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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 ‘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
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
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
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 feedback@bsquared.co.uk
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
sales@bsquared.co.uk, call 0845 4660 141, or visit:
B Squared Autism Progress Evisense
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