The realsmart community regularly share their best work for all to use in their own schools. Take a look and see what you can find for your own teaching.

Go to ‘my content’ and click the ‘Community items’ tab. Choose an item from the list and click on it to view, share and duplicate.

We love finding out why people love realsmart, and how they are using it effectively in their schools.

Hirst Park Middle School 

Hirst Park Middle School took the initiative and found realsmart easy to roll out across the whole school with very little support. Recently they told us how they’re using realsmart to deliver everything from lesson plans to field trip blogs.
‘It literally took me about 15 minutes to plan a unit of work – using the resources that we already have in school – and uploading them into realsmart. It was just so easy to use, so intuitive.’

Charlene Larter Literacy Teacher

Click here to watch the video

Hornsea School and Language College

Hornsea School and Language College have embedded realsmart into the schools way of life, whether it’s using rcast to keep Media Diploma production diary’s, or rcast to engage difficult to reach students. With little training, they have seen how realsmart can have a massive impact on both students and teachers.

‘We’re using realsmart quite a lot in our particuliar area because the students are responding to it really well, and it’s making life quite a bit easier in terms of collecting assessment evidence and things like that.’

John Hart e-learning coordinator (Music & Diploma)

Click here to watch the video

Aston Manor, Bartley Green and Wheelers Lane

These three Birmingham schools have used realsmart to reduce their workload. By writing their OCR Nationals ICT units in realsmart using rafl, and then setting them to the community area, they were able to share the work they had created and duplicate units the other schools had built.
‘realsmart’s just been a great tool to share ideas, share resources and just to get our message across – to save us re-inventing the wheel.’

James Gough Head of ICT – Aston Manor School & Technology College

Click here to watch the video

37signals  – the Chicago based makers of Basecamp and other great web-based software – recently wrote an article on smartassess for their Signal vs. Noise weblog.

The article, ‘Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud: smartassess‘, covers how realsmart came about, why it came about, and looks at the fundamental philosophy at the heart of realsmart – the learner!

It would be fair to say that since the article was published twitter has gone through the roof!

“realsmart is based on self assessment rather than the teacher telling you what to do. Students own their portfolios and can build them at their own pace. It’s based on the idea that we learn as we reflect and record our learning, not when a teacher tells us we’re a B- and could do better. It tries to help us learn like we do in the real world i.e. on our own, with our friends to help us, and occasionally some feedback from an expert.” Gwyn ap Harri

To read more about why we do what we do, click here.

P.S. You’ll also get have a look around the office and try and guess who’s who!

Thank you for coming to see us at the Achievement Show 2010. smartassess (makers of realsmart) were proud to be official sponsors of the show – we hope you managed to hang around for a glass of wine on us after the show at the drinks reception.

The interest form that you completed at the show was entered into an iPod Touch prize draw. The draw was made at the end of conference….

And the winner is….

Mark Potts, Salisbury High School – your iPod is in the post!

Don’t worry if you came a close second in the draw – we still have an offer for you!

Book your school demo and place an order this term and get realsmart for just £2600 – thats a £400 saving off your first years license. We will also give you free SIMS/CMIS integration worth £300.

Thats a saving of £700 for acting now and getting a demo booked in.

Click here to email us and start the conversation.

Aston Manor, Bartley Green, and Wheelers Lane are 3 Birmingham schools who’ve used realsmart to reduce their workload.

By writing their OCR Nationals ICT units in realsmart using rafl, and then setting them to the community area, they were able to share the work they had created and duplicate units the other schools had built. Students are able to track their progress and teachers can feed back on coursework at any given time. This, along with other uses and benefits that realsmart offers – collaborative student voice forums (rweb), Headteacher blogs (rcast) – have really opened up what these schools are doing. Click the thumb nails below to hear them tell you how easy it is to use realsmart.

If you want to achieve similar results but don’t know how, click here to contact the realsmart support team.

“realsmart’s just been a great tool to share ideas, share resources and just to get our message across – to save us re-inventing the wheel.” James Gough (Aston Manor)

“…we can collaborate with other schools by each writing a unit and then sharing it – so sharing the workload.” Sharon Fletcher (Wheelers Lane)

“When pupils come into the lesson realsmart is their first port of call. The focus is immediately there as soon as the kids enter the classroom. You can use it in many different ways – directed teaching, where by in a lesson you use a specific objective and that’s what you’re going to work on in a lesson, you can use where by you develop independent learning and pupils will learn at their own pace.” Olivia Burns (Bartley Green)

“rweb has allowed the student council to set up a website, to put any questions, statements, images, or feedback they want on there – to pose to the whole student cohort at the school. They can comment, give feedback, help each other, & they can ask questions to the staff, or to pupils if they feel more comfortable doing that…” James Gough (Aston Manor)

“It’s almost like everybody is part of the student council… everyone’s opinion is heard.” Aston Manor student

“Without putting their hand up and asking, they can see exactly where they’ve got to go, exactly what needs to be done next, and there’s all the guidance in there to help them, so they’re really enjoying it.” Sharon Fletcher (Wheelers Lane)

“It’s good ‘cos it helps you be more independent… you don’t have to keep going back and forth between the teacher – you can do it yourself.” Bartley Green Student

“We came up with the idea of having a Head Teachers blog using rcast… the pupils get to see the Head Teacher in a different light, posing questions to get them to think about other things… to think about what they do, and how they might impact and feed back on their influences and their experiences along side hers. And the nice thing is its available for everyone to see.” Olivia Burns (Bartley Green)

Hornsea School and Language College have embedded realsmart into the “school’s way of life”. Whether it’s using rcast to keep Media production diaries, or rcast to engage difficult to reach students. With little training, they have seen how realsmart can have a massive impact on both students and teachers. Click the thumb nails below to hear them tell you how they use realsmart.

If you want to achieve similar results to Hornsea School but don’t know how, click here to contact the realsmart support team.

I’ve been using realsmart with my GCSE year 10 PE group. I’ve been using it to create a dialogue with my students using rcast as a blog. I’ve extended that recently by uploading exam papers – which has proved really effective. Where is it working for me? I think its enabling me to engage those difficult to reach, C/D borderline boys -particularly with their homework. They’re now the first to do their homework – they’re doing at all sorts of crazy times – and they’re starting to engage with the process. So I think its had a massive impact.” Steve Ostler – Deputy Head (PE)

“I’m using rweb to collate a portfolio of evidence for the IAG Gold Standard with the local authority. I wanted a website so I could upload all of the evidence that we have. I decided to use rweb because it’s a very quick and very simple way of creating a website – just a case of dragging and dropping the pages that you want to create. By using rweb I can then control who has access to these documents (some of them are very sensitive in nature) namely myself, the staff from the school, and the local authority adviser who I’m working with to achieve the Gold Standard. It’s a really really simple and easy way of collating the information that we need, and then people can access it remotely.” Anthony Bennett – Assistant Head (Teaching & Learning)

“We’re using realsmart quite a lot in our particuliar area because the students are  responding to it really well, and it’s making life quite a bit easier in terms of collecting assessment evidence and things like that.” John Hart – e-learning co-ordinator (Music & Diploma)

Hirst Park Middle School took the initiative and found realsmart easy to roll out across the whole school with very little support. Recently they told us how they’re using realsmart to deliver everything from lesson plans to field trip blogs. Click the thumb nails below to hear them tell you how easy it is to use realsmart.

If you want to achieve similar results to Hirst Park Middle School but don’t know how, click here to contact the realsmart support team.

“There’s two areas realsmart covers that I find really attractive. One is the ease of use – people seem to take to it immediately – five, ten minutes of training and they’re doing stuff. The other thing is the flexibility in there – you can use different sections of realsmart to crack different nuts. We’re using rcast to do blogging, we’re actually using mind maps (rmap) to create lesson plans – so it’s not just one route through.” Brian Cosgrove – Web & Media Developer.

“It’s so easy to lose work sheets, and you don’t know where they are, but – you can’t lose these! realsmart keeps you on track of what you’re doing.” Harry – Hirst Park Middle School pupil.

“It literally took me about 15 minutes to plan a unit of work – using the resources that we already have in school – and uploading them into realsmart. It was just so easy to use, so intuitive.” Charlene Larter – Literacy Teacher.

“It’s easy to use. That’s why I use realsmart instead of some of the other things that I’ve used in the past.” Cameron - Hirst Park Middle School pupil.

“At the moment we’ve got about 50% of our planning actually through realsmart in the English Department, and from next year we’ll be looking at having 100% of our planning – for the department – available on realsmart. We’re also looking at how students get in to using that as well, so that it becomes an environment where the community can engage with planning as well as the teachers.” Louise Hall – Teaching & Learning Co-ordinator.

“A lot of the time I do my projects at home, and it’s literally just a click of a button and realsmart’s on.” Beth – Hirst Park Middle School pupil.

“I’m using realsmart as a way to get the task across to the students, so they can see what they’re expected to do, but also to provide the resources, so that they can go on there and have a look at things that I’ve found, that I’ve selected – links to things – so that they can go home, as well as in school, and continue with their work, and also to help out their parents so that their parents can help them with their enquiries and their research mainly.” Danielle Sykes – Geography Co-ordinator.

“… we can always just check that we’re doing it right. It’s really hard to get confused.” Georgia – Hirst Park Middle School pupil.

“I wanted the flexibility in producing lesson plans. The realsmart mind map (rmap) gave me that flexibility. So now we’ve got our lesson plans as a central resource, with everything linked to them. I find it ideal for both myself and the staff. One of the things is how simple it is to use, it’s just a natural progression to develop the whole system – it’s ideal.” Gordon Dickinson – ICT Co-ordinator.

When you create items, you can share them.

By sharing them, you are allowing other people to COLLABORATE through them. LEARN MORE

You can share items with another person, or people, or a group, or groups.

As a mentor or teacher, the simplest thing you can do is share an item with your class LEARN MORE

But there are more complicated things you can do. You can:

• Share an item with a number of groups and control how you see the results
• Add more mentors to your share, or share items on behalf of other mentors
• Allow other people to edit the actual item, and create items collaboratively
• Make an item publicly viewable without logging in to realsmart

And there are various ways to manage shares that you have already set up.

As a learner, you have to ask permission from a mentor to share an item.

We provide access to the Admin area through your normal log in in ‘My Profile’. Mentors and Learners CANNOT access the Admin Area.

There are four types of realsmart user; One Owner, and any number of Admins, Mentors and Learners.

The Owner of your site is set up by smartassess when we create your site.

Admins can be set up by the Owner and other Admins.

Owners and Admins log in through the normal way, and have the same functionality as Mentors.

Mentors are usually your teachers and staff.

Learners are usually your students.

Learners need permission from Mentors to share items in realsmart.

In the Admin Area, you can manage your users and groups, view items created in your site, upload your school logo and other things like passport stamp pictures.

realsmart is a website. Maybe not an ordinary, run of the mill website, but it is effectively a website.

So, all you need to run realsmart is a computer with internet access, and a modern, up to date browser with Flash and javascript (which is pretty much all of them). We’d recommend Firefox.

We would also recommend you have a good internet connection.

That’s it!