Release Notes V32 Ocaria Thales
Transcription
Release Notes V32 Ocaria Thales
RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Release: v32 – Ocaria Thales Spring 2016 Edition Version 32 of the My Learning Suite was released on Thursday April 7th 2016 @ 15:00 GMT. This document explains some of the additional updates and features which are now available in v32. During the latest release, the development team at My Learning have focused on streamlining the interface and creating a more responsive, fluid and enjoyable experience. No action was required and your update happened automatically between 15:00 and 16:00 GMT. During that time, the system was offline for approximately one hour. Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 1 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com New major additions for v32 Interface Enhancements Much work has been done behind the scenes in order to create a more dynamic and responsive edition for v32. This work has been split into three important areas listed below. New responsive design: The team at My Learning have now merged the traditional desktop and tablet editions into one user interface (UI). This means that you can use My Learning in exactly the same way on a desktop or tablet device in any orientation or screen size. The screens will look and perform in the same manner. Enhanced themes: We have individually improved every theme on the platform with updated graphics, crisper and more defined user interface controls and better use of highlighting and colour. We have also improved the speed of rendering and reduced image clutter throughout many modules on the platform. Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 2 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Improved page speed: My Learning have introduced a 2nd level caching engine to the platform which has further increased the responsiveness of the application in both desktop and mobile editions. End-users will notice that the browser interaction is faster to load and render. We have also reduced the amount and complexity of coloured icons to further improve speed on slower devices. Notice that the small icons are faded until such time that you hover or click them. This helps users to focus on the items which are more important. Audio Memos My Learning now has the ability to allow instant, on-demand sound recording on desktop, tablet and mobile devices. This service can be used to create recordings directly within My Learning, and can also be used to store voice annotations and comments directly within existing files. Kindly note that this exciting new service will require that you allow permission for the web browser to access your microphone. Unfortunately, this technology is not yet supported on any Apple devices, as they have not adopted the WebRTC framework. We expect that in due course, updates to Apple systems will support such features. If you wish to learn more about some of the fantastic features and abilities which WebRTC will bring to devices please see Appendix 1 at the end of this document for an insight into the plans we have for this. How to create a simple recording: STEP 1: To create an instant audio recording click on STEP 2: the (Create new) icon within the Quick Links dashboard. Alternatively, you can click on the “Tools” menu and select “Audio Memo”. There you will find an icon to (Create New). This will take you to the sound recording web-app. Learning solutions for education and beyond. Record Page 3 Stop Close VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Your recording will then be saved into “My Files”. How to create a voice memo: When you create a “Voice Memo”, you are pinning audio to an existing resource in My Learning. You can ‘pin’ your memo to any content you wish. This content may reside in a Classroom or a Learning Space, or even your personal My Files area. In the example below we will navigate to a Classroom and find some students work, and pin an audio memo. I navigate to my KS3 History Class and can see some pictures that have been placed there. I then click on the file that I wish to pin an Audio Memo to (this can be any file type) and I see a number of icons on the grey bar. When I click the microphone icon I am presented with the same screen to record my audio. See below for a quick overview of how this works. Record Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 4 Stop Close VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Now that the audio has been pinned to the file I can easily see this by refreshing my display. Alternatively, I could close the file and re-open it to see the newly pinned audio: When I refresh the display I now see my pinned audio memo listed. Any other audio memos that have been pinned to this document will also be listed here. I am now able to select from a list of pinned audio memos to access. If other users have also pinned audio memos then these would also be available within the list. Things to remember: You can add new audio memos to a file by selecting the “Add new memo” at any time. Students require “Contribute” permissions to be able to leave memos. Managers of the Classroom or Learning Space have full control of memos. You can manage your audio memos from the “Tools” / “Audio Memos” menu. PDF Embedding You can now embed PDF files from the system directly into website pages and documents. Instead of being shown as a PDF icon link, users will now see the actual PDF contents in line with other materials once the document has been saved/updated. This is a brilliant method of sharing school resources and documents. Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 5 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Grading Date Search When searching for grades and feedback within the Grading Centre, users can now use the calendar tool to find information easily using specific dates. Additional Metrics If your school is linked to an M.I.S (Management Information System), My Learning will now allow students to add a new dashboard panel which will display attendance, behaviour and reports. Timetables will now also show the name of the lesson. Edit your dashboard with “Panel Manager” and select the “My Data” dashboard panel. Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 6 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Example of a timetable showing lesson names. Uploading an Image Whilst Editing Previously, if you were editing a DOCX, MLD or Website in My Learning – and you wished to upload an image directly within the editor, you would have to click to find your image and insert it. In this release, if you upload a picture directly – we’ll automatically insert it into your editor. Twelve New Content Library Providers Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 7 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Profile Editor Our team has entirely re-written the profile editor for My Learning. The layout and arrangement of buttons and functionality has been adjusted to reflect the manner in which Social Networking websites also operate. We have also added four additional moods, as below: Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 8 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Notification Manager My Learning has now introduced the first phase of it’s “Notification Manager”. This feature is an administrative module which enables the Administrator of each school to decide who can receive different types of notifications and how often they receive them. End-users (if allowed by the Notification Policy) are also allowed to further customise what type of notifications they receive. Phase two of this feature will add support for Push Notifications to personal mobile devices. To access the new service, as an Administrator – click on the top left ‘shield’ icon to see the management screen. Scroll down to “Policies” and select the “Notification policy”. You will see a detailed screen of policy rules which you can edit in-place by clicking each option directly. “Notifications” are events which are triggered by certain actions and behaviour within the platform. Some events may be origininated by a Teacher, others may be originated by a Student. In either respect, My Learning now allows the Administrator complete control of how these notices are configured and delivered. Firstly, let’s look at a sample area of the Notification Policy page to understand how this works: Each type of notification has a colour and short-code representing its behaviour. Something in dark green with “C” represents Courses. An item in lighter green “HM” represents Homework. The legend on the same screen shows this in detail. Across the top, there are 5 headers: Students, Parents, Teachers, Admin and Frequency. You can click these header titles to effect changes for ALL rules if you wish, however, most Administrators will prefer to select more individual settings. Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 9 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Let’s choose the top line as an example. This is a “Course” rule. Every time a new Quiz is created then a FORCED notifcation is sent to a Student, a Parent and a Teacher. The item is HIDDEN for the Admin. The frequency of these notices is daily, meaning every morning and afternoon – the platform will transmit any existing notices. Understanding the three notification options for each user type: Hidden: Forced : Choice : The item will not be available for the end user to customise The notifications will be forced to that user type The end-user will be able to choose their own options *Remember these options can apply to different user types. It is also worth noting that the Administrator can also determine the frequency of such notifications. For example, looking at the screen sample below there may be situations whereby a daily notification is not required, but a weekly summary would be more useful. In the example above, the Administrator has chosen that if any internal websites have been modified or updated, then this notice will be FORCED to all users on a weekly basis. Likewise, any abuse or bad words notifications will be sent daily (AM or PM) to end users. If the Administrator wished to allow a Parent to choose and customise their notifications for websites being updated then they would change the “Internal website has been updated” to the screen below: This means that Parents would be able to choose whether or not they wish to receive notifications. The policy editor is also equipped with a “Reset to defaults” option which will re-configure a default set of rules which fit most schools’ preferences. Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 10 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com In an interim update to Version 32.1, My Learning will be adding a new delivery method entitled “Push Notifications” which will be able to send notices to users of the My Learning App (Android and Apple). HTML5 Video Player Now that more browsers are truly HTML5 compatible, My Learning has switched (by default) to use the engine of your device to play media and video. This has distinct advantage of being quicker and more reliable than using other techniques to play content. Another advantage is that videos will now fully support seeking and streaming on mobile devices. The player can also be activated in full-screen mode. My Learning will now utilise your browser’s preferred media player, then default to your operating system. If this fails, our system will then revert to a Flash method of playing your media. As a final attempt, you will be given the option to download the media and play offline. Image Auto-Detect My Learning can now detect the rotation/angle of an image that you upload from smartphones, and will automatically rotate the image to align to the correct landscape or portrait format during upload. This has previously been a particular problem with Apple iPads, as you can take a photo from any of 4 orientations without a known baseline to determine the correct up and down layout. Grading Centre Updates In the Grading Centre, if a piece of homework, or file submission that had been graded still exists within the platform, then clicking on this resource will directly display it on the screen. This can be a very useful means of Teachers re-capping work which Students had already completed, or allowing managers and colleagues to see what had been created by the student. Task-List Manager (v2) Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 11 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Task lists can now have multiple managers. Teachers in the group where the task is assigned will become managers unless the task list has been assigned to ‘all’, or that individual Teacher. You can now clone any task list, not just archived ones. In the task list dashboard panel, the list size can now be controlled. Retirement of Flash Based Plug-ins It is with regret that My Learning have now rescinded any reliance on our Flash based audio and video recording tools which allowed much flexibility in being able to record audio and video resources directly into My Learning. With use of Flash-based technologies proving to be ever more difficult to support we have now disabled these features across all servers. We are now pioneering WebRTC and associated technologies with the advent of our first “Audio Recording” service based on HTML5 web browsers, which should continue to adapt over time. My Learning are also researching and developing associated video options. Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 12 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com New minor updates for v32 1. Censor filter infringements and context information is now visible to Teachers as well as Administrators. 2. DOCX Editor: a. When viewing a .docx file, if you have editing rights for that file, you can edit it from the pencil icon in the toolbar (top left). 3. Forms: a. A user who has just completed a form can view their results (there is an option to allow this when the form is created). 4. Reports: a. Overview reports can switch between classes and learning spaces. 5. A keyword search has been added to the people directory. 6. Blogs: a. On internal websites only, users can now read blog comments in a blog widget (read only, not write) . b. Blog posts now have the option to add an expiry date to them. c. You can no longer insert the blog gadget into a blog post (potentially creating an endless loop). 7. Grading: a. When searching for grades and feedback in the grading centre users can search between specific dates. 8. My Diary: a. General overhaul of the look and layout of ‘My Diary’. b. Any Teacher can approve any diary entry. c. A ‘Finder’ tool has been included to find other diaries. d. A diary can be exported as a pdf – ideal for e-portfolios. e. Diary entries can be ‘unapproved’. 9. Admin Assistants can now edit the AdBoard panel contents for both the school (Students and Parents) and Teachers. 10. Homework: a. Homework flow for docx homework has been streamlined. The Student clicks a pencil icon to edit the docx file then clicks ‘submit’ when done. They can also click to save a draft to ‘My Files’. b. A specific time can be selected for homework deadlines. 11. For schools with MIS data access set up: a. Timetables now have lesson names included. b. Students can now use a data dashboard panel that gives them one-click access to attendance, timetable, behaviour and reports. 12. In the document editor, if a user uploads a file via the ‘upload’ button, and that file is an image, it will now insert the image in the normal way. 13. Teachers can archive their discussions with Parents. 14. Password security update http://wiki.mylearningltd.com/wpcontent/uploads/2016/02/Changes-to-password-security.pdf 15. Task lists: Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 13 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com a. Task lists can now have multiple managers (Teachers in the group that the task list is assigned to will become managers, unless the task list has been assigned to “all” or the Teacher creating the task list). b. You can clone any task list, not just archived ones. c. In the task list dashboard panel the list size can be limited. 16. Advanced options for groups: a. The manage, create class or learning space, layout and badge buttons are now hidden in an ‘Advanced options’ popup . b. Also in the ‘Advanced options’ popup; groups can now be filtered by subject if applicable. You can also select a group from a drop-down and go directly into the group (if this is quicker than searching through groups). 17. Parents: a. Parents can now add extra children more easily; once logged in they have an option in the top right to “Add child”. There is also a button on the swap child page to add children. When clicked the link takes them to a simple form where they must enter the master username and password for the new child. If all credentials are correct, their current information is copied and created as a parent against this new child, and they are taken to the swap page. b. There is a new option to disable parent comment posting to blog posts. 18. Login reporting: a. Admin can now specify a duration for whole school logins, this is viewed by teacher/student rather than individuals. Available durations are Year, Month, Week. b. A group can be specified with custom duration; this shows individual students and teachers. Admin is classed as a Teacher for the purposes of this report. Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 14 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Appendix 1 What is WebRTC? WebRTC is a free, open project that provides browsers and mobile applications with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple APIs. The WebRTC components have been optimized to best serve this purpose. As many of our veteran customers know, My Learning’s goal has always been to adopt upcoming technologies in advance so that when the general user-base is requiring such features; we are able to support them. In version 32 of My Learning we have taken an early step forward to release our Audio Memo tool which allows any device to record sound directly into the platform. Since WebRTC is gradually being adopted, you will notice that in future releases more and more features will be possible. To learn more about WebRTC and to try out some new technologies follow this link. What is the current adoption of WebRTC? Because WebRTC is a rapidly developing technology, major technology vendors are gradually adopting support for the technology. Below, is an approximate heat map of certain feature availabilities. Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 15 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com When will Apple support WebRTC? Unfortunately Apple is still progressing their support for WebRTC which means that many popular devices such as iPhone and iPad (using Safari browsers) currently do not support the technology, however, this is changing. If you are a “Technology Pioneer”, and wish to try out WebRTC on your Apple device – you can visit http://www.openwebrtc.org/bowser/ who provide a downloadable app for your device which can use WebRTC. For additional information on upcoming support for Apple and WebRTC there are many websites with purported details, such as https://thenewdialtone.com/apple-webrtc/ Whilst many technology development studios, such as My Learning, wait in hope that Apple will bring WebRTC support, kindly note that we have no control over the adoption of such technologies. With the ongoing development of My Learning native apps, this will also ensure that there is seamless interaction between any device and the My Learning Platform during the next few months. Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 16 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201 RELEASE NOTES V32 – Ocaria Thales Telephone:+044 8451 543211 Email: support@mylearningltd.com Interim updates towards v33 Additions and updates until mid-Summer 2016 Departmental level features. Establish departments by linking classrooms and subjects. Imprint custom designed “dashboards” to the entire school, classes or individuals. Multi screen mode. Users will be able to add new dashboard screens (multi-dashboard). My Learning Rubric Designer – will allow Teachers to mark and measure learning objectives. Official launch of “ClusterPad”, our school -> school sharing service. The next official version of My Learning v33 entitled “Peria Lamis” (Peach Beauty) is due end of July 2016 The July release will be focusing on enterprise LMS and Higher Education features. Ability to make an entire Course Public (with only email login) – MOOC. Document annotation service allowing overlay of audio and written comments. Cross document conversion tools (for Enterprise edition). Generate ePub, PDF and HTML directly from an MLD or DOCX file. Additional features for mobile app (Push notifications, new modules released). Learning solutions for education and beyond. Page 17 VAT no: 985324784 Company No: 06989201