1. Thurrock Education Services Web Portal Sarah Williams Web Communications Officer Heather Clark Senior Data Liaison Officer

2. What is the web portal Made up of three distinct areas My Portal E-briefing My Communities THE PORTAL IS AVAILABLE NOW

3. Thurrock Portal Purpose: General dissemination of information about education in Thurrock Education Services Contact Details Day to day operational information The Education web-portal will be linked to the Corporate web-site

4. Thurrock Portal Audiences: General Public: Including Parents, Carers and Pupils LEA Staff Schools Including Heads, Teachers, Support Staff Professionals Members

5. Thurrock Portal Type of Contents: News – What’s happening Notice Boards – Latest Information Resources – Guidance / Information Calendars – Events / meetings Pictures – Gallery for pupil art work Web-links to other useful sites Contact details – e.g. school lists

6. The Portal – In Development Content: Gaps in LEA Services Information – some sections still to submit content Calendars In development Staff Area This area is being extensively enhanced to provide a virtual office for staff throughout the LEA and schools Contact Sarah if you have any suggestions for site content

7. E-briefing Purpose Is to manage all documents sent from the Local Authority to schools. It is a gate-keeping process complying with DfES requirements. A classification system is used to tag and organise documents into different Education categories

8. E-briefing Type of Contents All documents sent to schools Statutory plans Policy documents Guidance Briefings Circulars General letters

9. E-briefing Audiences Specific groups have been set up Head teachers Governors LEA Staff Education Management Team School Effectiveness SENCO School Administration Class & Pupil Support School Support Staff Parents/Carers

10. Access to E-Briefing Documents Belonging to a particular group will give users access to appropriate documents Not all documents will be in the public domain or available to all groups e.g. draft documents or those containing personal information

11. How to use E-briefing You will need to register and state the group/s you belong to in order to retrieve documents New users will be vetted by the Web Development Officer After registering you will receive an email with your password for the site, you can change your password in the ‘managing your profile area’

12. Managing your subscriptions You will receive e-mails when new documents have been made available on E-Briefing You can tailor how you receive notification of updates via weekly or daily email alerts You can choose which type of documents you wish to be notified about in the ‘managing your subscriptions area’

13. E-briefing - Now Documents are currently being loaded Documents created for schools from Sept 2004 onwards Other Key current documents gathered through OFSTED process (e.g. policies)

14. E-Briefing in Development We are working with ELT admin team (Denise) on: New procedures for submitting documents through e-briefing Guidance on classifying documents to categories A Generic e-mail address has been created for document submission TGfl_EBriefingdocuments@thurrock.gov.uk

15. What we need from YOU Register with E-Briefing (see flyer) Tailor the way you receive information (e.g. e-mail alerts / types of documents) Familiarise yourself with the document classification groups (you can view categories in ‘manage your subscriptions’) as these will be used to tag all future documents you produce for schools

16. My Communities Purpose Creates a Forum area for communication and information sharing between specific groups of people Brings together people located in different places – e.g. offices, schools A community forum can be accessed from any computer with internet access

17. My Communities – Audiences Examples of potential communities: SEN Co-ordinators Head teachers Finance Staff Admin Staff EMT Teenage Parents

18. My Communities Content Type of Contents: Discussion Areas – sorted by topic Resources – Shared Documents Calendars – Events / meetings Web-links to other useful sites

19. My Communities How: Each community has a designated manager who has responsibility for vetting members and content Users need to register with a community or can be pre-joined by a community manager. Access is password protected

20. Development of MyCommunity Currently only pilot communities setup New communities are to be approved by the web development team We would like ideas for new communities Do you belong to a forum that would find MyCommunities useful?

21. An exciting development opportunity We are looking for : Designated Officers Designated Web-publishers My Community Managers Talk to your EMT if you are interested

22. Designated Officers Designated Officers will help to: submit content items and resources in their field of work seek approval for content from their EMT manager encourage news items regularly review content

23. Designated Web Publishers Designated Web Publishers will help: To learn how to publish content for their team to the portal (Training will be provided by Sarah) To attend a web development user group meeting once a term