We’ve posted our ’0-6 Month Guide’ again because we think it’s the most useful bit of kit we’ve got – and it will help you to start using realsmart immediately!

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We now offer an automated integration link, that allows you to populate realsmart with your member data as often as you want from two of the most popular MIS systems, Serco Facility and Capita SIMS. This means that any changes to classes will automatically be picked up. You can set the data transfer for once a day, once a week, once a term…. you get the idea.

From our experience, the fun of exporting your member data and sending it through to us for upload can be somewhat of a chore to say the least. This service will automate the collection of users and groups to administrate your realsmart account. You won’t have to bother your network manager or administrator again once this is done…

Please contact us for availability and set up of these services.

You can link anything you’ve created in realsmart to other realsmart items you are creating. You can do this by either adding it as a link, or by embedding it using iframe.

For this example we want to insert an rmap into an rweb. Just follow the simple steps listed below:

Option one – insert the item as a link.

• Firstly you will need to have shared both the items with your intended audience – if not, the rmap you are trying to include in the rweb will not be viewable by them.

• Open both items so that you are viewing them in two separate windows (the rmap & the rweb).

• Select the ‘edit‘ option for your rweb and select the destination (pen and paper icon) where you want to insert your rmap (click the little book next to the page title).

• In the web cell editor, type what you want the link to be called and highlight it:

• Click the link icon ( )

• Switch windows and copy the URL of the rmap you want to insert.
• Switch windows back again and paste what you have copied into the ‘Link URL‘ box.
• Select ‘Insert‘ and the click ‘Save my content‘.

You have now inserted your rmap into your rweb as a link.

Option two – embed the item.

• Firstly you will need to have shared both the items with your intended audience – if not, the rmap you are trying to include in the rweb will not be viewable by them.

• Open both items so that you are viewing them in two separate windows (the rmap & the rweb).

• Select the ‘edit‘ option for your rweb and select the destination (pen & paper icon) where you want to insert your rmap.

• In the web cell editor select the HTML icon ( )

• Switch windows and copy the URL of the rmap you are wanting to insert. Switch windows back again and paste what you have copied into the ‘HTML source editor‘ box. See below:

• Double click at the start of the URL you have just inserted and type the following:

<iframe src=

• Double click at the end of the URL you have just inserted and type the following:

width=”100%” height=”600″></iframe>

It should look something like this;

• Click ‘update’ at the bottom of the ‘HTML Source Editor’ box, and click ‘Save my content’.

• Select ‘Save’ and then you can view your website with your rmap embedded.

You have now embedded your rmap into your rweb.

This process works the same with with all the rtools. You may want to attach an rcast to an rmap, or a website to an rafl unit; the process is exactly the same – all you need to decide is whether you embed the item, or attach it as a link.

Easy, eh?!

Paul Hanson from Homewood School & Sixth Form took time out to tell us some of the great things that they’ve been doing with realsmart over the last year.

Homewood have been using realsmart for everything – be it showing more transparency between planning and assessment, or simply helping them achieve over 30% A* in GCSE Media.  From centralising their History homework, to replacing their outdated VLE realsmart has become an integral part of daily life at Homewood.

“To get a whole school approach takes a lot of effort…but the rewards that you’ll reap after a year or so are enourmous – they’re fantastic!“.

Paul Hanson, Homewood School & Sixth Form Center.

Click on the videos below to see how all this happened (and more)……

Skip Your VLE!!!

OFSTED

GCSE Media

History Homework

CPD

The Xtra Factor

AS10

What do you get if your learners collaborate across key stages, communicate with, and feed back to other learners they have never even met?

Well, apart from seriously engaged pupils, at Homewood School in Kent they also won the BIMA Award for the Inspiring Future Talent, Digital Schools Challenge 2010.

Along with this, Homewood are using realsmart across the whole school to deliver individual subjects. Pupils have even been training their teachers to use realsmart.

This is a tool to really get the pupils excited about learning!

“What realsmart allowed them (the students) to do was communicate with other students who had particular skills across the school – that they did not know … to this day they’ve never met each other.” Paul Hanson (Homewood School & Sixth Form)

“The communication between myself and the students has vastly improved….” Pete Sparks (Homewwod School & Sixth Form)

“It’s easy because I actually do my homework now, so I don’t loose it anymore.” Homewood Student

“We made the jing videos because it would be much easier for other students to hear how to do things from students about the same age…. Students don’t need to listen to another teacher droning on, they can hear people their own age, and I think that’s really helped.” Homewood Student

Sharing is a fundemental part of harnessing best practice in teaching and learning and realsmart is set up to make this as easy is possible.

With our new MIS integration you can now have dynamically updated class lists within realsmart.  This means you can easily share the right resources with the right students.

If you look at “my content” there are 4 areas;

• My items – items created by you

• My Site – items created in your school that others have shared

• rcommunity – items created by realsmart users nationally

• realsmart items – items created by realsmart (these are pretty good!)

Once you have created an item you can choose how to share it.  If its just for you and your students just go through the sharing system in the following way.

How to add a new share;

1. Share with groups, individuals, or  yourself – click next

2. Choose mentors – by default this is you but you could add additional mentors, perhaps someone you team teach with, share a class with a teaching assisstant or your head of department.

3. Acitivity – I think of these as subject areas or activities i.e. Maths, English, Science, but activities could include Student Voice, Key Skills, PLTS, etc.

From here you can select “Finished! Create My Share”, which will place your item in the “My Learning” Activities area of yours and your selected learners accounts.

Click here to see the sharing tutorial video

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)

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.

Ok, so you’ve created an item, an rweb or rcast etc and you want to know how to get the students in your class to see it when they log in to realsmart.

Well, you can do this in a number of places…

• In ‘My Content’, click on an item and select ‘share’,
• Or when you are editing an item, or viewing it, by selecting the ‘shares’ menu and selecting ‘add new share’

You will then go to the ‘share an item’ screen.

Here, just select ‘Share this item’, then click on ‘group(s)’.

You will see a list of all your groups and classes in your school. You can either scroll through this list, or start typing the name of your group in the ‘search for groups’ box.

Select your group, then click on ‘Add >>’

The only other thing you need to do now is decide which ‘Activity’ to share your item under.

Click on ‘Activity’ and either choose an activity or subject name, or type in a new one.

Finally, click on ‘Finished! create my share!’.

Now, when your students log in, and when you look in your dock in ‘My Learning’, the item will be shared under the activity name you have chosen. You may have to ‘refresh’ your dock screen by clicking on the refresh icon.

Our new 0-6 month guide is designed to get you safely and successfully through the first 6 months of your realsmart life. It’s full of practical help and support, and will be your guiding hand to cope with the first few weeks and beyond.

Copies have been sent to all our schools and further hard copies can be ordered by contacting support@smartassess.com

To download a pfd of this guide click here