THE WHITEBOARD - B Squared Squared... · B Squared has recently welcomed two new members of staff...

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THE WHITEBOARD The Rochford Review: final report I would like to thank Diane Rochford and her group for such a valuable contribution to the pursuit of excellence in the field of special educational needs and disabilities. After many hours of evaluation, feedback and consideration we have concluded that whilst The Report has recommended a big shift in thinking, many of our recent and current projects (including the Developmental Continuum and Evisense) are already aligned with the recommendations and more importantly will help professionals to achieve these goals.- Dale Pickles Welcome! At B Squared, we really believe its good to talk’. We are keen to communicate with you, our customers, to better understand how you are using our products. We have developed our software to meet your needs and we want to ensure you continue to get the most out of it. The chaos of primary assessmenthas been highlighted by the General Secretary of the ATL (Association of Teachers and Lecturers) as one of the major problems affecting education today. In response, our assessment solutions can bring calmand orderfor schools looking to better manage pupil assessment. Connecting Steps has been designed to be easy to use, to save teacherstime and to be flexible enough to suit your school s needs. We realise that time poorteachers need quick and easy access to information. So we plan to include all the latest B Squared updates here in one place, just for you. This first issue of our customer newsletter includes details on Autism Progress, our innovative autism profiling tool and the launch of Evisense, our new evidence capture software. New features and special offers are also highlighted. Your feedback is crucial to us. Please see the feedback section for details of the many ways you can get in touch. We aim to produce this newsletter half-termly and would love to hear what you think, or what you would like to see in future issues. Dale Pickles, Director, B Squared B Squared Ltd Newsletter Issue 1: November 2016 Autism Progress is now available! Our new and innovative tool for profiling autism helps education and care professionals to assess the true impact of a persons autism and guides the development of targeted support strategies. It was developed in collaboration with three leading autism charities: Autism Wessex, Scottish Autism and the North East Autism Society. A more in-depth understanding of how an individual s autism affects them is provided by profiling their strengths and weaknesses across four key areas of impairment: Autism Progress is available on our hosted Connecting Steps V4 assessment platform. The descriptors are also available in a free handbook for all V4 hosted customers. Communication Social interaction Flexibility of thought Emotional regulation Download handbook Order Autism Progress

Transcript of THE WHITEBOARD - B Squared Squared... · B Squared has recently welcomed two new members of staff...

Page 1: THE WHITEBOARD - B Squared Squared... · B Squared has recently welcomed two new members of staff to our Sales and Marketing teams. We are also taking on 1700 square feet of additional

THE WHITEBOARD

The Rochford Review:

final report

“I would like to thank Diane

Rochford and her group for such a

valuable contribution to the pursuit of

excellence in the field of special

educational needs and disabilities.

“After many hours of evaluation,

feedback and consideration we have

concluded that whilst The Report has

recommended a big shift in thinking,

many of our recent and current

projects (including the Developmental

Continuum and Evisense) are

already aligned with the

recommendations and more

importantly will help professionals to

achieve these goals.”

- Dale Pickles

Welcome! At B Squared, we really believe ‘it’s good to talk’. We are keen to communicate

with you, our customers, to better understand how you are using our products. We

have developed our software to meet your needs and we want to ensure you

continue to get the most out of it.

The ‘chaos of primary assessment’ has been highlighted by the General

Secretary of the ATL (Association of Teachers and Lecturers) as one of the major

problems affecting education today. In response, our assessment solutions can

bring ‘calm’ and ‘order’ for schools looking to better manage pupil assessment.

Connecting Steps has been designed to be easy to use, to save teachers’ time

and to be flexible enough to suit your school’s needs.

We realise that ‘time poor’ teachers need quick and easy access to information.

So we plan to include all the latest B Squared updates here in one place, just for

you.

This first issue of our customer newsletter includes details on Autism Progress,

our innovative autism profiling tool and the launch of Evisense, our new evidence

capture software. New features and special offers are also highlighted.

Your feedback is crucial to us. Please see the feedback section for details of the

many ways you can get in touch. We aim to produce this newsletter half-termly

and would love to hear what you think, or what you would like to see in future

issues.

Dale Pickles, Director, B Squared

B Squared Ltd Newsletter Issue 1: November 2016

Autism Progress is now available!

Our new and innovative tool for profiling autism helps education and care

professionals to assess the true impact of a person’s autism and guides

the development of targeted support strategies. It was developed in

collaboration with three leading autism charities: Autism Wessex, Scottish

Autism and the North East Autism Society.

A more in-depth understanding of how an individual’s autism affects them

is provided by profiling their strengths and weaknesses across four key

areas of impairment:

Autism Progress is available on our hosted Connecting Steps V4

assessment platform. The descriptors are also available in a free

handbook for all V4 hosted customers.

Communication Social interaction

Flexibility of thought Emotional regulation

Download handbook Order Autism Progress

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Special Offer

If you are a

Connecting Steps

V4 hosted customer

you are entitled to a

10% discount on

the annual

subscription for

Evisense.

Don’t just take our word for it…. According to Yvonne Skillern, Primary Leader, Highfield Ely Academy, Cambridgeshire “Using Evisense, we can securely capture and store evidence of learning and link it directly to the Characteristics of Effective Learning for EYFS. It is straightforward and easy to use, with a clear user friendly interface. “In the past photos were stored on our school drive - which took up lots of space! Staff are now taking photos and adding evidence directly into the Evisense app. This saves a great deal of time compared with cutting, sticking and linking evidence in hard copy Early Learning Journals. We also save money on ink and paper as we no longer need to print out photos.”

Order Evisense

Evisense Evisense, our new evidence capture software is now available to existing Connecting Steps

customers*.

Starting an evidence revolution

Evisense is a revolutionary tool for schools that enables teachers to showcase events from a

child’s time in education. It has been designed to record a pupil’s achievements and

progress through photos, videos, audio and documents, tracking their journey from Early

Years through Primary and Secondary education.

Here’s how Evisense can make your life easier…

Extensive trial conducted

Earlier this year we conducted an extensive Beta trial, rigorously testing the software. Over

50 schools and nearly 200 teachers (with more than 1000 registered students) took part and

have already had the opportunity to experience how easy it is to capture evidence of pupils’

achievements.

Link to Connecting Steps

Evisense enables you to link evidence to assessments points in Connecting Steps**, our

market leading assessment platform. Connecting Steps covers a wide range of curriculums

(for example EYFS, P Levels, KS1 & 2 of the National Curriculum). Evisense and Connecting

Steps work alongside each other with users, groups and pupils being linked between

applications. Users in Connecting Steps can see which skills have been linked to evidence,

as well as viewing evidence linked with subjects, attainment levels and assessment points.

*Launch to the wider education market is planned for January 2017. **Linking to assessment points requires Connecting Steps V4 running on B Squared servers.

Record evidence Increase parental engagement

Share with others securely Moderate work

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Evisense

top 10 features

Follow a child’s journey - Evisense follows a child’s journey through their whole education from Early Years to Primary and Secondary.

Multi-platform - capture and upload evidence immediately using our mobile apps or upload via a web browser.

The power of flexibility - view evidence by student, class, subject, attainment level or skill.

Record evidence of achievements - to support assessments and justify decisions about students’ learning.

Moderation and standardisation - quickly and easily view and compare students’ work to standardise marking.

Linking with Connecting Steps - view evidence linked with subjects, attainment levels and assessment points.

Security and safeguarding - delivered using encryption, device security, audit trails and child protection lists.

Parental engagement - reviewing work together has a positive impact on learning outcomes.

Communication - enables more effective home-school communication through messaging parents and sending newsletters and diary dates.

Self-assessment and self-reflection - students can be empowered to add their own evidence, encouraging self-assessment and self-reflection.

Connecting Steps updates

New group assessment feature saves time

We have added a new tick box

within Connecting Steps labelled

‘Assign achievement to whole

group’. Accessible from the

Group Assessment screens, this

new feature enables you to

record achievements quickly and

easily for an entire group. It will save you time by speeding up the assessment

process. The group can then be reviewed to identify gaps in learning, helping you

to proactively plan lessons to ‘fill the gaps’!

New curriculums update

Our Connecting Steps software now incorporates the Welsh Foundation Phase

and Key Stage 2 Assessments for English and Mathematics 2016. We plan to

continually expand our breakdowns as new curriculum components are released

by the Welsh Government. We are also developing progress tracking across Key

Stages 3 and 4 of the National Curriculum and a new framework to assess pupil

progress within the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence.

New support portal

We have recently launched our new Connecting Steps support portal to provide

easy access to the resources you need. We have rewritten all of our articles,

reorganised them and added lots of new content to support our customers. We

have also made the support accessible from inside Connecting Steps, just click on

the question mark in the bottom right of each screen to search for help!

Connect to the Support Portal

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Forthcoming Events

If you are going to be at any

of these events, please come

and see us.

Your feedback Your feedback is crucial to us. By listening to our customers we have developed

our assessment and evidence capture software to meet your needs.

Please continue to provide feedback on our assessment frameworks.

You can reach us at:

0845 4660 141 or [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter & like us on Facebook

We are working to increase our presence on Social Media. Please follow us on

Twitter and like our Facebook pages. You can link to our Twitter feeds and

Facebook pages from this newsletter, where you see the logos. We have

separate accounts for B Squared, Evisense and Autism Progress.

Share your views on the Rochford Review final report... for a chance to win one of 20 prizes!

We are interested in your views on the impact that the recommendations from the

Rochford Review final report will have on your school. In order to better understand

this, we will be conducting a survey of our customers. The survey findings will be

used to develop our frameworks for the future. Please look out for an email from us

asking you to participate.

As a thank you, we are running a prize draw for all completed surveys. There will

be 20 prizes (each with something for you and something for your school). Teacher

prizes include a Kindle Fire, Waitrose gourmet Christmas hamper and B Squared

goodie bags. School prizes include free Connecting Steps curriculum updates,

Evisense gold subscriptions, Kindle Fire tablets and hosting discounts.

What’s new at B Squared?

B Squared team celebrating the launch of Evisense

We are expanding! B Squared has recently welcomed two new members of staff to

our Sales and Marketing teams. We are also taking on 1700 square feet of additional

office space. This expansion will give us room to grow as we focus on the delivery of

our latest products Evisense and Autism Progress.

For more information on any of our new product features, please contact us on

[email protected], call 0845 4660 141, or visit:

B Squared Autism Progress Evisense