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 reports and contextual data in Progress, loads of improvements to assignments, including integration with the student calendar, awesome (genuinely awesome) Google integration, and a whole set of learning content (videos) now in Frog Play, along with loads of other bits and pieces.
I’m thrilled to say that Frog (and co) have been nominated for three BETT awards this year!
Gareth.Frog 