Members of staff can access the Staff area by clicking the Staff tab at the top of the screen. The Staff area provides members of staff access to a number of specific areas. (When you access any of the staff areas you can return to the Staff page by clicking the Staff tab at the top of the screen.)

The Daily Diary links to a community which holds the “Day Book” rather similar to an electronic notice board which is editable by all members of staff. The Curriculum Planning link takes you to a folder view of planning documentation organised in this example by classes and aspects of the curriculum. Minutes and Briefings provides access to an area where all relevant information is stored and the Staff Handbook can be uploaded to the portal so that it is accessible by all staff anytime, from anywhere. The Letters section could contain copies of all the letters sent home to parents; any teacher can access and print a copy for the pupil who has lost or misplaced their own. (Thanks to Fir Tree Junior School for the example contained here). Forms and Policies can similarly be stored in the portal so that they are always available.

The Teacher’s Websites link provides access to an external web site, in this case the ICT Advisory Team’s web site, and links straight to the page containing examples of good primary school curriculum links. The Year 6 Transfer Project provides a link to a Digitalbrain community where pupils in the Kidlington partnership shared work as part of an ICT transfer project last term. The Moderated Work links to a partnership community which holds some examples of literacy and ICT work. We are also currently working on an e-portfolio which will hold more examples of moderated ICT work which will also be linked from here.

These examples illustrate that the links from a staff page such as this can be to information which is held within the school portal and which is for internal consumption. Links, however, can also be provided to external web sites or to partnership communities or other schools’ portals.

The Pupils section of the portal provides pupils with easy access to their own Year Group community and to the School Council.

These are simply year group communities where the class teacher and teaching assistants would be “leaders” and the pupils members. The teachers would be able to edit the content on the community front page, enter dates of outings or special events in the community calendar and add tasks and resources for pupils to access.

The Governors’ community would normally be a closed community accessible only by the school governors. The community calendar would hold the times and dates of upcoming meetings while agendas, minutes and other relevant information would be held in the resources cupboard.

To Copy Objects from the Cricket Road School Portal

You can copy any object from the Cricket Road School Portal and paste it into your own school portal as a starting point. You can then alter the object to suit your own needs. To copy an object you will need to be in folder view. For example, to copy one of the Year group communities:

·         Visit the community you want to copy, for example, Year 1.

·         Select View and Folder listing to go to a folder view of the community.

·         On the “breadcrumb trail” towards the top of the screen click on Communities to go to a listing of all the communities in the Cricket Road School portal.

·         Click to place a tick next to the community you wish to copy and click the Copy button toward the top of the screen.

You now need to browse to your own school portal to paste the object in the relevant location. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is:

·         Click the Smiley face to go to your personal portal

·         Click the Home tab to go to your school portal

·         Select View and Folder listing

·         Click your school sub-domain in the “breadcrumb trail” (i.e., cricket-road in the example above) and then click the Communities folder to bring up a list of the existing communities in your school portal

·         Click the Paste button towards the top of the screen to paste the new community in place.