NOTE: This post mentions changes happening to free instructor accounts on Schoology. These changes will not affect any schools that have at least one administrator.

Throughout the last school year, Schoology has grown very quickly, and we have worked very hard to listen to our users. In particular, we received a number of questions from users of our free accounts regarding student interaction.

It has always been our philosophy that users should feel safe and be kept safe using Schoology. With our free administrator and premium accounts, administrators have the ability to configure which groups of people (roles) have access to certain features (permissions). However, in our free instructor accounts, Schoology defines these roles and permissions.

On August 4th, 2011 we will be making changes to our free instructor accounts – specifically with regard to student accounts. We will be removing the ability for students to send private messages to other students. Rest assured, students will still have the ability to message instructors, and instructors will still have the ability to message students. In addition to the change in messaging, we will be removing the ability for students to create personal blog posts (we will be adding course/group blogs…

Many people have been asking for a way to reuse the content that they upload into the personal Files/Links area. In thinking about this we realized two things: 1) people want to reuse their files and links, but also 2) people want to reuse parts or all of their course content. Well…the new resources area provides the functionality for both of these issues. Note: We have removed the “Files/Links” navigation item from the left menu of the Schoology homepage. You can now access the “Resources” area from any page, via the top navigation.

First, let’s explain the layout of the Resources area:

The left column contains “Collections.” A collection is a container that stores templates of Schoology content. You can organize your collection by separating the templates into folders, or just by placing templates directly into the root folder of the collection. You may be asking yourself, “how is a collection different than a folder?” The answer is that a collection can actually be shared with your connections, which I will elaborate on shortly.

The right column contains the contents of a collection. This content may include folders, files, links, and Google Docs for students, but for teachers, this…

As the first part of our Google Apps integration, we have added the ability to import Google Docs/Spreadsheets/Presentations directly from Schoology without going to Google. In the past, the process to get Google Docs was as follows:

1) Login to Google Docs
2) Create a Google Doc
3) Download the Google Doc
4) Upload the Google Doc to Schoology

Now, the workflow is as follows:

1) Go to “Resources” and click “Add From Google Docs”
2) Choose the desired file and click “Add”

That’s it!

We will be adding greater functionality in the future, but we think that this is a great start. Let us know your thoughts.

We realize that most people collect events from a number of different areas (e.g. Google, Outlook, Schoology, other sites, etc). Often, it can be a pain to keep track of all events in an aggregate manner. In the past, you had the ability to download your calendar in iCal format. That works well, but sometimes it is not enough — especially when the likes  of Google Calendar, Outlook, and others are including the ability to read external iCal feeds. Today, we are helping to ease that pain by releasing iCal feeds. From your personal calendar, you will see a link at the bottom right corner that says “iCal Feed.” Clicking this link will bring up a popup with two options: 1) Subscribe to the calendar, or 2) Download the Calendar.

Clicking “Subscribe” will show you the private url for your Schoology calendar. Simply click the link, or copy and paste it into an external calendar program to get it to read. Below are instructions for Outlook 2010 and Google Calendar.

Outlook 2010:

1) Click Calendar from the left bar
2) From the top bar, click “Open Calendar,” and select “From Internet”
3) Paste the url from the Schoology…

Over the past year we have grown very quickly, and we have many users that are not native English speakers. For that reason, we are happy to announce that Schoology can now be viewed in Spanish. At the bottom right corner of the screen is a button that displays the current language of Schoology (it should read “English” for most of you). Simply click on the text and choose the new language (only Spanish at this time).

We know that we have many users who speak other languages. Rest assured that we are working hard and will continue to add support for more languages in the future. If you would like to help us in our translation efforts, please email jeremy@schoology.com.