Reviews

All in a day's work - SEN software creator
Special Children, June/July 2003

Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3

Our free downloadable resources of Clicker grids and Wordbars are also a very successful growth area. We've recently recorded our 10,000th registered user and have had 100,000 downloads from this site at www.clickergrids.com. These impressive milestones reinforce my view that teachers want to be able to use ICT in lots of different areas, but have such little time to dedicate to creating their own resources.

We've been growing so rapidly that I'm also in the throes of looking for new premises, and I've just been to see a design-and-build site with the Building Surveyor. This is a longer-term option than I would like, but would ensure that we could specify space for offices, packaging and distribution. We do almost everything in-house, this way we can be flexible and most importantly, provide a high level of customer service. I'm also interviewing today for another new post, hence the need for larger offices!

I'm involved in all areas of the business and like to meet with all the business functions at least once a week to keep up to date with developments. We're just about to beta release our latest software offering, Cloze Pro. I've been involved at every stage of this exciting new project, and it's great to see it getting to a stage when we can actually test it in a number of schools to see its benefits. Cloze activities are used extensively throughout all key stages, but there's nothing available to integrate ICT into these activities. With Cloze Pro teachers will be able to copy and paste some text into the program, then ask it to remove every fifth word, or remove all the high frequency words. Then Cloze Pro will provide a bank of words (which could include picture clues as well as words) to complete the cloze activity. Structured reporting is provided for teachers to track pupil progress. The software will be in schools in September, but there's still a lot to do before then!

Telling schools about these new developments is an important part of my role. I'm already scheduling meetings with our graphic designer and Business Development Manager to discuss the new catalogue, so that it will be ready for BETT 2003! This has to be managed in the light of all our other preparations for BETT, which involves everyone in the business. It's such a showcase for all of our products and resources and it's a wonderful opportunity for me to meet with teachers. We have a really close relationship with teachers and LEAs, and have over 250 LEA centres as Clicker centres that we speak to regularly about existing and new products at regional 'Clicker Days'.

Go to top