If you haven’t heard about Digital Learning Day — today is the first of its kind — be sure to visit the website that has been set up with tons of information about national and state events, as well as a toolbox for teachers interested in what other educators are doing to participate in Digital Learning Day.  An estimated 1.7 million students will be working on related projects and assignments today — with a great many of them powered and supported no doubt on Schoology!

Obviously, we share in the vision behind National Digital Day and in its broader message that we can meaningfully enhance the learning process through digital learning strategies that foster stronger student engagement, communication, and collaboration.  As Jeremy Friedman, our CEO, said earlier today in a press release:

“Pick virtually any industry or sector and you will find that technological innovation is at the core of all major game-changing advancements; the same will be true for education.  Today’s students are growing up surrounded by…

We have been listening to our users over the past few months, and are going to be making some changes that will greatly increase ease of use, navigation, and site performance. Our expected transition date is Saturday, February 4, 2012.

Top Navigation Changes

1. We will be removing the Courses and Groups block from the homepage/left menu and adding them to the top navigation. You will now be able to access all your courses and groups from any page on the site without having to go back “Home.” You will also be able to Create and Join courses/groups from this dropdown (depending on your permissions).

   

2. The Inbox has been changed to a mail icon that appears in the upper right next to Requests/Notifications. You will be able to preview received messages or create new ones from the dropdown.

   

3. We are moving the Logout and the School profile into the Account dropdown, which now appears at a button in the upper right corner. Your name is displayed next to this and acts as a link to your Profile.

   

4. Search

…

In order to help with gradebook organization, we have added the ability for teachers to use grade placeholders in individual grade cells. These placeholders have no effect on the final or grading period grades, but can be used to keep track of who is excused from specific assignments.

Assessment Submission Review

Until now, teachers had to choose between not allowing students so see their responses to an assessment or revealing the correct answers. Teachers can now choose to show students how they performed without giving away the correct answer, allowing them to re-take the test/quiz. To use this submission review mode, select “Yes” for “View Submissions” on the assessment settings tab.

Resource Sharing

In addition to having the ability to share resources with people in your network, users who have the “Allow user to share collections” permission can now choose to share a collection with anyone in his/her school.

Flash Uploader Fallback

We use a flash uploader to allow multiple uploads at a time and to show upload progress. However, users with certain setups might experience…

In addition to the new homepage and other site updates we’ve been working on this week, the Schoology team has been busy gearing up for next week’s FETC conference in Orlando, our third year in attendance.

Everyone is looking forward to another exceptional event and, of course, to meeting our ever-growing Schoology community in Florida. We’d love to hear about your experiences and the creative ways you are leveraging the platform to better teach and engage your students.

We’ll be in Booth 436 — stop in and say hello. Just please — not all at once. There are hundreds and hundreds of you, after all!

And if you are not yet signed up for Schoology, we would love the chance to introduce you to our collaborative learning platform, walk you through its unique functionality, and share with you the many, many ways it can enhance the learning process for you and your students. Please stop by!

Last spring, we excitedly rolled out the enterprise-level version of our collaborative learning platform. The premium features it offers were designed specifically with the school or district administrator in mind, granting expanded performance analytics and reporting functionality that can only come from having all their teachers working on a single, integrated platform. At the enterprise level, Schoology essentially serves as the “one-stop shop” for educators to teach, assess, administer, and analyze student progress.

One of the many school districts to upgrade from our cost-free solution to the enterprise-level platform was the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD), a K-12 system with an exceptional reputation for the academic performance of its students. It’s also recognized for being tech-savvy, which is not too surprising given that it sits within the very heart of Silicon Valley in California.

Earlier today we shared more information about PAUSD’s decision to select Schoology for its 12,000 students and 600+ teachers, which you can read about here. PAUSD completed its first full semester utilizing the platform last month, with high marks received all around.

We’d certainly welcome the…

Edit Update Attachments

Users can delete or add attachments to existing updates, in addition to editing the update text. To remove attachments, click on the “x” next to the attachment you would like to delete. Adding attachments can be done from the edit popup.

Create Templates in Resources

Teachers now have the ability to create course content directly from the resources area. Discussions, tests, pages, and assignments can be created and edited without having to first import from or save to a course.

Test/Quiz Attachments

Attachments can be added to assessments in the same way they can be added to assignments. This can be useful for equation sheets or other reference materials that students need to see throughout the exam.

Published vs. Unpublished Grades

Courses that have unpublished materials will show a different grade to students than to teachers. The two grades can now be seen side-by-side directly from the gradebook. If a final or grading period grade is affected by unpublished assignments, the corner of the grading period…

Teachers now have the ability to hide the numerical value associated with specific grading scales, which could be helpful with smaller scales like “check+/check-”, where the exact percentage value is not as important. To hide the numerical value from students click on the “Hide numerical value” checkbox when editing or creating a grading scale.

Copy Subfolders into Other Course Folders

When maintaining multiple sections of the same course, teachers often need to copy certain subfolders into other courses. Teachers can now copy subfolders directly into existing folders, rather than having to copy directly into the top level of the course.

Inline Pages to Replace Text Blocks

In order to simply course organization and content creation, we are phasing out support for text blocks in course folders. Instead, teachers can create an “inline” page, which will display all content of the created page in the course folder without having to navigate away. The option to make a page “inline” will only be available for pages created within course folders.

SMS Notifications for Canadian Customers

Canadian mobile subscribers can now choose to receive text message notifications from Schoology. Support for…

Over the past year, one of the most requested features has been to add a “Like” button. Whether it’s an update message or a comment throughout Schoology, often you want to express your approval without having to write a note. Today, we are allowing you to do just that. Now, whenever you see an update or a comment you will have the opportunity to “Like” it. You can see how many people have liked a particular update/comment, and you can see who those people actually were by clicking on the number next to the thumbs up icon. The screenshot below should help illustrate the like button and how it works.

Event Profiles

In addition to the like button, we have made other improvements that have come from user feedback, requests, and analysis. Events are one of the more popular features on Schoology. Previously, an event was a simple calendar reminder. It could have attachments, but overall the event was something static. Today, we are making events more useful and interactive by giving them unique profiles.

Event profiles change the experience of events by allowing attachments, comments, and even RSVP capabilities. This means…

As a teacher, it is sometimes helpful to see how your course might appear to your students. With this new feature, you can! To view your course as a student, click on the “Members” block on the left sidebar of the course profile (or if you have chosen to hide the student roster, you can also access by clicking on “Edit Members”). You can then choose to preview the course as a specific student:

While you are viewing previewing your course, you will see a yellow box at the top of every page showing the student you are currently previewing the course as.

You can end preview mode by either clicking on the “Back to Course” button or by navigating away from your course to another part of the site.

Discussion Comment Attachments

Students and teachers can now attach files and links or embed content along with their discussion comments. If the permission is enabled, users should see “File” and “Link/Embed” buttons under the comment entry box.

Questions / Further Information

As always, if you have questions about the new features, you can ask them on our support forum at http://community.schoology.com.

Supported File Formats

The following files are supported by our video transcoder:

Keep in mind that certain codecs may prevent the file from successfully being converted regardless of file format.

Conversion Process

As soon as you uploaded and save a media file, you will see an icon next to the file name or a placeholder for the player, along with a status message outlining the status of the conversion. If for any reason the conversion fails, it will let you know…