SharePoint Products and Solutions: Muhimbi

One of my favourite SharePoint companies at the moment is Muhimbi. I came across them during 2009 via twitter and found them to be one of those companies who have created something special- really useful products which meet a clear need. Since then they have extended their product range further and have a number of high quality products, three of which I wanted to share with you today. The great news is the first one is free!

SharePoint Infuser

Have you ever added a custom content to a SharePoint site and then had to add it to every singe site within the site collection manually? SharePoint Infuser overcomes this by automatically adding any custom content to all pages in the site collection. What I like about the team at Muhimbi is their site also contains a blog with great examples of how you might use their product. Cant imagine how you would use SharePoint Infuser? The blog shows you two great examples including adding search as you type to every SharePoint page and cleaning up a new SharePoint site by removing unesessary elements of the page.

PDF convertor for SharePoint

My favourite tool as a heavy end user and a real time saver. PDF convertor for SharePoint does exactly what its name suggests and converts common document types to PDF. The include the main Microsoft suite of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Visio and InfoPath. End users in education will use this facility endless times within the year and the ease of use shown below shows just how much time you will save.

SharePoint URL Shortener

Have you ever sent an email to staff or students with that ridiculously long address hoping that you copy it correctly? SharePoint URL Shortener overcomes this, again with real ease. A one click function allows you to create a short URL similar to services like TinyURL  but within your company network

I will cover these products in more detail throughout the year and also spend some time talking about Muhimbi’s Workflow Power Pack which looks excellent for our SharePoint developers at Twynham. If you would like any details on the product above and the possibility of educational pricing contact me below for further details. 

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Snow days and the effective Learning Platform. Staff connecting with the Learning Gateway.

Does the Learning Gateway support staff working when the school is closed.

Of course the Learning Gateways are used by both students and staff and so one of the other questions is did staff find it helpful on the snow day? The Gateway contains a separate area for all our staff including support staff to get key notices, look at their timetable, search for a student and access relevant data about them and whole classes and access key school documents. As well as this they have staff only subject areas for department documents and resources.  Walking around the school site on Friday a number of staff commented on using the time during a snow day to update a learning area or adding schemes of work. This is supported by the statistics below with the snow day the second bar from the end.

Twynham Learning Gateway Staff visitor numbers

Again I have taken the two week trend which shows around 170-190 staff (120 teachers plus support staff) a day access the staff section of the Gateway during the 9 school days shown above. On the snow day this was impressively high with over 150 staff choosing to login and complete work online.

Twynham School Staff Gateway

From the usage analysis during the recent snow day it seems clear that the TwynhamLearning Gateways are an embedded aspect of both student and staff use. Both groups clearly use it to support both learning and teaching beyond the classroom. Its impact was further made clear to a member of staff at The Year 14 presentation evening held on Wednesday 6^thJanuary. A student now studying Sociology at LSE asked if she could have access to the Learning Gateways for her first year at University. When asked what the reason for this was she said she missed the quality and ease of availability of resources that she could get from Twynham School’s Learning Gateway.

Snow days and the effective Learning Platform. What happens when you further engage students?

What happens when you further engage students in aspects of the Learning Gateway?

One interesting thing about the timing of the snow day is the fact that it followed a major launch the day before. On Wednesday 6^thJanuary we launched our new Online Options system to the whole of year 9 in assembly. We have had an Online Options system for three years at TwynhamSchool but a new build aimed at further engaging students with a face lift and new videos was quietly made live on Monday 4^th January. After the launch on Wednesday morning we would expect a surge in numbers as students can independently look at all possible GCSE subjects from both within school and at home. The statistics for the first week of spring term are below.

Statistics for the launch week of Online Options and the new site

The statistics show that students started to find the site on Monday and Tuesday when returning to school. On Wednesday and Friday when the launch plus PSHE lessons being in the IT rooms to allow students to look at the site saw 247 and 269 students visiting. What is astonishing is the highest day for visitors during the week was Thursday when 271 students visited the Online Options site even though the school was closed. The feedback on the new site has been overwhelming positive and the evidence shows that when something is both well created and seen as valuable by students they will use it heavily. With just 250 students in year 9 the vast majority visited the site on the snow day with some students from other year groups taking an inquisitive look. Looking at the number of pages viewed some students viewed as many as 280+ pages on the new site.

Student comment video on the French Options page

Uploading a video to SharePoint 2007 in seconds

A quick post to show you my favourite feature on some of our new SharePoint solutions. The video below shows a system we have built which allows you to upload a video to a SharePoint page in seconds.

Snow days and the effective Learning Platform. Students connecting with the Learning Gateway

Closure day 7^th January 2010. How did students connect with the Learning Gateway

On Thursday 7^th January when the school closed the notice on the website reminded parents and students that the Learning Gateway was available to support students with their study during the closure day. Whilst we do not expect students to use just the Learning Gateway as they had homework and textbooks available the Learning Gateway hosts a rich range of learning resources to support students. With A-level and GCSE students completing modular exams the following week having both GCSE and A-level Revision Gateways well resourced should be a fantastic resource.

Twynham Learning Gateway Student visitor numbers

The statistics above again show the last 5 days of autumn term and first 5 days of spring term. On 7 of the 9 days when the school was open around 900 students logged into the Learning Gateways, mainly from within the school. On the last day of term before Christmas student logins are below 500 as the school closed before lunchtime. The highest day of logins was Wednesday 6^thJanuary when a large amount of training on the Online Options system was taking place. The overall trend is 900 logins per day. On the snow day (second bar from the right) when no school computers were available 774 students logged into the Learning Gateways from home. This is an astonishing 86% of the average logins on a normal school day. What is clear is that students see the Learning Gateway as an integral part of their learning.

Maths Revision Gateway helps students to prepare for the GCSE exams in January

Snow days and the effective Learning Platform. Using your website as a communication tool.

The following series of posts on our recent snow day will cover:

Part 1 The use of Twynham School’s SharePoint website during a snow day

Part 2 Does the Gateway support students with their learning during a snow day?

Part 3 What happens when we further engage students with the Learning Gateway?

Part 4 Does the Gateway support staff and allow them to work during a snow day?

The use of Twynham School’s SharePoint website during a snow day

January 2010 saw a turbulent start to the year in terms of the huge disruption to education during the extreme weather in the UK. The largest snowfall for 50 years and cold weather not seen since 1981 has forced schools across the country to close. With nearly 50% of schools in the UK closed on Wednesday 6^th January and large numbers remaining closed for the remainder of the week one key question is, what was the impact be on learning with such widespread closures? Since 2008 all schools have been required to have a Learning Platform in place and whilst most have achieved this goal the extent to which these systems support learning beyond the classroom is questionable. During this disruptive period have students throughout the UK had access to high quality learning resources which they can use from home when schools are forced to close.

At Twynham School we managed to keep the school open throughout the first week in January except on Thursday 7th when ice throughout the site and surrounding road network forced a closure. Given the absence on Thursday we have taken the opportunity to look at the impact Twynham School’s Learning Platform had on the ability of students to learn during the forced closure.

Twynham School Website- how well did we handle the closure?

On Tuesday 5^th January a notice was sent to all students during tutor time and the last lesson of the day when it became clear poor weather was likely. The message was a simple reminder, all confirmation of school closure would come through the school website. We do of course use other communication tools including radio but our commitment was to make a decision and post a notice by 7 am on the website. The figures below show on an average day we would expect around 3.000 hits to our website. I have taken analysis from the last week of the autumn term and the first week of the spring term to give a clear trend of 10 consecutive school days with the second last bar being the snow day.

Twynham School website visitors

Clearly the website was well used both on Wednesday 6th and Friday 8^th January when a closure was possible but avoided. On the actual snow day we experienced over 21,000 hits which is 7 times the usual demand. Although our text message system and use of radio are other supporting ways to communicate with parents they are not without their pitfalls. Local radio took over an hour to mention each school closed on Thursday and is not a good medium with this volume of school closures. Text messaging can be effective but is reliant on having every parent’s mobile number and these remaining accurate throughout up to 5 years. Our analysis of household availability of broadband shows that it is near 100% and the statistical evidence shows that our parents and students use the website as an effective broadcast medium.

Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 4 of 4

Part 1 of this series can be found here

Part 2 of this series can be found here

Part 3 of this series can be found here

In the final post on this series we look at the final parts of the Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint. This includes the video demonstration of Admissions, Newsletters and the ‘I joined’ video clips. 

Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 4 best viewed in 720p

Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 3 of 4

Part 1 of this series can be found here

Part 2 of this series can be found here

In part 3 of the series looking at the Twynham 6th Form Site we look at the additional features in the bottom navigation. This video covers the following sections: Student life, Gallery and ‘Getting to a Top Uni’.

Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 2 (best viewed in 720p)

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