Author Archive

Meet Beth Sanders | Social Studies Teacher

Hello, my name is Beth Sanders and I am a second year social studies teacher at Tarrant High School in Birmingham, AL. I am beyond lucky to have 1:1 Macbooks and iPod Touches in my classroom and have become known throughout our school system as the “techie” who rarely sleeps.

If I only had one word to define myself, it would be passionate. I am passionate about education reform, social justice, 21st century skills, and purposeful technology integration, among several other things. I live, eat and breathe all things education and I am in constant pursuit of embedding purposeful and passion driven learning tools into my classroom. I am an advocate for problem/project-based learning. I believe strongly in the power of technology to support students in becoming independent, aware, empathetic, problem-solvers who cannot only live in, but thrive in an ever-changing globally connected world.

I am an avid supporter of Schoology and can truly attest to its power in the classroom in supporting all types of learners in maximizing their learning experience. If you follow my twitter handle, you know how serious I am about this; I truly cannot imagine my classroom without Schoology. As a…

Meet Mark Garrison | Instructional Technology Coordinator

Schoology is happy to introduce you to our newest Guest Blogger, Mark Garrison.

Mark Garrison is the Instructional Technology Coordinator for White Bear Lake Area Schools in Minnesota. In 2002 Mark and his wife paddles 3,000 miles from the Minnesota border to the Arctic Ocean. They now live in Minneapolis where they are raising 3 children and finding adventure in everyday life. Among his many hobbies, Mark collects and presents interesting and innovative websites at GarrisonSites.com.

Mark is also attending the Google Teacher Academy and the first ever Youtube Teacher studio. Be sure to follow Mark on Twitter at @MarkGarrison and check out the Schoology Blog for Mark’s latest blog posts.

ISTE 2011

We are very excited to be attending the ISTE 2011 conference in Philadelphia! We have exciting news to be released at the confernece, including several new features:

- Google Apps Integration
- Library: Shared Resources
- Test/Quiz: Question Importer

Schoology is now eligible for E-Rate

Schoology has been accepted into the E-Rate program. Now non-profit private schools, public schools, and libraries can receive funding to go towards purchasing Schoology with their E-Rate program by using the following information:

Provider: Schoology, Inc
Spin #:
143035378

To learn more about the E-Rate program click here. If you are interested in purchasing Schoology through your E-Rate program please contact Bill Kindler, bill@schoology.com or Jonathan Hume, jhume@schoology.com.

Visit us at Booth 2948!

Exhibitor Hours:

Monday, June 27th: 9:30am – 5:30pm
Tuesday, June 28th: 9:30am – 5:00pm
Wednesday, June 29th: 9:30am – 2:30pm
See Interactive Floor Plan

Be the first 200 people to visit Booth 2948 and pick up your free Schoology T-Shirt!

We look forward to meeting you at ISTE 2011 – Enjoy the conference!

For those of you who are learning about Schoology for the first time, here’s

Assistive Technology and Special Education

This guest post is written by Danielle Martino, a graduate student at Manhattanville College in New York finishing her Masters in Special Education. Danielle is conducting her thesis on the effectiveness of Assistive Technology in the classroom relative to students with mild disabilities. Please take a second to read her letter below, and we would greatly appreciate you contributing to her research by participating in the survey. If you have any questions please reach out to her at AssistiveTechnologySurvey@gmail.com.

Hello Fellow Educators:

I am conducting research to analyze the relationship between Assistive Technology and students with mild disability. I am currently completing the last of the requirements for my Master’s Degree in Special Education. I would appreciate any teachers that have experience instructing students with mild disabilities (impairments that are sufficiently mild, so that generally normal functioning is possible when adequate medical, educational, or other special services are provided) and that have some familiarity with Assistive Technology (low-tech: pencil grips, highlighting tape; high-tech: devices that are computer based; and/or other similar technologies) to complete this electronic survey.

It is important to note that your participation in this survey…

Text Message Notifications

We are happy to let you know that we have added text message notifications to Schoology! You can now opt-in to receive text alerts when new actions on Schoology occur, allowing you to stay up-to-date with new activity.

Follow the instructions below to get started:

1) Click “Account” from the top right navigation bar, and choose “Notifications” from the dropdown

2) Click the blue text that says “Send notifications to your phone via text message”

3) Enter your phone number and choose your carrier, then click “Submit”

4) Choose the messages you want to receive, and click “Update Settings” at the bottom of the page

That’s it! As always, we welcome your feedback.

Feedback/Comments:

Please share your feedback about Schoology text notifications below:

Improved Topic Creation & Navigation

Over the past few months we have looked at how our users create and structure content. While many educators loved the idea of structuring content into topics, many felt that using a rich-text editor to manage all topic content was difficult. Instead of having all the content in the topic body (like a page of text), educators wanted a topic to act more as an organizational folder for different content items (e.g. Assignments, Quizzes, Pages, etc).

Today we are releasing a new topic format — one that functions more as an organizational folder. Now you can create a topic and easily add items into that topic. For example, let’s say that you wanted to organize your class content by weeks or units. You could create a topic called “Week 1″ or “Unit 1″ and add all appropriate material. Each topic can then be easily published or unpublished at the click of a button, making it invisible to non-course instructors. Using the publishing functionality, you can create course content for the entire year and release it to the students when you are ready.

We have also significantly improved navigation for content that belongs to a topic. Each item can now…

Schoology Hosts Tri-State Education Technology Conference (TSETC)

NEW YORK, Sept. 14 — Schoology (http://www.schoology.com), a cloud-based learning platform and configurable social network for academic institutions, has partnered with New Milford High School in New Milford, NJ to present the inaugural Tri-State Education Technology Conference (TSETC) on Saturday, October 2, 2010. The conference is dedicated to educators in the Tri-State area and will provide a day to explore the latest developments and best practices to prepare students for a technology-driven future. The conference is free and attendees can register by visiting the conference website (http://www.tsetc.org).

TSETC is intended to highlight advancements in education technology and to help illustrate how instructors can best adopt and utilize these technologies. “The goal of this conference is to provide educators with practical strategies and tools to engage all learners. We hope that all educators leave inspired and motivated to pursue innovative practices while becoming agents of change,” states Eric Sheninger, Principal of New Milford High School. The conference will begin with a keynote speech by Lisa Nielsen, and will continue with professional development sessions, workshops, and virtual learning labs for attendees to explore new tools with experienced instructors. Nielsen, who has worked for more than a decade to support New York Cityschools, is also the…

Schoology Jobs | PHP Developers

Schoology is currently looking for a few experienced PHP Developers to join our team.

Responsibilities

· Assist in the development of high performance, highly scalable web applications
· Be involved in all aspects of development — playing a critical role in design, planning, development and deployment
· Use technical knowledge and creative thinking to provide the most innovative solutions
· Be self motivated to meet aggressive deadlines in a rapid application development environment

Experience

· Expert in at least PHP, MySQL, Javascript/jQuery
· Experience with Drupal (or strong desire to learn)
· Extensive knowledge of LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) based development
· Experience working with Web Services (e.g. REST, SOAP) in a highly scalable, highly available environment

Skills

· Strong fundamental understanding of web application technology
· Strong understanding of basic web skills (HTML, CSS and Javascript)
· Good communications skills and organization skills
· Ability and desire to learn new applications/processes/environments

Education

We don’t care where ou went to school, as long as you are passionate and good at what you do

To Apply

Will only accept applicants living in the New York area.

Please send Resume/CV to jobs@schoology.com with subject title “PHP Developer | Your Name“.

Schoology Jobs | QA Engineer

Schoology is currently fishing around for an experienced Quality Assurance Engineer with a focus on Internet Web testing.

We are looking for a bright and professional individual to manage quality assurance here at Schoology. The ideal candidate has extensive QA experience in a LAMP environment, possesses a strong knowledge of QA practices, excels at organization, and is comfortable working with databases, unit tests and the command line. A degree in Computer Science or a related field is desired but not necessary. Other pluses include knowledge of web-specific QA tools, Flash development and mobile development.

The Quality Assurance Manager will run quality assurance for all the various aspects of the Schoology system. The individual would manage both the long term and day-to-day requirements of QA, including creating test plans and test cases, executing manual and automated tests, providing usability input and interfacing with other members of the Schoology team.

Responsibilities

- Develop and maintain a high-level plan and approach that ensures a high quality product
- Develop and implement a testing approach to each new feature added to the Schoology system
- Further develop the system of automated testing in place
- Execute manual testing on the…

Scheduled Maintenance

Schoology will be unavailable on Sunday, August 15th from 3:00pm EST to 6:00pm EST for scheduled maintenance and site upgrades. For more information, please see Site Updates: 8/15/10.