Hebburn Lakes Case Study

12th May 2022Geoff Hewitt

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. 

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. 

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!

Norton Infant School Case Study

21st July 2021Geoff Hewitt
“Norton Infants School have a great example of a realsmart website that has a relentless focus on sharing beautiful work“

– KS1 teacher Laura explains how posting regularly on her class blog has had a positive impact on teaching and learning…

remote rockstars

20th April 2020S Brown

Check out this beautiful work from Miss Mistry at XP East – we this she’s a realsmart remote rockstar!

 

If you are too – we’d love to hear from you! Send us a message at [email protected]

 

 

 

Remote Learning Resource Pack

30th March 2020S Brown

Working with our partners at XP Schools Trust we have created a range of video resources to help you support staff, students and parents working remotely. 

You can now view the new ‘Parent Support Centre‘ by clicking on the image below. 

The video resources include:

    • How students are set work
    • Why XP use different online technologies
    • How to download these technologies
    • How to log in to different applications
    • Frequently Asked Questions

https://sites.google.com/xpschool.org/xp-parent-supp-centre/home 

Even more content will be added to the website in the next few days.

You can also view the complete video playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7eogYOPaSLyx7abiGKgEKsfOhjbmj9iK  

Further support can be found at our customer support centre here: https://realsmart.groovehq.com/help_center 

Google Hangouts Chat

20th March 2020S Brown

We’ve been working very closely with schools this week and have found Google Hangouts Chat to be a very useful platform for collaboration for remote working. You can set up groups for Leadership, Departments, Projects and instantly chat, share files, add events and start video conferencing.

To active Chat for your domain, you can start by enabling Chat just for teachers.

A school G Suite Admin user will need to navigate to admin.google.com > apps > Hangouts Chat and enable for the appropriate organisational units. Teachers only for a realsmart customer would be the Organisational Unit labeled “mentors”.

Quick Attendance Survey

18th March 2020S Brown

The Government has this evening announced that schools are to close on Friday until further notice.

BUT…

Not for all students. The Children in the care of Key Workers or those with an EHC Plan can still attend school.

Great, but how do you know how many children are going to attend school on Monday?

For example, Some parents may have one Key Worker in the family but might choose to keep their child at home.

We’ve created a very simple Google Form that will allow you to poll the parents of your students to identify the scope of the provision you might have to provide on Monday 23rd March.

If you have a Google or G Suite for Education Account you can take a copy of the form below which you will own and have the data submitted to your own spreadsheet.

Once you’ve clicked the link a copy for yourself will be made and added to your Google Drive. You can then change, edit or add more questions, you can share the form on your website, send via text, twitter or email.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1_CA2LIZueUSq5Na51JuNLyy324xdyVs3s4pdMrnvjfs/copy

 

Thinking About Remote Working?

9th March 2020S Brown

Our world class MIS to G Suite Integration means that your school is ready and prepared for any remote learning emergencies.

 

FREE GUIDE BELOW! 

  1. Our Google Classroom automation means that all of your Google Classroom courses are ready and waiting for teachers to just set work for their students. All students are pre-populated into ready-made courses.
  2. Our Google Classroom reporting tool means that school leaders can monitor classroom usages and statistics across the school.
  3. Using Google Hangouts Meet video conferencing is ready to go, simply create a calendar event and invite your class group or staff group.

N.B.

Google are offering free of charge advanced functions that include the ability to record meetings, livestream up to 100k people and add 250 people to a Hangout. These features will be available at no additional cost to all G Suite for Education customers until July 1, 2020.

(more…)

What content does my school website need?

28th February 2020S Brown

Q: Is my school website compliant?
A: You’d better check…

The real answer is that the requirements change all the time and it depends on what phase your school is and if you’re maintained or academised.

These two links should keep you on the right line.

Remember, realsmart would always advocate sharing the beautiful work your students produce is the best way to demonstrate success.

Have a look at these beautiful work blogs from our partners.

 

 

Xposé Free Tickets Competition

17th February 2020S Brown

XP are realsmart – you can be too!

“Staff and Students are on a mission together to make the world a better place” – Ron Berger, EL Education

XP is a secondary School in Doncaster, South Yorkshire that is based on the model and Expeditionary Learning practices from EL Schools like High Tech High, in the USA. They have established a Multi-Academy Trust of Schools that works closely with the local community and prepares children to be successful in the modern world, with compassion, character and integrity through beautiful work.

XP are realsmart – our technology is at the heart of the beautiful work the students and staff create on a daily basis. You can enter our competition to win free tickets to XPosĂ© – the XP Trust Annual Conference in Doncaster. Delegates travel from all over the world for this event. You could be joining us as our guest at this inspirational day conference by entering our competition.

“XP are changing lives for the better. The students are an inspiration. XposĂ© is superbly put together” – XposĂ© 2018 Delegates.

Be the difference – come and learn how to XP at XposĂ© with realsmart.Â