Well what a few months we’ve had. As a teacher myself I’ve never known anything like it; remote learning, class bubbles, lockdown, Zoom classes - we’ve had to overcome challenges that none of us could have predicted.
At globalbridge, the pandemic pandemonium has just made us even more focused on creating a platform that supports our amazing students. However, it has also made us adapt to a new world; by working closely with schools and users we have been able to identify key needs and subsequently develop features that we feel will provide real benefits to students and teachers alike.
As the resident techie on team gb, I have been working with our developers to make sure that our new features are implemented in a way that fits with the pressures of school life, as well as being incredibly user friendly and intuitive. It gives me great pleasure to announce that the following features are now live and ready for you and your students…
The globalbridge mobile app: This is a biggie! We have built, from the ground up, a brand new native mobile app (we had to, every time we went into schools we were always met with a resounding chorus or ‘is there an app for this?!). Available now across iOS and Android, your students can use all of the functions of globalbridge quicker and easier than ever before, and by enabling notifications they will never miss an opportunity or important update. And teachers can log in too to view opportunities and send messages to their groups. ‘Messages?’ What’s this I hear you cry…
Group messaging: Staff can now create groups of students (classes, tutor groups, trip groups, etc) and, using the mobile app, can send secure messages. We’ve made teacher-student communication safer - Inform your students about deadlines, push out important notices, send links to articles, and inform them about new opportunities on globalbridge. Students can reply too, but they only do so with a certain set of responses.
Bulk Experience Upload: We know that our students never forget to upload important information to their profiles… but just on the off chance that they do we’ve created a great feature that allows staff managers to ‘bulk upload’ an experience to multiple user profiles. All your students need to do is add a rating and there is a permanent record of the experience. This is also a great way to track and evidence your careers programme engagements (did someone say Gatsby…).
In addition to these big features, we’ve also squashed a few small bugs and made some refinements to make sure the globalbridge experience is as smooth as possible. We’ll be running a series of training webinars over the coming weeks too to help you get used to the new features, so keep an eye out for these. A big thank you too to our development partner schools for your input - this has been incredibly useful and you’re all absolute stars!
And we’re already working on our next set of great features - you’ll be hearing more from me very soon.
All that’s left to say is that if you haven’t already done so, make sure you contact the globalbridge team now to discuss your plans for the academic year. We love to hear from you and can’t wait to support your students to help them #BridgeTheGap .
Product Manager, Ben Brownlee
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