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About NPCAT
The Nicholas Postgate Catholic Academy Trust was formed in September 2018. It is a large trust of 4 secondary schools, 22 primary schools and a teaching school. NPCAT partnered with realsmart with the goal of delivering a MAT website, a common website theme for all schools in the trust, trust-wide Google Suite for Education, smartportfolios, smarthomework, smartparents and Google Classroom reporting.
Getting a brand new realsmart school website is easy – you don’t even need to start from scratch. We can rework and mould your existing website into something fresher, simpler and more beautiful. Here’s how we did that for Hebburn Lakes Primary in South Tyneside.
Rebuilding/rebranding the logo
When we build a realsmart website, we put together a full proposal for the website and its new design – all ready for you to approve and amend until it’s perfect for your school. This includes the layout of the homepage, fonts, colours, logos, key features and more!
As part of this process, our Designers took the existing logo from Hebburn Lakes and quickly updated the brand for the new website. They also provided more up-to-date, compatible files to be used for any future updates to signage or other livery to make sure the school’s brand looks nice and sharp – no matter what the context.Â
Feature Video/Cover Video
Have you always wanted to showcase your school with a beautiful video, featuring all of your wonderful students and the incredible work they do on a day-to-day basis? That’s what we created for Hebburn Lakes, with the help of our Videographer. Their video, which now lives at the heart of their homepage, was filmed and coordinated in half a day! We collaborated with staff at Hebburn Lakes to plan and Art Direct a shoot that would cover all the wonderful aspects of the school, including specific classes and school features.Â
As well as the finished video, stills from this video were then sent to the school to use in any future publications.
We also edited a 20 second highlight version of the video, which loops at the top of their homepage. This is a dynamic and engaging way to draw people into Hebburn Lakes and their story – with an option underneath to watch the full video.
OTHER AWESOME FEATURES
As part of the redesign, we added various different features to Hebburn’s site, on top of our standard realsmart features like our easy to update blog. We added Notices, Events and Attendance plugins to the site – these are easily updated via our smartNotices feature or a linked Google Calendar! Easy eh?
All of these wonderful features and it’s as easy to update as sending an email – with a realsmart school website you’ll learn more and you’ll learn faster.
Find out more about updating and upgrading to a realsmart school website here – or book a free demo!
Designed with flexibility and simplicity in mind, realsmart is perfect for project based learning. Our products below provide everything your School and Students need.
Project-based expeditionary learning with realsmart
With a smartsite you can:
> Record your kick-off events.
> Create project blogs to record the learning journey.
> Create beautiful online exhibitions of learning or capture your exhibitions for reference in your learning portfolio.
With smartsync you can:
> Draft, Redraft and Critique – for example, whilst creating driving questions – collaboratively or by yourself.
> Hangout with “out of this world” world-class experts.
> Book check-ins and milestones with your teams and students using a timetable sync’d calendar..
smartHomework supports:
> students to demonstrate good habits of work, teachers to collect assessment for learning and keeps parents in the loop through a weekly email digest and portal.
> Keep track of all of your stats, hand-ins and more with the easy to use dashboard that tracks progression.
smartportfolio features:
> Evidence your learning against differentiated and standards-based criteria.
> Students can track their progress through personalised report cards.
Andy Jackson of XP School describes his use of smartportfolios
smartportfolios are the most powerful way to demonstrate and track learners’ progress, give real-time feedback and continually assess learning. smartportfolios provide an integrated gradebook and include target setting and tracking
We caught up with Andy Jackson to see how smartportfolios has improved education at XP Schools.
why smartportfolio?
how did you structure your first smartportfolio?
what happened the first time you used it with students?
how did the Google Drive integration help?
what did your course moderator think?
how did smartportfolio add value over a physical or digital folder?
XP is heavily inspired by the principles of Expeditionary Learning – Ron is the chief programme officer for Expeditionary Learning in the USA.
Take a look at the video below to see why realsmart is the perfect companion for delivering Project Based and Expeditionary Learning.
realsmart and XP School Trust have teamed up to offer a free place and an opportunity to meet the man himself. We’ve chosen a lucky winner from hundreds of responses.Â
Valley Gardens is an outstanding middle school located in Whitley Bay, North Tyneside. Headteacher David Godfrey appointed realsmart to support the school in March 2017. Since then, realsmart have worked in partnership with the team at Valley Gardens to: create a new website, develop the school’s own Google Apps domain for email, calendars, online storage and Google Classroom, and launched smarthomework with staff, students and parents.
A New Website
David wanted the new website to be easy to update, work well on mobile devices and make it easier for parents to find out the most important information on a day to day basis.
“I’m delighted with our new website; there is always more to be done but with the support from realsmart I know I can keep the website up to date myself. Using realsmart to support our website keeps our design fresh and ensures stability and performance across mobile devices. Our staff and students all log in to the website to access their own resources and have a single sign-on to Google and the new smarthomework application.” David Godfrey – Headteacher
Take a look at Valley Gardens Middle School website here and some other smartsites from realsmart here.
Taking Control of Google
As a North Tyneside school, the staff were already well acquainted with using Google Apps for Education though control for this was managed by the local authority. Now David and the team have full administrative access to their own Google Apps environment meaning they can quickly add new features, can control which users have access to certain resources, and it’s all automatically managed from the school MIS system (SIMS) so that all user accounts and teaching groups are constantly up to date.
Find out more about smartsync to Google apps here.
A Smarter Approach to Homework
smarthomework was launched during a staff Inset session earlier this term. It took less than 10 minutes to present the technology to teaching staff and they were asked to trial it for themselves. smarthomework enables leadership to have an overview of the quantity and quality of homework set in school and makes it easy for teachers to set, collect and assess. Â Google Apps are deeply embedded in smarthomework meaning that copying sharing and collecting documents and resources is all automatically managed for you. For more information take a look here.
“Using smarthomework has made tracking homework a hundred times easier for me; it saves precious time in the classroom and parents love being able to see what is expected.”Charlotte – Science Teacher
In October the school shared a public homework calendar with parents, meaning parents can quickly see what homework is due.
In the new year realsmart will release smartparents; an application for parents to receive school notifications and to promote engagement with homework, attendance and rewards. Find out more here.
“I’m really happy with the support and technology provided by realsmart; we’re still just at the beginning of our journey but I’m excited to see how we progress. I’d recommend any school take a look at what they can offer.”David Godfrey – Headteacher