer.

We’ve been quietly offering our help to some schools and MATs over the past few months, supporting them to develop new resources; things like an Appraisal and CPD system, saving around £2,500 a year in EVERY school in the MAT that we’re building it with, or Digital Planners, already saving up to £4,000 per year per school in a lot of schools. We’ve also just started working with a group of schools on an IT Service Desk and another group on a Behaviour and Rewards system.

This isn’t brand new software development, this is built using the Frog Lego bricks – that’s how powerful they are now. There are already over 50 examples like this, and that’s not including things like the hundreds, maybe thousands of learning resources that our schools have already shared on the FrogStore.

Wouldn’t it be great if all this hard work was available to every other Frog school at the click of a button?

So, our offer is that we will help you to build stuff, on condition that you let us make the results available to the whole Frog community, and that we do so without charging anyone anything.

Everything for free.

This way, if one school finds a way of saving a few thousand pounds a year, then every Frog school can mirror it, with just one click of a button. If another school finds a way of saving hours of teacher time, then every Frog school can benefit. If a MAT finds a way of improving their governance and communication, then every other Frog MAT can benefit.

To be honest, this has been happening naturally and organically over the past few months, since a major update to Frog that has made it exceptionally flexible. What I’m doing is offering to invest in this further and to make a real go at getting all of our schools to work together.

Money is tight in schools today, and teachers, in fact, all school staff are under tremendous pressure.

Let’s stop mucking about all doing the same things and work together, as one.

For free.

I’m really excited by this vision. It’s exactly what our UK schools need at this moment and we’re really proud that we’ve reached a point where we’re able to deliver it, and frankly that we’re able to be part of it.

Are you in?

 

New mobile theme already being adapted!

We recently released a really powerful, highly visual, fully mobile responsive theme.  The first use for this was for our own Home Learning interface that combines the workflow and homework monitoring of the Frog Learn product with the revision and academic reporting of the Frog Play product into one seamless, mobile friendly interface.

In case you’re not aware, the latest version of Frog marks a significant shift in the platform.  You are now able to build fully functional platforms / products inside Frog Sites now.  This will be familiar to schools that used the previous Frog 3 platform, and is generating a lot of excitement.  Of course, with Frog Code, this means that Frog Learn is way more powerful than Frog 3 ever was.

Greenshaw High School has already had this theme adapted to provide their own similar interfaces within their world of Frog.

A couple of pictures here to show the direction it’s heading in:

BETT Radio hear about Frog’s School Improvement Team

Last week I spoke to Russell Pru from BETT Radio about what we’re going to be showcasing at this year’s BETT show. Listen to the interview below:

More detail available on the Frog Blog here

For those not aware, we are also going to be speaking immediately following Michael Gove at the Education Leaders Conference.  Apparently there are some VIP tickets that we can give away for this, so click on this link to see the full details on the Frog Blog.

We’re on stand M50 and I’m hoping that we can get everything agreed soon enough to tell you about some very exciting developments, especially for those of you that would love to join the Frog family but are struggling with budgets at the moment….

Moseley Park School Build cool iReview site in Frog

Luke Bennet (@lukeyboy) from Moseley Park School from Wolverhampton just sent our guys some screen grabs of their iReview, which look great, so I’ve put them on here along with a description from Luke:

Luke:

iReview has been part of our frog site for 2 ½ years now. This year our whole VLE underwent a rebrand and this included iReview, which was given a new design. iReview is there to allow pupils to submit reviews of music, DVD’s and Video Games. Its aim is to improve literacy skills as well as increase the usage of our frog platform. It has managed to do both of these. One of the students that submitted a review last year is now in year 11 and applying for journalism courses and is using his review as part of his portfolio. Throughout the school we encourage the use of iReview with posters placed around the school in key areas.

It was built using Photoshop and then simply added to frog using the background brick. The covers are then inserted using the columns and text and pictures brick. There is also a simple form on a separate with a file upload brick added to it to allow the reviews to be submitted online by students.

Nice innit?

First Guest Frog Blog

Graham Quince, from Cramlington Learning Village has just written the first guest post on the new Frog Blog, about Mobile Learning.

You can find it here: http://frogtrade.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/mobile-learning-%E2%80%93-is-it-really-all-that/

Noyana Recording #frog11

For those that went to the Frog Conference this year, David pearl sent along the recording from his ‘phone of us all singing Noyana.  I thought you might like to hear yourselves again:

Thanks David !

Student Built Learning Platform

I’m hearing the phrase, “every school will go through a journey of three learning platforms” more and more.  What I think people mean by this is that they try one, it doesn’t meet their needs, so they buy another (usually more expensive) one, and when they outgrow this, they buy a third one.  I guess there’s some truth to this, many Frog schools go through the same process, essentially “re-launching” their Frog platform every couple of years, adding in new capabilities to the system, a new design and layout, and usually a new emphasis, a new catalyst for additional change.  So it’s not that every school will go through three platforms so much as it’s important to keep re-energising people with something new, fresh, and more capable than the previous system – fortunately for Frog customers, they can do this without having to buy something else, but the point still stands.

On that note, I’ve nicked a few paragraphs from a recent press release from one of our schools that I thought was an interesting development, a learning platform built by the students…

Roles Reversed at Halifax High

Students at Halifax High at Wellesley Park have been showing their teachers a thing or two with the latest technology hitting schools – Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) – technology that engages the whole school community in students’ education. And the kids have been training the teachers on how to use it!

The school first implemented their VLE three years ago, a system that is very much like an interactive intranet site, developed and supported by local Halifax company, Frog (www.frogtrade.com). It acts as a virtual school for students, teachers and parents to open up the channels of communication through email, forums, online homework assignments and much more! After three years the school decided it was time for the VLE to be updated and redesigned.

“With the re-launch of the Frog VLE,, we have always encouraged our students to use this technology to its full potential – so who better to develop a learning platform for students than the students themselves” explains Julia Pollard, Head of e-Learning at Halifax High.

With technology at the heart of the latest teen generation, the school went on a recruitment drive to find a team of ‘Lead Frog Wardens’ in Year 10 to re-launch the learning platform to the rest of the school.

“From talking to our friends at school we knew our VLE needed a new design that let us choose what we wanted it to look like. We worked with Frog to come up with six new designs and launched these to the school using a video that we recorded and showed during the school assembly.

“What’s great about Frog’s VLE is that it is really flexible and easy to use – it lets us customise our own personal page to view school notices, useful tips, forums etc.” says Mariya Hussain a Year 10 student and Lead Frog Warden at Halifax High.

“I have mine as the neon background!” exclaims Fize Iqbal, also a Year 10 student and Lead Frog Warden.

After re-launching the VLE to the school, the Frog Wardens realised that teachers needed help and support with the VLE. The created step-by-step guides for teachers to follow, ranging from the basics through to designing their own departmental website.

Emma Geall, Head of Citizenship and SPACE said “I’m not particularly IT literate but the new VLE was bound to be really popular in the school and I wanted to get on board and support my students. The new VLE gives them access to online resources for their homework and revision and allows them to email me when they’re at home and have questions.

“The students really helped me understand how to use the system and I have to say, it felt a little strange being the student!”

Froggy Wordsearch

Ninestiles have just finished an awesome wordsearch widget in Frog:

To play the game go to http://frog.ninestiles.bham.sch.uk/search

To see a video of all its Froggy goodness, go to http://frog.ninestiles.bham.sch.uk/wordsearch

Cool School Community Site

Regents Park, along with their 5 feeder primary schools will soon have a shiny new community site, specifically to provide a shop window for community services that are offered by the schools, and to allow people in the community (parents, carers, etc.) have easy access to information on services that can help support them to raise and care for their children.

A secure login area in the site allows primary, secondary, and head teachers to use a collaborative area for resource development and general communication within and between the schools.

Here’s a piccy (click on it to see a bigger version):

It’s only a first draft, so it might look different by the time it’s finished, but I thought it was an interesting development worth showing off.

First Frog Primary Bespoke Skin

Our guys have just finished the first draft of the very first primary school bespoke skin we’ve ever done.  Most primary schools are just taking standard Frog Primary with the dozen or so default skins that it has in it, but this school specifically wanted their Learning Platform to look exactly like their existing website: http://www.htpd.surrey.sch.uk/

I thought I’d let you have a look at it: