We emailed all our customers regarding something we were curious about.    It was a fairly simple question "what are your top three uses of Frog?".  When we collated the responses, it makes for quite interesting reading. 

 

Content & Curriculum online

 

 

Not particularly surprising, the first of our uses is for hosting and delivering content online.   It is nice to see this use confirmed, but what was rewarding was the responses which linked this approach to saving schools money.

 

"Resources of Frog [including] worksheets, revisions guides etc... has reduced photocopying [by] creating a bank of revision materials" - James Fendek - Aldridge School

 

There were several surprising mashups in your responses, such as this example:

 

"I use Pinterest regularly as part of my planning and teaching which I have embedded the department’s boards (via Twitter!) onto an ‘Inspiration’ site. This is useful for me in the classroom but also good for the children to use as a resource" - Rebecca Bruce, Hildengrange

 

The benefits for using Frog for content were often mentioned in your replies:

 

"Everything accessible from one place, , Single source of truth (not multiple copies of everything), Easy (and fun!) to use" - Sue Busher, Kennet School

 

"We like how creating sites is so quick and easy to do, more and more staff are facing their fears and using frog to develop sites. The discover option also means we can make sites look appealing and find videos very quickly and easily…" - Emma Waddington, Rastrick High School

 

Work Assignment, homework support and flipped learning

 

 

Frog's assignment system was quite a popular response, not just for homelearning but also for directing work to students in class.  It isn't just for work either, several responses talked about using Frog for passing any resources to students.

 

"Having an easy to access place for all students to get their homelearning from our Science page makes it easy to set and has dramatically reduced the number of excuses from students (and parents) about not doing homework." - Richard Lacey, Penistone Grammar School

 

One response pointed out a surprisingly different use for the assignment system:

 

"Creating a site linked to an after school coding club so children could follow-up what they've learnt at home and practise some more.  It also allowed other children to see what was happening in the club and have a go on their own" - Rachel Coultart, St Nicholas Church of England Primary School & Nursery

 

Flipped learning, blended learning and indepedent study were also frequently mentioned in responses talking about the assignment manager.  Creating content-rich sites to assign to students provides them with tasks almost like a 'To do' list takes a bit of time, but your results suggest it is worth it

 

"Flipped learning ... sites created with resources for students to share. Transformed learning in areas of school where it has been embraced." - Liz Alton, Arden Academy

 

There is one other story about work assignments which came to us from the British School of Riyadh, which we just had to share it with you:

 

"Rainy Day Sites. We are proud of our scheme to roll Frog out to the whole school. We created the “Rainy Day” task. In Riyadh sometimes it rains really heavy and the school closes (like a snow day in the UK) so we held training sessions for all staff (including TAs and admin) and their homework was to create a site which was an activity that students could carry out at home in around an hour. It could be curriculum based or something else. This meant that every single member of staff had the skills to create a basic site and publish some information, consolidating the training sessions lessons. It also meant we now had a bank of over 200 activities for all ages so if the school closed for a day (due to rain) the students could continue to engage even if they were not following the curriculum. We had some brilliant sites made by staff ranging from maths problems to how to pack a rucksack." - Lee Drury, British School of Riyadh

 

Parent and Student communications

 

 

Engaging parents through the platform is also in most of your Top 3s.  We recorded lots of examples of different ways to pass student information onto parents using Frog.   Many schools use forms for Student Voice surveys and set up a site for their Student Council.   The nature of 24/7 access was mentioned several times but overall, the impression we got was you wanted parents to be part of the school and you were using Frog to do this.

 

"Main info page for parents followed by overviews, curriculum and pastoral info then each subject has info there. All shared as public pages on the site. It has replaced paper booklets and is ... an active area that is frequently updated." - Vik Paw, British School of Jeddah

 

Use of forms to gather information from users was probably the most popular item mentioned in this category.  Schools have used forms  and polls for everything from finding out how many parents are planning to attend parents evenings through to asking students their thoughts on school events

 

"Using poll widgets to create a questionnaire gathering feedback on previous projects and activities" - Chris Langstaff, Holmfirth High

 

Forms are not always being used for academic issues, as David Hilyard points out a novel use at his school:

 

"Staff meals for parents evenings: sign up using a form on dashboard." - David Hilyard, Cheltenham Bournside Schooland Sixth Form Centre

 

Student Voice was mentioned a lot in your top three.  Many of you use Frog to create spaces for students to communicate and share ideas with the faculty.  Creating a site for the Student Council to manage themselves was frequently mentioned.

 

"We have been using Frog for our student voice. A Student council portal has been created plus student home pages usually feature a topical poll which is managed by the student council. We have used Frog for student surveys too, for example we are looking to revamp the schools rewards system so we surveyed students in school through Frog to get their opinions." - Katie Green,Theale Green School 

 

 

Thank you so much to everyone who responded.  The survey is helping Frog's product team to focus on the developments you need.   We have gathered so many good ideas and are looking at ways of sharing them all with you.  We don't want this to be the end of the discussion, if there's anything in the above that's intrigued you or prompted a question, chat about it on the forum:

https://forum.frogcommunity.com/