Everything you need to support your curriculum to yr 6 and beyond – all in one place

The editor's view

• What is it all about?

It's a serious business, education. We want to support you in a wide range of subjects, and give all abilities an equal chance. All of the tabs across the top of the screen let you support your students to the best of their abilities, whatever that ability might be. So we give you books, videos, powerpoints, interactive presentations, page reads, audio eavesdrops and a huge range of teacher printables, lesson plans and more. Three quarters of a million files more, in fact.

But on the home page we try to engage as well.
•The start screen gives an easy way for staff and students to see how exciting - as well as informative - our site is. If staff have not seen us, get them to play the start screen. It's just 2 minutes.
•The home page features an alternation of either a new video, with links to more research and/or a teacher lesson plan, or a new curious question, which links through to an answer and then to one of our search screens. In either case, It's a good way of getting used to how powerful the search screens really are.
• Down the side of the home screen we have added quick link tabs to make it simpler for students to navigate to subjects (although I still suggest they are told to use the search).
•The dropdown tabs at the top of the home screen are your anchors to our world. They are the 'workhorse' links of the site. So when you want to get to a subject, use those even when not on the home screen.
• Help? On each main topic screen, for example, Mountain or Tudors, look top left for the question mark icon and click it. Then you will find explanations for every part of the screen pop up. But we also have a help desk. Feel free to use it from the dropdown menu at the top of the screens.

• The age of responsive video books

If you are a long-term member of the platform, you will have seen the way that the books have steadily become more responsive. Now book pages can be enlarged and dragged (fabulous for whiteboards), and every book can be searched (the search bar is top right on the book page). On vertically-held tablets and phones the books are displayed one full page at a time and are a joy to read. Swipe to move on. Best opened in tabs, so you can go back to the home screen and keep the book window open, too. Now we have added videos on pages of our core textbooks. We have hundreds more to add, so keep looking our for them.

As a result of these improvements, books have become much more useful and flexible. Our digital platform provides by far the most economical way to let staff have books and other materials to use at home and on whiteboards and also students to use with their parents at home. As publishers of printed books we are not trying to see the demise of things you hold in the hand, but we want to give you more flexibility, and to give you books on specialist topics we could not afford to publish in printed form.We produce new digital books every week.

• Binge-watch our videos?

No, I don't really expect you to do that. But with people now browsing from video to video on the major on-line video platforms, we wanted to have the same kind of facility ourselves, to help you to see quickly what the new videos are that we have added, as well as a few all-time favourites. Just click on the aircraft as it flies onto the home screen. That takes you to our latest videos. It also has autoplay turned on, so when one video stops the next starts (although you can control it all from the icons above the video). And remember you don't always have to come back to this page to see them because we put them in appropriate search pages and subject lists. It's just there to give you a shortcut to what is new. And to binge!

• We need you as champions

I also want to tell you about how to explain to colleagues how to use the new platform. If you are reading this, you are probably already one of our champions, so spread the word to even reluctant staff members by suggesting they play our start screen video. We keep our membership prices stable by adding to our membership base, so if you have friends in another school, do tell them about us, as the more the members, the less likely it is that prices have to rise.

If you have a membership and want to comment, please do; it makes our day when you get in touch: e-mail technicalsupport@curriculumvisions.com or start a help desk ticket.

Brian

(Editor:Dr Brian Knapp)

Curriculum Visions is the Primary School division of Atlantic Europe Publishing. We produce and publish highly illustrated, full-colour text books and reference books for schools and libraries throughout the world. The words Curriculum Visions', the logos Curriculum Visions lozenge and Atlantic Europe Publishing compass device are trade marks of Atlantic Europe Publishing Company Ltd, registered in the UK, USA and elsewhere.